I HAVE SEEN THE ARC

I Have Seen the Arc

There is a peculiar vantage point granted to a long life.

I have seen the golden age of technology,  from rotary phones to handheld supercomputers. I have seen the decoding of DNA and the mapping of the cosmos. I have watched astrophysics turn speculation into measurable fact. I have seen men walk on the moon and telescopes peer into the infancy of the universe.

I have seen the American middle class rise like a tide and then recede.

I have seen democracy flourish with confidence, stumble in arrogance, and now strain under division. I have seen economic booms, oil shocks, financial collapses, recoveries, and excess. I have seen leaders who steadied the ship and leaders who shook it.

I have seen the best of this country,  and I have seen its unraveling.

From this vantage point, one is tempted to say: I have seen enough.

When you have witnessed ascent and decline, progress and regression, expansion and contraction, the temptation is to conclude that the arc has peaked. That the best has been spent. That's what remains is entropy.

And now we stand at the threshold of artificial intelligence,  a force that may amplify human brilliance or magnify human folly. It could cure a disease. It could consolidate power. It could liberate or destabilize. It may reshape labor, identity, and even survival.

To someone who has watched decades unfold, this feels like a final chapter,  perhaps not of one life, but of a civilization’s phase.

There is a quiet thought that follows:

If I have seen the summit, why linger for the descent?

Yet that thought contains an error.

History does not move in straight lines. It convulses. It regresses. It surprises. What appears to be a collapse may be a transition. What feels like finality may be reformation.

The long view can breed fatigue — but it can also grant clarity.

Perhaps the role of age is not to flee decline, but to name it honestly. To document it. To warn. To analyze. To testify.

If I have seen the golden age, then I am also a witness to it.

And witnesses are not ornamental. They are necessary.

The country may fail. It may recover. It may transform into something unrecognizable. Artificial intelligence may save us or diminish us.

But until the last page is actually written, none of us truly knows the ending.

And perhaps that uncertainty, irritating, unsettling, is itself the reason to remain.

Not for hope.

For observation.

For the record.

For truth.

WJS