The United States might not have been the only country confronting change, but Lifton felt that most Americans had an advantage and were better prepared to deal with change than people in most other countries.
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We seek to help broaden free reader access to independent and critical reporting in the public interest worldwide. This is a shared article with our North American media partner, Who, What, Why, an investigative newsportal. EDITOR’S NOTE: Global Insights Magazine/Global Geneva has consistently sought to provide in-depth coverage, analysis and compelling writing on the war in Afghanistan. As Lifton saw it, the Protean personality in many Americans proved surprisingly able to adapt to new situations, while retaining those aspects of American values and culture which remained valid in spite of a changing environment. Like the waters over which he ruled, the Proteus of legend could change his form to fit the circumstances of the moment. Proteus, the mythological creature who caught Lifton’s attention, was a shape-shifting, ancient Greek god of the sea. What would steer Americans through the storm, he felt, was the “protean” personality of many Americans. Despite these challenges, Lifton remained guardedly optimistic.
Americans still flew the flag on the 4th of July, but chances were that those flags were manufactured in China - everything else was. Advances in automation and artificial intelligence made factories as well as many American workers suddenly obsolete. Retreat from Vietnam was followed by a period in which new technologies disrupted nearly every American industry and globalization shifted most manufacturing to developing countries where labor was cheap. Lifton, who spent his long career studying violence as well as the difference between the public’s professed intentions and its actual behavior, tried to make sense of the social chaos following a defeat that many Americans still refused to acknowledge. The divisions in American society over whether to continue fighting or admit that the US had made a tragic mistake were even louder and more violent than today’s partisan divide. Lifton was writing his book two decades after the US had decided to declare victory and cut its losses in Vietnam, a pointless war that resulted in the death of nearly 60,000 American soldiers, more than a million North Vietnamese soldiers, and an estimated two million civilians. While a large segment of the population was struggling to adapt to change and to face the future, another equally large segment was likely to reject it. Lifton saw the growing partisan divide in America as a natural reaction to accelerating and destabilizing change.
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