January/February Issue
A note from our publisher, Craig Kaminer from the January/February issue of Sophisticated Living
Rebuilding Our Republic, No Time Like the Future
I remember the professor in college chemistry asking how many people were pre-med (I was) and virtually all hands in the large lecture hall went up. Then she said look to your left and to your right and realize more than half the group (including me) would no longer pursue medicine after taking this class. I realized then that half of most people don’t get what they want, no matter how hard they work for it. Now, I look to the left and right and wonder how at least half of the people in the country wanted a different president than I did and think so differently than I do about so many important subjects. The reality is that fewer than half of us live in the kind of country we want.
Perhaps we are all going to have to imagine a different country.
As we look to a new year, a new administration, and perhaps a new chance to create a more perfect union, I hope we can find more things to agree on, more things which bring us together, and the acknowledgement we are on the verge of doing something that has never been done before...and it’s not going to be easy.
We are attempting for the first time in human history to create the first mass multiracial democratic republic. No other country has tried to do this. Other societies have done one, two, or three, but to be at a mass scale, truly multiracial, to have a culture of democracy and have representative government in a republic, to have all that work at once, will be really hard. And one of the great things about this time, as painful and broken as it may be, is that we have a shot right now to prove whether this is possible. One of the things that we've got to recognize, wherever our ancestors and we were born, is that we have to demonstrate a commitment if we really want this, even if it takes the form of good, vigorous arguments and debate.
The proverbial genie is out of the bottle. Generations of immigrants (including mine) have made it to our shores in search of a better life. Many have found it and some are still searching, but now is not the time to turn our back on the dream -- and hope -- of our grand experiment.
We live in a time when on any day, you can enjoy the cuisine of virtually any ethnicity, purchase the products grown or made in the four corners of the world, work with people down the block and the other side of the planet, young and old, black and white, and a new spectrum of sexual orientations. Add on top, a global pandemic and an economic crisis, and it's obvious (at least to me) why so many people experience what’s happening differently. Like it or not, the world we all grew up in is fundamentally different than it is now.
So how are all of these colliding worlds, disparate ideas, and honest passions going to find peace so we can realize the opportunities of a mass multiracial democratic republic?
Being comfortable with grey, because black and white may be impossible.
Relearning how to speak to -- and love -- people who don’t agree with us.
Understanding that we live among people of different faiths, changing faiths and those who don’t believe. We must recommit ourselves to religious freedom and all that entails.
Becoming more media literate and seeing media bias for what it is, and learning to see the reality and not just what we want to hear.
A renewed interest in facts, truth, and transparency. These are the things we must hold to be self evident and the building blocks of our freedom.
Realizing that all American families are going to be multi-racial, omni sexual, and more politically diverse than we can even imagine today. The outcomes of Ancestry® and 23andMe will continue to reveal that we always have been a patchwork, and the quilt is getting more intricate.
Demanding that our leaders represent us all, work together better, and are judged by their outcomes and not how hard they fought the other side.
Setting our sights on something bigger than ourselves...like John F. Kennedy did in the 1960s when he set our sights on putting a man on the moon. Is the future Mars, curing cancer, eliminating hunger, or ????
But we have to want this. We can’t expect the country to embrace radically new ideas or go back in time 50 years. We can’t expect everyone to think alike, but we should expect everyone to work hard at moving toward the middle, to common ground, to the things we can agree on, do together, to make a better world.
To our Sophisticated Family, I wish you a happier, healthier and more unified New Year. May we make it so.