What myth can replace the American frontier mentality?

Question

Limits to Growth. How can we possibly avoid environmental catastrophe if we don’t limit our growth?

The American myth is a frontier mentality: conquer new lands, exploit it and become rich. There is always a Western frontier, a place to go and start over where there are riches just for the taking for a hardy spirit and determined worker.

What myth can replace the American frontier mentality?

Answer 1

Caring gardener myth?

Rewards for conservation, rather than exploitation. Hero faces danger of environmental catastophe, saves the world by defeating psychotic drug-crazed car-fume-addicted killers of green plants, memories of the dust-bowls in the 1930's, makes the desert bloom, gets the admiring girl.

Answer 2

I don't think any myth can replace the frontier mentality, however, I do think that it can be refocused to a less destructive target.

Growth doesn't always have to mean literal border expansion. Frontiers exist in other ways: frontiers of knowldege, of technology and of innovation. By abandoning the imperialism of the 18th and 19th centuries, America (and the "West" in general) can refocus this energy on pursuing things that will enhance the lives of people worldwide, not just in one country.

Answer 3

I am hoping and working for a sustainable economy of the United States and indeed the whole world. Americans are coming face to face with the fact we can not continue to exploit the resources of our own country, indeed the world, without consequences. I vote for sustainable prosperity.

Answer 4

How about the " let's all live like the Europeans " myth. We are the greatest country in the world because we don't live that myth.

you have no idea what you are wanting the US to do.