MISSOURI WATCH: LIFE AND TIMES OF GOOD, DECENT CITIZENS

A half century ago, life seemed simpler, or at least less complex than the one we lead today. Good citizenship was relatively easy to practice at the end of World War II, when the world seemed to take on the appearance of America's oyster and the requirements included such now-inchoate duties as voting at every election and replenishing the nation's emotional level with peace and prosperity.

Today it's painfully apparent the world is far more complex and the answers to its problems far more complicated than anyone could have realized in the 1940s and 1950s. Good citizenship today requires much more than a biennial trip to the polls and the singular pursuit of personal wealth and treasures. Now we must have a working knowledge of how we influence our irreplaceable environment, how minority rights are essential to our societal future, and how to adjust to a whole new array of technological inventions that change our lives even as we watch.

Practicing good citizenship at the turn of this century is far different than observing it in the 1890s, as a book entitled "The Education of Henry Adams" so graphically illustrates. I recently reread this American classic, written by the grandson and great-grandson of U.S. presidents detailing his splendid preparation for a life devoted to public service. Sadly, this life never became reality for Henry Adams was unlucky enough to have been living at a time his services were neither accepted nor deemed worthy. Despite his impeccable education and detailed preparation for a life of service to his country, Adams' talents were never tapped during his lifetime and he died a ready-but-unwanted servant of the people.

The lifetime of frustration felt by this action of one of America's best known families seems to have an uncanny resemblance to a vastly greater number of us today, as we join Adams in a search for our place in the society's political, civic and service communities. In my less optimistic moments, I have a feeling the search by today's citizens has become so complex and fruitless that many of us have already given up the pursuit and settled for something far less satisfying.

Like Henry Adams, most of us begin our adulthood first seeking ways to sustain our daily necessities and then searching for ways in which we can make a contribution not only to our society but to our fellow man. Some choose public service through the electoral process, only to discover that the system has become so convoluted that just making a run for office is sufficient to convince us it has become an unbearable burden. The awful, demeaning act of raising far more money than we will ever make in our lifetime just to seek high office creates a wall we are neither willing or able to scale.

Besides, we who live in its midst have found today's partisan battles so disgusting, so petty, so lacking in common decency that we are unwilling to engage in its methods. Politics as it is practical in Jefferson City and Washington has too often become irrelevant to the public welfare and has progressed not one iota beyond the rules of mud wrestling. Politicians heap scorn upon their enemies, willing to engage in demeaning tactics that would discredit even the vilest of society's inhumane. Today's political culture ignores the humanitarian and seeks the lowest possible rung on our spiritual level. Winning is everything and service without motive is nothing. The winners of today's electoral exercises worry how to overcome the campaign debts they have accumulated while the losers are left to threaten their enemies with angry shouts and economic boycotts. It's almost impossible to tell the winners from the losers in today's political climate.

Fifty years ago we might have envisioned the start of both a new century and a new millennium as the beginning of a new and wonderful age in which human misery would have been ameliorated, life's burdens relieved, and mankind's energies devoted to the furtherance of human equality, dignity and advancement. That view as no doubt simplistic, even unrealistic, but it was one held by many, perhaps most, of our fellow citizens from the time of the first Adams and Jefferson through Henry Adams and extending clear up to the era of Roosevelt, Truman, George Marshall, and yes, Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley.

These were the heroic figures of Americans' dreams, which undoubtedly explains why there was such an abundance of patriotism and public dedication a half century ago.

Where are today's heroic figures? I must confess they are elusive, but some have managed to scale the ladder and their talents should not be wasted, as were those of Henry Adams a century ago. Our potential as a great society is not as dependent on great leaders as it is on great citizens, willing to give of their time, talents and energies to causes greater than passing fads, narrow philosophies and personal careers.

The kind of service envisioned by Henry James, and by generations following him, scales mountain tops and reaches for the betterment of mankind rather than the predominance of one view or one philosophy. Too many of us today have given up any journey other than the one that leads to our own comfort, our own well-being, our own security.

It may take another 50 or 100 years, but someday we will learn there is no path that can guarantee the satisfaction of purely personal goals. The most successful journey is the one that seeks to improve the society in which we live, the families that we create and the aspirations that we evidence for the welfare of others.

Far from being a personal sacrifice, this desire for productive work, the search for personal and collective peace, the cleansing of our air and water, the rooting out of corruption and the assignment of restoring civility in American life are the highest achievements we can imagine for ourselves and our successors. It is time to start our journey toward these goals.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.