But….one thing that I would say (and I think that this is very pertinent to the whole post-modern and post-post-modern consideration) is that much of what has come down to us as Americans is NOT useful for long-term stability. I was reading somewhere Wallace discussing our age as being an age in between exhaustion and replenishment.

I think that a central idea in this age is that of parsing out which aphorisms are useful and which are not.

If you’re not sure what I mean by this…the clearest example is Manifest Destiny and the underhanded, illegal and immoral methods used to establish title to the land of the Native Americans. (And if anyone thinks that this is in the past, I will say unequivocally that you are wrong).

In fact, it is not possible to simply pick up the bits of wisdom that have been handed down to us because at least half of them are corrupt, deceitful and dishonest.

This is the problem – that we have to again decide for ourselves what wisdom is.

Yes, it’s out there already, but it’s buried under mountains of useless, couterproductive bull—t.

From my perspective, what’s been “shoved in my face” for the past 40 years is that he who dies with the most toys wins, and every man for himself – devil take the hindmost.

I think that the effort to find REAL wisdom is a much more difficult and tortuous road than you seem to imply here.