Hallym International Journal of Aging

“Think globally, act locally” was a sticker occasionally affixed to bumpers on U.S. automobiles two decades ago. The bumper sticker signaled a change in the ways that some Americans in the middle decades of the twentieth century chose to think about themselves. For most of our national experience, we Americans have thought about our homeland and relations with other nations in parochial terms. By turns indifferent and domineering in our dealings with friends and foes in this hemisphere here and abroad, Americans generally acted with an eye to the short-term advantage. The slogan suggests that U.S. lawmakers may have been trying to do something different—to link foreignand domestic-policy initiatives. The sentiment was a demand for change; it prompted broad thinking and long-term perspectives. If so, it is not an exaggeration to hypothesize that the bumper sticker presaged a paradigm shift in national values that is still unfolding.