"There are Two Types of People..."

We have had the misfortune to have grown accustom to the perpetually reoccurring phrase, "there are two types of people in this world..." To continue on that tradition of oversimplification I posit that there is a new dichotomy of modern thought emerging today. Those whom are Long-termers and those who can be categorized as Short-termers.

Sweeping statements aside, there seems to be a true split developing between how people think that is identifiable by these opposing perspectives. Perhaps what has made this phenomenon so salient today is the fact that our cultural society has fallen into a malaise of shortsightedness for the past 30 or some odd years and is now crashing into the consequences of such behavior. America has been increasingly driven by the quarterly-performance perspective of Wall Street, the next-election perspective of politics, and the spend-now-worry-later perspective of false wealth. These institutionalized cultural conditions have created a pandemic myopia that clings to the past and refuses to think about the needs of the future. This is unsustainable by definition.

We are just now as a collective society beginning to realize the challenges that we have created, namely; depleting resources, climate change, dependence on foreign oil, faltering infrastructure, failing economy, absent energy policy, shameful health care system, shrinking middle class, and an oligarchy of corporations facilitated by the lobbyists who represent them.

We can illustrate this with a current example. Issue, gas prices are rising and we need a solution. The Short-termers advocate a "fix," which is distinguishable from a solution. They suggest the answer to our energy policy woes would be to open drilling at Alaska's pristine and biodiverse ANWR territory and further deregulation for an industry reliant on a depleting resource. At maximum production, which would not be realized until 2025, we would decrease our foreign oil dependence a whopping 4% according to the DOE. American oil reserves peaked in 1970 and oil will only get more expensive to pump out of the ground, and more wars will be fought for it. On the contrary, Long-termers advocate a modernization of our entire energy policy, redirecting subsidies from fossil fuels to alternative energies and create incentives for increasing vehicle efficiencies and ultimately transforming transportation away from the combustion engine. The Long-term approach would be good for the nation, and not so good for a powerful few,... not to name any names.

Today we face a climax of grave challenges. Ironically, these very challenges have essentially exposed the existence of Long-termers versus Short-termers. As in the case of gas prices, the solutions that are proposed for these challenges can be traced back to either a short-term or long-term perspective. The short-term perspective is making it difficult for the United States to move forward in the sensible progression that is necessary to advance the well being of society. The Short-termer has an inherent disregard for inter-generational equality. Meaning, this line of thought is willing to maximize short-lived wealth at the expense of our children, and their children's children. The Long-termers and Short-termers are slowly magnetizing into their respective camps, furthering their distinctiveness. This is apparent from the types of debates occurring today. Short-termers have the luxury of the status quo advantage and the support of the prevailing powers that are desperately attempting to keep their empires from crumbling. The victor of the Long-termers versus the Short-termers will ultimately decide the fate of America's standing in the world for the 21st century and beyond.

Many of us have been conditioned to think on a short-horizon simply by living out our cultural experience. It is time for some self-reflection and introspection as a society. This will reconstitute our knowledge of self and will recalibrate our decision processes.