A sense of purpose needed

I'm too overly optimistic, I admit. While people are crying the blues around me about the disintegration of western society, I'm usually the first to say it's not that bad.
You hear it all the time. The economy is collapsing, crime is rampant (when it actually isn't), politicians are all corrupt (well...), public servants are incompetent, merchandise is crap. But I'm reluctant to join in the carping chorus.
In a cynic's profession, the one-eyed optimist is looked down upon with pity.
But even I have to admit that our nation is rudderless, tilting helplessly in the wind with no sense of direction or purpose. It's something that has been troubling me for some time and it took a song to crystalize it in my mind.
Legendary Canadian folksinger Ian Tamblyn (What? you've never heard of him? Now why doesn't that surprise me?) wrote a song sort of in response to Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy. You know, that epic Lightfoot song (aren't they all?) about the building of the Canadian nation on the back of a railway from "sea to the sea." Tamblyn put Lightfoot's song in perspective with Once Upon a Railroad in which he sang of the last cross-country train ride. What strikes me about the song is the perspective it puts not only on the Canadian Railroad Trilogy but also on this country and the symbolism of the national railway. Now, I like trains but I never got too caught up in the preserve-every-stretch-of-rail-in-this-country sentiment of some people do. You'd think that every railway closure was like the loss of a national park or something. To me, trains were an outmoded form of transportation that nobody wants to use, so why hang onto them? Abandoned rail beds make better hiking and biking trails anyway.
Now other than the obvious symbolism of a national railway tying a country together, I didn't get what all the big fuss about the national railway was. Okay, it tied us together but we've moved on from that technology, so what? A country grows, a society evolves, get over it. Tamblyn's song, however, pointed out that the railway debate isn't about the past, it's about the future.
The national railway symbolizes a time when this country had a purpose. It had a dream, a concrete goal to achieve. For the first time in our short history, we no longer have a dream, a purpose or a goal. After the railway was built we set about industrializing our land (well, parts of it like Central Canada. The hinterlands were set up to serve the central core with resources).
Then the wars came and we united to fight evil. You can't beat fighting evil for uniting a country for a common purpose. Canada came of age during the wars, the Second World War, in particular. We became an efficient, productive industrial juggernaut as well as a military power. But it was all because we had a purpose – defeat the Nazis and restore order to the world.
Then the post-war era saw our economy leap forward on the back of abundant natural resources which we could sell off with near-abandon. We also cranked up our industry and the post war period of wealth allowed us to assert ourselves in the world. Education improved and we became a civilized and modern culture. Our purpose at this time became a peacekeeper, a pillar of civilization in a world wallowing in nuclear madness. We saw ourselves as a better people. Canada the good, to paraphrase a term that was used to apply to Toronto.
But now. Now, we can't be a peacekeeper because we can't, or won't, afford it. There is no evil empire to defeat and there is no national building project that we can undertake. Our best friend is also our biggest headache. And we're seen as a diminished force in the world. Our society is retreating into a sort of isolationism as our reputation takes a beating in the world. Internally, we gripe about each other. We're not unified in our approach to everything from medicare to economic development.
We have no vision of what we want to become. Given that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with what we are, the need to grow would follow from that. We could be satisfied with what we are. That's an option. We do quite frequently count our blessings and take pride in who we are and what we've got.
But in reality, there's a malaise in this country that seems to sour everything. We have no confidence in our political leaders to do the right thing. There seems to be few creative solutions to problems. Nothing gets resolved to a level that makes us stand back and go, "Impressive." Usually, our tendency to compromise means nobody is happy with the outcome instead of the proverbial win-win situation. Everything is half-measure.
The reason, I put to you, is because we have no purpose in life. We're not building anything concrete (figuratively and literally). We need a goal.
We're an ambitious lot. We want to be the best and we get cranky when we don't turn out to be (in our mind – ask a developing country if they'd like to trade circumstances and you know what the answer would be). But what are we going to be the best at? What is Canada going to do with itself? Continually fight to keep together? Is our biggest accomplishment each year the fact that we didn't spin apart into 10 or so different fragments? What kind of accomplishment is that?
I fear our lack of a goal will see us drift into a merger with the American federation. For every flare up of nationalism and national pride I see, I see two or more acceptance of Americanism. Now, this is nothing against the Americans. They are who they are because history, circumstance and ambition has built their nation. Americans are in no fear of becoming somebody else but we are.
Whenever we complain about our government it's because it can't build a free market economy that's like the U.S. economy. Our sports are minor league, compared to the Americans. Even our nation-defining medicare is a mess. Scrap it, let's privative health care like, well, like the Americans.
Of course, when you really analyze things, much of what we do is the best in the world but that current popular mindset is very negative and down on ourselves, no matter how unjustified.
But what? What, you say, should be our purpose? I'm interested in hearing some ideas.
Perhaps we should set a goal to be the most productive economy in the world. Or maybe we should set about to be the most ecologically efficient nation in the world. There is an economic impetus to do that. It's a matter of efficiency. Perhaps we should attempt, again, to eradicate poverty in children in our country.
Our goals don't have to be just or exclusively social. Perhaps we could take the Russian and American leads and set a goal of being a major explorer and user of space.
When I went to university, senior governments were being urged to get on board the new industrial revolution of digital technology. Maybe there's still time to revamp our economy and rid ourselves of dependence on resource extraction. Let's replicate what Japan did after the Second World War and become a major manufacturer.
Are these too small in scope? I don't know. It's hard to imagine a goal that would get everyone on board, given our social fractiousness. Maybe we need to disband this country and make it 10 individual nations? Heresy? Maybe.
What could be our purpose in the 21st Century. It's a question than Canadians are going to have to answer at some point.