The ever changing world

Six years ago, just around this time in May, my mother and I were in Paris during my sabbatical. A highlight of the trip was our visit to the Picasso Museum.

We spent the better part of a day there; we had been to the Louvre, the d'Orsay, and Versailles earlier in the week. What struck me most about the Picasso Museum was the fact that a museum dedicated to a single artist seemed more compelling than any of the others we had visited. As we passed from room to room of the museum and period to period of Picasso's artistic journey, I repeatedly found myself confronting something fresh in his work. He just kept evolving.

In one room stood his statue, Le Chevre (The Goat). I was leaving the room when I heard a group of French schoolchildren, perhaps seven or eight years of age, entering from the opposite door. The docent had them sit on the floor in front of the statue, and I positioned myself so that I could watch them without them seeing me.

As the docent began to talk about the statue, the children were absolutely transfixed by her every word (and as I know little French, I was focused on their expressions and not her story).

I found myself wondering what it's like to grow up in a country where so many of the buildings, while still beautiful, are quite old. Where for the most part you might see your neighborhood change little during the course of a lifetime: no new strip malls, no streets widened, no new marquees.

And what is it like to grow up in a country that was once the world's strongest but had long since lost that title?

It had to be very different from growing up in America, I imagined.

Future generations of American schoolchildren may find out. I've just ordered Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World, which, according to the description, is not so much about the decline of America but rather the rise of everywhere else.

Ezra Klein writes a bit about the importance of symbols as reflected by trends Zakaria describes in the book:

We are no longer the only country with an internet, or a Sears Tower, if we ever truly were. And as more Americans come to realize that, it could have fairly profound psychological effects. After all, these symbols are how many folks have always understood our affluence, The reason the World Trade Center was a crucial American symbol wasn't because most folks understood it housed much of our financial sector. It was because they were two really tall, really impressive, buildings. They were a visual heuristic for power. But now other countries are developing their own entries into that genre, and they're no longer pale imitations of ours. As the world develops, America is going to start to look less exceptional -- as that's the inevitable result of being less exceptional. The point of Zakaria's book, as I understand it, is that whether we see that shift as an opportunity or a threat is probably the most important foreign policy question of the 21st century.