The grasshopper’s lack of responsibility is underlined by the song, “The World Owes Me a Living,” sung by superstar Shirley Temple in the 1934 film Now and Forever.
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Oh, I owe the world a living. . . . |
Keep in mind that the fable of “The Grasshopper and the Ant” has been around for more than twenty-five hundred years. Along with “The Fox and the Grapes,” “The Tortoise and the Hare,” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” it’s one of the fables of Aesop, a storytelling slave who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE.
This particular story involves a grasshopper that spends the warm months singing and playing while the ants work diligently to store up food for winter. When those icy winds arrive and the ground is covered with snow, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and asks the ants for food, only to be rebuked for his idleness. The grasshopper then dies miserably while the ants enjoy the winter, snug and warm and with bellies full. The End.
At least that’s how we spin the story during the Upswing of a “We.”
Figure 7.1 Moving toward the Zenith of “WE.”
In 1564, just one year past the tipping point into the Upswing of a “Me,” Gabriele Faerno published a poem in Latin that tells of an ant that was once a man who was always busy farming. Sounds familiar, right? But this man, tirelessly working and obsessed with gathering, also plundered his neighbors’ crops at night. This angered the king of the gods, who turned him into an ant. But even as an ant, the man still roamed the fields, gathering and storing food for the future.
MESSAGE: Ants are tedious workaholics.
Roger L’Estrange published a similar pro-grasshopper spin more than a century later, saying the ant’s “Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name.”
In 1922, a literary indictment was published that spoke of America’s loss of personal, moral, and spiritual values. The 434 lines of this indictment energized and unified the nation as we marched dutifully into a “We.” The indictment was T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, one of the most important poems of the twentieth century.
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What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow |
Eliot seemed to have been saying that our dreams were “only a heap of broken images” and that we were aware mostly of our own shadows—that moment-by-moment existence we call life. But “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” Eliot spoke of the consequences of our actions and the certainty of our mortality: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, during the third year of the six-year transitionary window. It moved the reader neatly from the “Me” American dream that anyone can achieve anything to the rapidly growing “We” perspective that individual achievement is ultimately empty.
The book introduces Tom and Daisy Buchanan as part of the “old aristocracy.” Tom was a football player in college and is now a wealthy dilettante who plays polo and has a mistress. His wife, Daisy, is attractive, pampered, and superficial, largely ignoring her three-year-old daughter. Jay Gatsby is a millionaire bootlegger who is wrongly murdered while floating in his pool. Although hundreds of socialites had attended Gatsby’s lavish parties, almost no one attends his funeral. In the end, the wealthy “Me” people in The Great Gatsby suffer due to their questionable morals. Nick, the narrator, disgusted with them, returns to his home in the Midwest.
Another huge book published during this six-year transitionary window was Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in 1926. A summary of this book in Wikipedia includes the following paragraph:
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Hemingway admired hard work. He portrayed the matadors and the prostitutes, who work for a living, in a positive manner, but Brett, who prostitutes herself, is emblematic of “the rotten crowd” living on inherited money. It is Jake, the working journalist, who pays the bills again and again when those that can pay do not. Hemingway shows, through Jake’s actions, his disapproval of people who did not pay up. [Hemingway’s biographer] Reynolds says that Hemingway shows the tragedy, not so much of the decadence of the Montparnasse crowd, but of the self-destruction of American values of the period. As such the author created an American hero who is impotent and powerless. Jake becomes the moral center of the story. He never considers himself part of the expatriate crowd because he is a working man; to Jake a working man is genuine and authentic, and those who do not work for a living spend their lives posing.1 |
Keep in mind that The Sun Also Rises was written during the transitionary window from a “Me” about big dreams and personal achievement to a “We” about small actions and personal responsibility.
Published in the seventh year of the Upswing, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury details the moral decay of the Old South. It is instructive that Faulkner took his title from a famous line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
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Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player |
The emptiness of individuality is an overarching theme of The Sound and the Fury.
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner were the literary giants during the Upswing of the last “We,” and the values they communicated were identical.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer spent the Upswing of the “We” working among the poor in Africa. He wrote extensively about his experiences and motivations. His opinions and concepts became acknowledged not only in Europe but also worldwide. He said,
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I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. 2 |
This “We” period also marked the spread of ready-to-wear fashion. Women were joining the job market and didn’t want to spend time sewing or being fitted for tailor-made clothes. As class distinctions were blurring, the status symbol aspect of fashion was losing its importance.
But what about the hit songs of that six-year transitionary window?
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Popular music is a mirror that shows us collectively who we are. |
All the big songs spoke of “togetherness” or expressed the pain of a lack of it. One of the marks of a “We” is that although we try to do the right thing, we whine about it. The song lyrics of a “Me” celebrate the moment and look forward. The lyrics of a “We” bemoan the moment and look back. Throughout the rest of the book, we’ll look at what the majority of Western society was singing as the Pendulum swung from “We” to “Me” and back again. The song lyrics have been abbreviated to only one or two lines that capture the mood and message of the song.
Do you remember the Disney movie Winnie the Pooh? Eeyore the donkey is the perfect spokesperson for a “We.” His general response is to sigh deeply and moan, “Somebody’s got to do it, and it’s probably me. Oh, well. Let’s get started.”
The top songs of the era reflect this sentiment:
Figure 7.2 Popular music themes during the first half of an upswing into “WE.”
| WE POPULAR MUSIC THEMES: FIRST HALF OF AN UPSWING INTO “WE” (1923–1933) | |
| A TIME OF DUTY, OBLIGATION, AND SACRIFICE | |
| 1923: “Downhearted Blues,” Bessie Smith | MESSAGE |
| Trouble, trouble, I’ve had it all my days It seems that trouble’s going to follow me to my grave. | Life is not a bed of roses.
Library of Congress |
| 1924: “It Had To Be You,” Isham Jones | |
Why do I do just as you say? Why must I just give you your way? |
You’re bossy and mean, but I love you anyway. |
| 1925: “The Prisoner’s Song,” Vernon Dalhart | |
I’ll be carried to the new jail tomorrow |
I’m lonely and I wish I wasn’t lonely, but I’m going to remain lonely. |
| 1926: “Bye Bye Blackbird,” Gene Austin | |
| No one here can love and understand me Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me. |
Life has been dark up until now, but I’m going to make a change. |
| 1927: “My Blue Heaven,” Gene Austin | |
| When whippoorwills call And evening is nigh I hurry to my Blue Heaven. |
It’s getting dark out there, but I’ve got all I need. |
| 1928: “T for Texas,” Jimmie Rodgers | |
| T for Texas, T for Tennessee T for Thelma The gal that made a wreck out of me. |
Love hurts, and I’m angry about it. |
Popular music is a mirror that shows us collectively who we are. There is no better way to gauge the values and perceptions of a society than to examine its popular music.
These weary and sad song lyrics might make sense if they were written during the Great Depression, but these were the hit songs during the so-called Roaring Twenties, when the United States was in the midst of a boom economy. The stock market didn’t crash until 1929, so, please, let’s not hear any nonsense about how popular literature and music are tied to economic cycles. The evidence clearly denies this.
Other Expressions of “Coming Together”
In its purest form, the central idea of communism is “working together for the common good.” So it should come as no surprise that 1922, the first year of an Upswing into “We,” was the year in which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established in Europe. It should also not surprise you that this Union fell apart at the Zenith of the “Me,” but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
In the United States, we came together in a different way. Radio in 1923 was the Internet of that day, a cheap and convenient way of communicating ideas and information to “the group.” Early radio broadcasts were primarily news and world affairs. Later in that decade, radios were used to communicate fears about communism, “The Red Menace.”
Although radio had been invented earlier, it took the beginning of a “We” to trigger radio’s sweep across the United States. The first broadcasting station created for the general public, KDKA, was launched in Pittsburgh in the early 1920s, just before the tipping point into the Upswing of the “We.” Entire families would sit around the radio in Pittsburgh and listen to whatever was broadcast.
In just six short years, new radio stations popped up by the thousands, and listening to the radio had become a national obsession, much like texting, Twitter, and Facebook would become at the beginning of the next “We.” Our hunger in a “We” is to connect.
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
Radio impacted the United States exactly like the Internet would impact it eighty years later: exposing the nation to new ideas and new entertainment, as well as causing us to form opinions on matters to which we had not been previously exposed.
According to Elizabeth Stevenson in Babbits and Bohemians: From the Great War to the Great Depression:
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Radio strengthened a tendency already working to make the people of the United States feel united and whole; for the first time, it seemed as if they could have thoughts and feelings simultaneously. For certain individuals, this was comforting and strengthening. It had the effect of making people wish to have simultaneous sensations.3 |
She went on to state that, “The new hobby of radio listening encouraged the tendency . . . a feeling that one’s country and oneself were exempt from unpleasant consequences.”4
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The false advertising of radio advertisements helped to create a sense of ignorance among most Americans towards anything unpleasant. Even though radio had brought the nation together as a whole, it also had the unfortunate side effect of making people of the 1920s more close-minded, ignorant, and disillusioned. Perhaps it was the sense of denial and false hope created by radio that made America so mentally unprepared for the Great Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression. |
In a “We,”
1. there will be a widespread hunger to come together;
2. technologies that facilitate this “coming together” will flourish; and
This expression “United we stand, divided we fall” can be traced back to “The Four Oxen and the Lion,” another fable of Aesop, but its embrace as a defining statement of America can be traced to “The Liberty Song,” a Revolutionary War song of John Dickinson published in the Boston Gazette in July 1768—five years into the Upswing of a “We,” during the magical six-year transitionary window. Notice how the song encourages coming together for the common good: “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!”
But let’s jump back to Aesop for a moment, that man who extolled the virtues of the ant in “The Grasshopper and the Ant” and gave us the phrase “United we stand, divided we fall” in his “The Four Oxen and the Lion.” For these fables to have gained sufficient traction to be remembered for twenty-five hundred years, Aesop would almost certainly have to have been an Alpha Voice at the thirty-year point of a “Me”—in the middle of a Downswing toward a “We.”
Figure 7.3 Values of society during a “WE” cycle.
| WE | MINDSET |
| ”UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL” | |
• Responsibility • Humility • Thoughtful • Conformity • Authenticity • Transparency |
• Relationships • Teams • Small actions • Connecting • Volunteerism • Common good |
iStockphoto / whitemay
Aesop was born in 620 BCE and died in 560 BCE. We can assume that he wrote his fables during the second half of his life. Do the math and you’ll see that the year of his birth, 620 BCE, was just three years before the Zenith of a “We” (617 BCE). This means that Aesop grew up during the Downswing of a “We,” was forty-three at the Zenith of a “Me” (577 BCE), and died at the age of sixty, just three years before the tipping point into the Upswing of another “We.” This means Aesop would have been fifty-three years old at the time of the Alpha Voices. His canon of fables would have been nearly complete at that time, precisely ten years before those “We” values exploded into the mainstream of Greek society.
Alpha Voices often become immortalized.
Another “connecting us together” invention that swept America during the “We” Upswing of 1923 through 1928 was the automobile.
The prosperity of these years was owed in part to the public funds the US government poured into the economy for the construction of roads and highways. Cars were connecting people everywhere. According to Kenneth Bruce, author of YOWSAH! YOWSAH! YOWSAH! The Roaring Twenties,
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[T]here were very few good roads outside the east coast; crossing the continent was a real adventure, as during the spring when the snow melted or after a good rain storm, automobiles would sink into gumbo mud up to their hubs. Travelers crossing Iowa or Nebraska were often forced to wait several days until the road dried before moving on to the next town.5 |
In 1921, the Federal Aid Highway Act offered federal money to state legislatures to stimulate them to organize highway departments. Spurred by these federal dollars, the states launched ambitious road-building programs. Soon, highway construction employed more men than any other industry.
Figure 7.4 Drivers of a “WE” cycle.
| WEDRIVERS OF A “WE” CYCLE | |
1. Conforms for the common good. 2. Assumes personal responsibility. 3. Believes a million men are wiser than one man. 4. Wants to create a better world: “I came, I saw, I concurred.” 5. Small actions. 6. Desires to be part of a productive team. 7. Values humility and thoughtful persons. 8. Believes leadership is “This is the problem as I see it. Let’s solve it together.” 9. Focuses on solving problems to strengthen society’s sense of purpose. |
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Roads were built to connect us on the ground, just as radios connected us through the airwaves.
The car craze touched every corner of the American economy—stimulating the oil industry, boosting road construction, and creating a housing boom in suburbs.
Henry Ford was the Bill Gates of his generation. In 1923, he earned $264,000 a day, and the Associated Press declared him a billionaire. He paid a record $2,467,946 in taxes for the year 1924.
Factories that had produced armaments for World War I were refitted to produce household appliances. “The primary reason why Americans bought so many household appliances was to simplify everyday tasks such as dishwashing or cutting grass, so that they could spend more time with their families.”6
iStockphoto / filo
Togetherness, connection, working together for the common good—these are the dreams that unite us in every Upswing of a “We,” and they are good things, indeed.
But we always take good things too far.
And you already know what happened on October 24, 1929: the stock market crashed, and our belief in “We” was put to the test.
Sadly, America had just elected Herbert Hoover. Born August 10, 1874, Hoover was eight years old when the Upswing began a forty-year “Me.” Consequently, he learned politics during a “Me,” and being a politician, he was unable to swing into “We” as quickly as the general public. Hoover was tragically out of step. Even worse, his previous job had been Secretary of Commerce for the previous two administrations, those of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. In effect, he had been on the steering committee that landed our ship on the rocks.
iStockphoto / DNY59
As the Depression deepened, Hoover launched public projects to create jobs, but he steadfastly resisted feeding the poor. But this rigid adherence to conservative principles was not his greatest problem. Trained as a mining engineer at Stanford, Hoover came across as mean-spirited and uncaring. Consequently, the shantytowns of the homeless were called “Hoovervilles.”
To make matters worse, Hoover supported and signed into law a tariff act in 1930 that triggered international trade wars and made the Depression even worse. Like George W. Bush in his second term, Hoover was a “Me” president in the early years of a “We.”
His opposition in the election of 1928 was Alfred Smith, a Democrat, the first Roman Catholic ever to be nominated to run for president. Protestant Americans were afraid to elect a Catholic president, particularly during the Upswing of a “We,” when working as a group was the ultimate ideal, because the American public believed the election of a Catholic would put one man, the Pope, in charge of our nation. As a result, Hoover won 58 percent of the popular vote and 444 of 531 electoral votes.
