In 1974, Hiroo Onoda emerged from the jungle on Lubang Island near Luzon in the Philippines, twenty-nine years after WWII had ended. In those twenty-nine years sequestered from everyone and everything, believing the war was still going on, he accomplished nothing. Less than nothing, really—he engaged in several skirmishes with locals, creating heartache and disruption without reason.
If the human race were to severely socially distance for twenty-nine years—a blink of the eye in history—the species would go extinct. Greatness is not only in the agency of others; anything that matters is in the agency of something else. Without relationsionships, communication, and institutions, we are not even mammals.
Human connection is elemental to something that renders everything else trivial—babies. In America, young people are having much less sex. Besides being enjoyable and (needlessly) controverisal, sex is a key action to establishing the elemental foundations of any society: relationships and families.
Before we can get to intercourse, we need discourse. And our discourse has become so coarse that our fastest-growing mediums of communication are, unlike previous advances in communication, not increasing productivity but increasing polarization and making enemies of allies. Whipped to a frenzy by manufactured controversies, half of us see members of the opposing political party as our mortal enemy.
Institutions, another key feature that distinguishes us from less-successful species, are now seen as harmful. They’re no longer the mechanisms that put us on the moon or turned back Hitler but entities to be distrusted and defunded, and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy as they become less effective.
Distrust and the lack of connection have resulted in systems failures. Specifically, the central compact of any society has been broken in America. For the first time in our nation’s history, thirty-year-olds are not doing as well as their parents at the same age. Young men are failing, while the old and rich weaponize tax and regulatory policy to protect their wealth and still the gale of creative destruction.
We are not just lonely—that implies a recognition that we need to be with others. We have no collective vision. We not only cannot see landfall, but wouldn’t recognize it. We are adrift.
Adrift doesn’t mean lost. But we can’t course correct, or agree on a direction. We have the largest vessel with the most robust propulsion ever imagined, and we’ve registered staggering prosperity—but scant progress. We are divided, angry, and more of us feel disconnected.
However, some of the biggest clouds may be clearing. In its early weeks, the invasion of Ukraine brought new unity to the West and purpose to NATO. We saw Republicans and Democrats not just talking, but agreeing. Whether or not that unity lasts, it’s a clear sign that common ground exists. Covid-19 has killed more Americans than all the combat deaths in U.S. history combined, but the science dividend may unleash a wave of well-being. Specifically, we may have pulled forward an age of discovery that takes the gift of vaccines and washes immunities over the world, liberating millions from preventable deaths. We may witness a dispersion of education, healthcare, and work from campuses, hospitals, and offices, unlocking billions of hours better spent on self-care, caring for others, or making money.
This book is dedicated to my cousin Andy, who died from complications of Covid-19 on December 23, 2021, at the age of 52. If I’d made a list of everyone I know, speculating who was at risk, Andy would have been at the bottom. Andy was a strapping, handsome man who lit up a room. Yet due to a series of unthinkable mistakes and misfortune, including Andy’s decision not to get vaccinated, a beautiful nine-year-old boy is now fatherless. Like the millions of people who have lost loved ones, I gain perspective and sense the fragility and finite nature of life. But . . . now what?
My hope is that the visible landfall of progress, citizenship, and perspective provide determination and direction. That we make a massive investment in younger Americans, that we re-embrace our brothers and sisters abroad, that we discern the difference between competitors and enemies, and that we recognize before all else . . . we are Americans. In 2021, we saw child poverty in America nearly halved. In 2022, people are booking rooms in Kyiv (on a U.S. tech platform, without intending to use them) as a means of transferring funds to Ukrainians. We are spending more time with loved ones. We are resisting tyrants, and beginning to reject polarization.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that we’ll get to land. We don’t just wash up on any of these shores—the investment and leadership needs to be focused, and immense. However, landfall is there. It’s only a matter of getting to it.