2009. What could it be like?

2009.

It’s right around the corner. It seems like there’s so much possibility around that corner and a ton of uncertainty, too. Still though as we exhale the last of the stale breath of 2008 and start to draw in what will be 2009, it’s tough not to try to imagine what the year could be like if all the pieces fell into place.

Perhaps the current economic crisis will make us really think about what it means to be a free and happy people.

It seems like there has always been this list of unavoidable truths that we as Americans just keep ignoring until a crisis hits and we have to confront whatever item has floated to the top of that list. Giving women the right to vote, state-recognized gay marriage, admitting that we are causing the Earth to heat up (or, harder still, fessing up to the fact that electing Bush for a second term was a colossal mistake) — there are truths we resist as a country. Fortunately that resistance just can’t compete over time with common sense.

The irrationally-denied truth that I hope our current economic crisis makes us confront this year is: we can not proceed into the 21st century with our national economic well-being tied to conspicuous consumption. The whole consumption-instead-of-connections ball of wax is so central to the lens through which I view the world that I’m not sure I can separate it out and explain it anywhere nearly as concisely as does the Rev. Billy:

… a good New Year’s Resolution would be to be able to shout the truth, and then to be able to hear such a crying out from others, too. [. . .] I believe that the criers are out there, but we are so dulled down, emptied, hurried, shell-shocked by advertising, iPodding, Facebooking, sitting in traffic, waiting in line… all we do every day to pursue Consumerism…. If we remain consumers, fans, tourists, demographic groups, investors – and not sensual citizens, we will never make our way back [ . . .] If we die, we might die standing up with our eyes open, buying something we don’t need with money we don’t have. That is modern Hell. Right now, in 2009, we have an opportunity to defend ourselves against those who find every detail of our lives a potential profit center. The corporations have stumbled, they are smashed on their own greed. We have a unique window of opportunity - maybe have a few weeks or months in 2009 - in which to cry out. All the fake happiness and sorry of advertising is less powerful now.

Love that Rev. Billy sometimes.

I think it would also really be something extraordinary if we could look at what it means to really flourish in 2009: as people, as neighborhoods, as communities and as a nation.

If everything fell into place for you in 2009, what would it look like?