Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Plus Que Ca Change

My favorite inauguration speech quote:

“The world has changed and we must change with it.”

But what I mostly felt was 1933 and 1960.

1933 for the economy

and

1960 for a shift in spirit and intellect.

I imagine fat cats from the 1920’s running around, not caring, greedily consuming everything in their paths.

I imagine Black Americans in Newark in the early 1960’s waiting for the great times to come.

Change is cyclical but it is also linear. So yes, the world has changed and WE MUST change with it. It’s all about the effluent and the affluent. We must diminish our pollution, all of it, so living things may grow. We must spread the riches more evenly, so the system can thrive.

The world has changed and we must change with it. The thinking in our country has changed. It is evolution.

4 comments:

Bancha S. said...

I most like his emphasis on personal responsibility. Both on the individual level, and the community level. He reminds us that the country is what we make of it. It's the product of our actions and decisions. A bottom-up causality, rather than a top-down one.

Rebecca Waring said...

It feels like a burst of enlightenment. Like the Renaissance.

40licious said...

Yes, it seems like sacrifice isn't so much of a problem if everyone's doing it. It's a good challenge, to wipe clean, to start over, to be simple.

Todd HellsKitchen said...

Yeah... As opposed to Bush's quote: "The whole world has changed, F#ck the whole world!"