Breakthrough Generation

As Breakthrough Fellows, we are here to learn the details and finer points of the philosophy of the Breakthrough Generation. Give us two hundred pages to read for tomorrow, and it’s done; ask us to write a couple hundred words about the subject matter, and it’ll be (basically) complete by mid-day. However, Breakthrough is meant to galvanize an entire generation of youth, regardless of how deeply immersed in the issues each person is. We do not have the luxury of sending out readers to each person whom we would like to sign on to our mission. Even if we could, to paraphrase Break Through, people aren’t looking to subscribe to data or science or even facts; people sign on to ideology, to the story that we are telling.

It is important for us to keep in mind that if we want our message to spread, it must be one that is inclusive and inspiring, yet grounded and relatable. When Kennedy said, famously, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” he created a message that the entire country could sign on to. There was no specific promise, no detailed explanation of a plan; there was simply an ideal, an entire system of thoughts and beliefs condensed into a short sentence. It is this type of message that will help us tell our story at Breakthrough.

How do we well this story? We need similarly powerful words; ways of turning heady and complex thoughts into relevant, significant messages. What is it about modernization that informs Breakthrough’s mission and that we can turn into a positive and affirming message?

Ronald Inglehart’s Modernization, Culture Change, and Democracy is a substantial re-evaluation of how social values develop and change in communities, and how this development in turn affects and is affected by modernization and democratization. Overall, he claims that “socioeconomic development brings cultural changes that make individual autonomy… increasingly likely, giving rise to a new type of society that promotes human emancipation on many fronts” (2). Modernization, democratization and a new focus on “self-expression” values have lead to what Inglehart calls “[t]he broadening of human choice” (3).

There is a bit of Maslow to this study, an explanation that as survival needs are met, material needs come into focus, such as the need for belonging and fulfillment, and as these needs our eventually met, new needs surface. Inglehart is focused on how values change after these first two sets of needs are met. Post material needs represent the expanding of individual human autonomy, which is reflected in new social values of self-expression. These self-expression values, in turn, lend themselves to more democratic institutions.

Concisely put, and if asked to promote Inglehart’s views at a rally or in conversation, I would say that human development is the story of a search for life, quality of life, and life choices.

This is a simple, evocative and memorable phrase with a few different layers: firstly, life, quality of life and life choices each correspond to a different level of Maslow’s hierarchy—life being survival needs, quality of life being material needs, and life choices being post-material and self-creation needs. Secondly, there is the connection that we can draw between life, quality of life, and life choices and the idea of our founding fathers, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

A message like “life, quality of life, and life choices” provides Breakthrough’s ideology a positive and constructive frame with which to promote itself. “Life, quality of life, and life choices,” frames the Breakthrough mission as one that is welcoming of modernization—as it should be: modernization has lead, as Gregg Easterbrook documents, to “almost everything about American and European life is getting better for almost everyone” (35). Beyond laying the groundwork of Breakthrough’s ideology as one that is pro-modernization, “life, quality of life, and life choices” is also an expansive and progress-oriented phrase that verbalizes the human existence that Breakthrough is striving for each member of our earth to live. Equitable distribution of energy that provides for a high standard of living at little or no cost to our planet, self creation and the ability to create the social landscape each of us wants in our lives, and a new social contract for post industrial America—these will all set us on the path towards life, quality of life and life choices for all. This phrase might not serve as our marching orders, but certainly it could be an effective call to arms.

I think the real appeal of a message like “life, quality of life, and life choices,” is that, like Inglehart and Maslow, it recognizes that while we might all be in different stages of our progression, we are all, ultimately, on a path to the same sorts of lifestyles. While our values and upbringings might inform different life priorities and desires, and lead us to define quality of life differently and make different life choices, the expansive message of life, quality of life and life choices does not inherently deny any one person or culture their rights or desires, except where they may intrude on someone else’s life, quality of life and life choices. Life, quality of life, and life choices—it is this sort of message, culled from serious thought and reflective of complex ideas, which will bring people together.