Times are tough. In just the last few weeks the Dow Jones fell to a level not seen since 1997 and the unemployment rate in the United States, now over eight percent, reached a 25-year high. The bulk of the finance industry, including our largest and formerly most successful banks, exists only because the federal government has decided it must. Yet perhaps the most alarming indicator of our economic situation is that this is all, of course, old news. By now it seems almost a given that each day when we reach for the paper, turn on the television, or log on to the Internet, we will find only more evidence of hardship.
One would think that at a time like this, with so many in so much trouble, altruism would be in vogue. Yet instead it seems a never-ending supply of Ponzi schemes and executive retreats symbolize the avarice that caused this calamity. On February 19th two articles on the front page of the New York Times website, one next to the other, epitomized this troubling state of affairs. The first article, “Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks,” reported huge increases in demand at food banks across the country, while the second, “A Swiss Bank Is Set to Open Its Secret Files,” disclosed UBS “urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches, jewelry and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland” in anticipation of investigation by the IRS. To say that something has gone terribly awry seems an understatement.
While the myriad of economic policies aimed at resuscitating the economy is of supreme importance, I mean to focus on something else. How have we arrived at a point where it is commonplace to watch some hide their jewelry while others starve? The answer will explain, in one-way or another, how so many today have come to believe that they are not their brother’s keeper. This is, perhaps, the most pressing issue facing our generation. It is thus not a coincidence that amid this crisis the HPR chose a covers topic, Beyond Borders, that while not directly addressing the recession, attends to problems whose solutions require international cooperation, and a belief that we all share a fate as residents of the same planet. Or in other words, that we are all each other’s keepers.
Such a fundamental psychological shift seems less a subject of politics than epochal change, and may be little more than the naïve hope of a young American. But there is reason to believe our bonds can be stronger than is suggested by simply inhabiting the same place. As humans our activity is inherently social, even the most ardent individualist cannot deny their indebtedness to family, friends, and history; our fellow humans make possible all of our individual thoughts and activities. Recognition of this fact may hold the key to overcoming the self-centeredness that is today so hard to ignore, and I hope Beyond Borders, by pointing towards cooperative solutions to the most difficult problems facing humanity, helps to demonstrate it.
