We Live in a Marvelous Age

By Cecilia Sepp, CAE, ACNP, LPEC

I was thinking the other day about when I first started working at the US Chamber of Commerce back in the late 1980s. I was an administrative assistant at the time, and I was standing at the fax machine sending a message to someone in Australia. At the time, faxes (despite being “cutting edge” technology) took a little while to go through to the recipient because the machine had to read it, and then transmit it. You also had to wait for the confirmation – this process gave you a little bit of time to think about things.

As I was standing there thinking about things, I realized what an amazing act I was participating in at that moment. A message that my supervisor had written and asked me to send -- all the way to the other side of the world -- was coming out of someone else's fax machine in another time zone in another hemisphere in real time.

I remember thinking what a marvelous age we lived in that someone on the East Coast of the United States could send a message to someone in Australia and they would get it almost immediately.

That was several decades ago now and our world is even more amazing. We live in a marvelous age despite the fact we may not be paying attention to that fact, and some people will not admit it. Why is this? No matter how comfortable humans get, and no matter how wondrous our tools and interactions become, it seems our default setting is complaining.

It's not fast enough. The tool is too old. Why can't I get soy milk in my latte? Lattes and cappuccinos and other frothy drinks masquerading as coffee is a topic for another day. But the point is -- we live in a marvelous age! We are so comfortable in the United States right now that we complain about not having faux milk for our faux coffee.

The downside of our marvelous age is that the ability to instantly communicate and instantly share our perceptions, ideas, and opinions has deteriorated into name calling, finger pointing and an attitude of “my way or the highway”. Rather than finding those places where we agree and then working through the parts where we don't agree, we have abdicated our ability to reason and to use objectivity to analyze situations.

Some of the most marvelous policy debates happened in the 18th and 19th century when that was the activity that people participated in: they debated they didn't argue. While I sometimes laugh about the actual fisticuffs some 19th century elected officials participated in, I see that as a reflection of their passions for their positions (or in the case of Andrew Jackson, defending his wife’s reputation).

Sadly, we have allowed politics to replace public policy, to get in the way of friendship, and to get in the way of civil discourse.

This is another negative aspect of the marvelous age we live in and the trend is accelerating because artificial intelligence is making people lazy about thinking, researching, and creativity.

And yet despite these challenges I still say we live in a marvelous age! This marvelous age has created a different set of problems due to instantaneous messaging and communication. Our technology has advanced so far that some of us actually think it can think. While we do live in a marvelous age full of many opportunities and tools that help us do things better and faster, like A.I., too many people are abdicating responsibility for using their own intelligence and learning to solve problems or generate content.

This is leading to opinions rather than an ability to express understanding of deep thoughts and complex situations.

Too many people scratch the surface of a topic and never dig in deep enough to really understand it. Too many people think focusing on the exception to the rule makes them sound thoughtful and intelligent when it just really makes them sound argumentative. There is too much “yes, BUT . . .” and not enough “Yes, AND.” I believe in the power of debate because people who debate need to have clearly thought-out ideas and be able to present these ideas in an organized and informative fashion. It requires an intellectual rigor that is sorely lacking in our marvelous age.

When it comes to health care we definitely live in a marvelous age. People survive diseases and accidents that once killed us pretty quickly. Orthotics and prosthetics allow people to move around more ably after injuries. Medications cure things that used to kill us, especially in childhood. While some people may sneer, “well, it's not a marvelous age because health care is so expensive,” you cannot deny the fact that these treatments exist. Do I believe that healthcare should definitely be more accessible and affordable? Absolutely. But that's a topic for another day.

As we come up upon a holiday weekend, I would like to point out how marvelous holiday weekends are! There was a time in the world when we did not have these kind of holiday weekends, where most people get to take off and spend time with friends and family. Most of us don't know history and we don't understand that before the mid-20th century, people in the United States worked every day, except Sunday and certain holidays like Christmas, all year long.

Despite living in a marvelous age with amazing technology and health care options, we default to the negative rather than appreciating the positive right in front of us. We still don’t treat each other well. We continue wars, persecution, focusing on politics instead of solving problems, and looking to politicians rather than leaders to help us navigate the now and the next. These are all issues that are holdovers from the past – an example of how the past continues to haunt us.

For those of us who do get to take this long weekend to relax at the end of summer here in the Western Hemisphere, I encourage you to consider what a marvelous age we actually live in. Humans can do so much when they put their minds to it and work together. It's really quite marvelous when you think about it.