Mental Health Matters

The Mental Health Of Our Nation Matters

I have a theory related to the future of progress I'd like to offer you all in this year when we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of America's birth.

That theory is that we've approached the pursuit of the American dream… the dream the Founding Fathers had for the future of the entire country… from a mental place (a worldview) that ignores how the 250 years of technological progress has occurred.

One example: We have gone from writing letters to sending telegraph messages to speaking on the telephone to sending emails to speaking with each other instantaneously with video.

Another example: We went from the first heavier than air flight by the Wright Brothers to landing on the Moon in just 66 years and seven months.

We are a nation that has historically "achieved the impossible" - or at least "things unpredicted by the past" - by letting science contribute to our innate desire to always be moving forward.

So, what if there is one place where we have NOT allowed science to contribute to our innate desire for progress?

My theory is that this is, in fact, the case… with regard to society when viewed as a whole system. The examples of progress I've mentioned above are examples of "progress related to individual parts / individual goals and aspirations" of society. They do not relate to progress of society as a whole… to the overall goal (or some might say "impossible dream") of a nation in which EVERYONE is able to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

And I propose that the reason why science has not helped us achieve this foundational, "whole society" goal has two parts:

Part one is that only pursuing separate, unrelated goals keeps the design of the whole of society unchanged. And that's something that those who seem to have the majority of influence over how the larger overall design of society functions like… a lot… because they are succeeding at the goals they, individually, have: to be "winners" in the rat race, win-lose game of life, which is what capitalism is (in its current form): a system designed to allocate scare resources amongst an ever growing population.

And part two is that the public is not aware that there is a science that can be applied to the dream of progress for the whole of society… to the dream the Founding Fathers had. This science (which engineering students learn in college) is called Systems Thinking… the science of studying problems by thinking about how the entire system in which the problem occurs is designed. I learned this way of thinking when I was a civil engineering student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

I call this a Mental Health issue, because a person's mental health will suffer so long as they do not know that certain solutions exist to the things they worry about. And when it comes to the dream of achieving the vision of the Founding Fathers, I believe a lot of people believe that the dream of "everyone being able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness" is a truly impossible dream… which caused them great mental anguish and stress.

This mission of the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum is to help heal the American spirit. And doing that requires we all think about what may be the most critical subject that is causing that spirit to be broken these days: the fear that the majority of us will never be able to pursue life, liberty and happiness in ways that get us anywhere near achieving those aspirational goals. Living in a country where the promise made 250 years ago seems permanently out of reach for the vast majority of us is the perfect storm reason for the broken spirit of the population at large.

And I say "broken spirit of the population at large" because a recently released Gallop poll shows that 77 percent of all Americans believe these goals are out of their reach. Here's the reporting of this poll:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/politics/americans-sentiment-250-celebration-polls

"A widespread belief that the vision of the Founding Fathers is out of reach for most Americans was highlighted in a major Gallup poll conducted ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary. The survey found that 77 percent of Americans believe the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by how the country has turned out today.

Key details of the national survey include:

  • The Sentiment: Only 19 percent of respondents think the country's founders would be pleased with the current state of the U.S.
  • Bipartisan Skepticism: The disappointment is broadly shared across the political spectrum, with roughly three-quarters of both Republicans and Democrats expressing a pessimistic view of the nation's current direction relative to its founding ideals.
  • Long-term Trend: This marks a stark decline in optimism; when Gallup first tracked this sentiment decades ago, the public was much more confident that the U.S. was living up to the founders' goals.

What does the science of Systems Thinking have to offer at this time of national distress?

Systems Thinking teaches us to examine the fundamental assumptions guiding the system to be set up the way it is… with the knowledge that if any of those fundamental assumptions can be found to be no longer valid (even if they were valid once) then those invalid assumptions can be replaced with new assumptions that will lead to redesigning the system (in this case of society).

In 2008 - when it looked like the current economic system was close to collapse due to Wall Street making many bad loans and other issues - I wrote an essay in The Huffington Post in which I diagnosed the problem of why capitalism had let this happen. That essay was "Capitalism Is Dead: Now What Do We Do?"

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capitalism-is-dead-now-wh_b_127016

It got me interviewed on Fox Business News Live, was mentioned in The Week national news magazine, and was published in a college economics textbook, "The U. S. Economy" by GALE CENGAGE Learning (2011).

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capitalism-is-dead-now-wh_b_127016

Systems Thinking showed me the design of capitalism could change to become socially responsible (an idea I first became aware of when I heard Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream speak at a conference in 1991). And I proposed just such a redesign in that 2008 article… to a form of capitalism in which corporations would balance the needs of People and the Planet with the need to make a Profit.

But there was something missing from my analysis back then that I will offer you today. And this is what the work of the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum is focused on:

In addition to the principles of "win-lose" and zero-sum thinking at the heart of the kind of capitalism that existed in 2008 and that still exists today (a product of the belief "there is not enough for everyone"), the design of the system of society is also based on the psychological need to dominate others coupled with the fear of being dominated by others that has existed since the culture of "war is how we solve our problems" first developed thousands of years ago.

This "domination is the solution" mindset is driven today by cultural norms separate from those born of thinking "there's not enough for everyone". It is driven by the lack of experience from a very early age of being loved.

Separate from those societal norms that result from feeling "I may not have any food to eat or a place to live unless I take what I need from others," the societal norms that result from never feeling loved give us the world of spousal and child abuse that is an at least partially hidden aspect of society throughout America and the world.

The fact that this lack of love-generated abusive behavior is part of the design of society is preventing us from building the cooperation and "love thy neighbor" based world at the heart of the Founding Fathers' dream.

I personally know that experiencing a lack of love can lead to being an abusive person, because my father was a violently abusive person… the result of a childhood during the Great Depression during which his immigrant parents never gave him the love he needed and actually terrified him by having his brother committed to a mental institution for life because he was such a wildly creative young boy that he was hard to control. And back then, the solution my father saw was the opposite of being loved.

I also personally know the power of finding love in desperate circumstances, because I had that love - even as my father abused me, my sister and my mother - in the form of my pet cat… and to a lesser extent in the form of the delicious food my severely traumatized mother still managed to cook for the family (including wonderful homemade desserts).

The experience of being loved that I got prevented me from choosing the path of "the abuser" that my father had chosen. And I've been on a path of recovery ever since, because the love I experienced was still not "traditional" human-to-human love. The most recent experience in my recovery journey has come from joining the United Methodist Church in Stroud, Oklahoma five years ago. Knowing God loves everyone (which means He loves me) has helped a lot. And that knowledge has been backed up by direct experiences of miracles (to be detailed at a later date, when the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum's new programs launch), which go beyond 'intellectually knowing" something to "feeling it in my heart".

The Founding Fathers actually knew that the kind of internal, "finding love" process I've gone through (which prevented me from adopting the dark side personality choice of being "an abuser") is how happiness is best achieved. In a nation in which citizens were to be supported in pursuing life, liberty and happiness, they knew happiness comes from within. It was not to them a result of accumulating more possessions.

The 2024 book "The Pursuit of Happiness" by Jeffrey Rosen (who runs the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia) explores in detail how the Founding Fathers studied Greek philosophers in their quest to make happiness the result of a personal process of "being a good person". They emphasized the principles of "industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity" in their daily meditations on life and much more which this book details. I highly recommend it!

https://constitutioncenter.org/go/the-pursuit-of-happiness

I will end for now with this final point. Based on knowing that "love thy neighbor" is the foundational lesson meant to be learned from The Bible and that this lesson is cancelled out in a world filled with people who live according to domination / abuser psychological choices, it is time for us to recognize that America's future depends on recognizing the truth of an old expression: "You cannot legislate morality".

The "American experiment" was launched by people who gave us a brilliantly aspirational vision for what a nation can be… one unlike any that had come before it. They then created documents which relied on laws and other "governing principles" to help that dream of a nation where "all are seen as created equal and can thereafter pursue life, liberty and happiness" come true.

This was an incomplete plan, because it did not deal with the psychology of those determined to dominate and abuse other people. It did not address what is essentially a Mental Health Challenge: that a lack of love has led to a significant portion of society being filled with people who will never accept the ideas at the core of the American experiment.

How to deal with this Mental Health Challenge is the question for the age in which we live.

I look forward to talking with you all about the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum's plans for addressing this Mental Health Challenge.

Here's to the continuation of the American experiment, in which we continually improve how that experiment is being run.

Steve Brant
June 25, 2026