Building a Life (In America)

 

Every once in a while I have to go back through my Dynaxioms to see what needs to be changed. Searching the word "America" there was 0449:

America is a progressive nation--always building on what it already is, not going back to what it was before. (2005)

In my notes I wrote, "deprecate?" but I'm going to leave it in for now.

In Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset writes:

"Everything is possible in history; triumphant, indefinite progress equally with periodic retrogression. For life, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact (sic) of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama." (79) 

I've lived most of my life in a Roe America conflated with Beatles and 70s pop, then 70s "Acid Rock" (what it was called then) and "Art Rock" (Prog). That's the cultural ground of being for most boomers. The ground of being for other generations is different as well which logically suggests that things are progressing in a straight line. But it might be a spiral or a loop. 

But now the question is what is "before"? I'd be fine with any musical "befores" because I know they are modifiable.