Irrational American Optimism

On American Cultural Capital in 2020

A few years ago I spoke for a group in Italy, where unemployment is typically much worse than in the U.S. At the time, 40 percent of young people couldn't find a job.

I made a quip without really thinking about it: "If young people can't find jobs, then we should make jobs for each other!"

In the long awkward silence that followed, I just looked at everyone with a face like this: 😃

This is a long way from a ground-breaking observation ... and yet I still get kind and wonderful emails from people in the audience about that quip. The chamber of commerce group that paid for the event even shared it as "Our new motto!"

Why?

The intense negativity of the U.S. news and especially the upcoming election hides something important: As Americans we're heirs to many generations of cultural optimism.

Even in our economic and social struggles, Americans have a hard-to-copy advantage in the form of our cultural capital.

This sounds vaguely nationalistic, but that's not my intent. As anyone who has traveled to a Post-Soviet bloc country can tell you, there is such a thing as a cynical and pessimistic society. Traditionally, the average American is not a pessimist.

We have a sunny sense of progress and possibility that borders on irrational. Our confidence and ambition is almost manic. Good.

This part of the American worldview is the butt of many jokes. But it's also the envy of many other cultures where cynicism and conformity stop would-be innovators in their tracks. Even adjacent cultures like that of the U.K. cannot rival the intensity of America's traditional optimism.

In fact, people who are not American by birth but who share this optimistic drive for the future still come to the U.S. to find it. How amazing is that?

Americans are often brash and impatient and extreme and overly-friendly all at once.

It makes Americans annoying on trains (as any European will tell you), but effective as builders of a better world. In many developing nations, companies will hire U.S. managers not for their degree, but for their oh-so-American worldview!

A little bit of optimism goes a long way. And yet it's possible to lose it. Nationalists worry that America will 'lose its edge' to another country. They may fear foreigners and the growth of foreign nations.

But the American optimist knows that opportunities for growth and evolution are infinite. There's room for everyone, of every color, creed, and belief, so long as we make space for innovation and entrepreneurship to solve challenges that arise.

Besides, governments may invest in infrastructure and awards for 'innovative ideas', but it will be hard to copy the constellation of traits that make American optimism.

Unfortunately, just as it's possible to consume your savings in the bank, it's possible for Americans to consume our cultural capital.

I hope we don't.

I hope we can lose our myopic focus on partisan politics. I hope we can overcome the fear that says we're on a sinking ship and must eat each other with political infighting and crony capitalism to survive.

I spent years living outside the U.S. and it makes me sad to return and see so many haunted by an aching sense of hopelessness and despair.

Instead, we could make some new investments of optimism in our cultural bank account. More openness, more acceptance of outsiders, more 'impossible' missions to the darkest reaches of the sea and to the frontiers of Mars and beyond, more willingness to build and to change in big ways that others wouldn't even consider.

As an #IrrationalAmericanOptimist, I think it's possible. The future would thank us, and the present would be so much better.