Some time back in the 1960’s, large numbers of people starting drawing on that Goodwill, starting using it for their own purposes. I don’t blame the poor, but rather the people who USED the poor for their own aim.
I do blame the hippies, in part, since their claim was that they need not participate in civil society to enjoy its benefits. And when they eventually put on suits and ties, they brought with them a sense that they were entitled to a certain quality of life, and that their principle aim COULD properly be to enjoy life, rather than to build, and take joy in building.
When they raised their children, they taught them that they could have anything, do anything, and that their satisfaction was a proper aim in life: that selfishness was a virtue, in so many words, and this while robustly rejecting Ayn Rand.
Then of course you had the political cultists, whose sole aim in life was to use goodwill, to use the space given them by fundamentally liberal-minded people, to engineer destruction. No political cultist builds. Their whole aim is to destroy.
All of these things drew down our pool of Goodwill. They have caused mistrust, and hate. I have been chronically angry lately, even though I able to beat it back. I go through periods of acceptance, then see something like a handicapped person who is plainly just lazy, not hurt, throwing fits because they have to walk an extra 20 yards because somebody parked in their space.
We are not a nation of dignity, of reserve and calm. We are whiny and petulant. All of these things draw on our social fabric, make it less robust.
And if we look at this as a debt, it is every bit as large as our national debt. I have a plan to pay our national debt. How to pay our cultural debt, though?
My only idea is generalized deployment of Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork, in countless little circles of 24 people, who use that work to regerminate seeds of true communal awareness and personal responsibility.
That, or we may react in creative ways to a general economic collapse. We need to remember Argentina did not disappear as a nation. It merely went from being a prosperous nation to being a poor nation, entirely due to the idiocy of its people and leaders.