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Discovering that American success and virtue are not necessarily part of a divine agenda may have been a rather painful loss of innocence—but innocence is always overrated anyway. A wiser nation may now begin to discover the vast creativity available in its possibilities. America must start experimenting again in its institutions, in its science, in its business. "Modern consciousness," in Sociologist Peter Berger's formula, "entails a movement from fate to choice." Armed with the knowledge that they are not fated to succeed, Americans can take up the complicated burden of choosing to succeed, of making their way creatively across the expanses of their possibilities. That venture could be as liberating to the national spirit as the first forays west across the mountains.
—By Lance Morrow