I feel sorry for the generations that have grown up in the last couple decades. In an age of instant gratification and thirty-minute everything, some things have been irreparably lost. The movement towards political correctness and standardization has led these new generations of kids into creativity-free lives of mediocrity.
My generation survived being born to mothers who smoked, drank, did drugs, took aspirin, and ate whatever they wanted while they were pregnant. And though we "know" these things are BAD, somehow entire generations born under these conditions have not only lived to tell the tale, but quite a few of them have prospered very well.
We were put to sleep on our bellies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a special treat, today it's against the law.
When I was a child, parents took the more active part in parenting. All those things I just mentioned we knew to be careful because our parents explained things. They knew to be more careful and observant because they payed attention and read books on childcare other than the bible. We have now begun raising generations of kids who honestly believe that someone else can be to blame for everything. And created for them with our laws, rules and litigiousness a world where no one has to think for themselves, and kids grow up believing what they are told.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and eggs, and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day and we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We learned by trial and error, not by being told. We learned how to use reason and logic to solve problems all by ourselves. In school we learned how to think, not just how to memorize. We were taught philosophy and music, thereby developing self discipline, curiosity and logic. We were taught that religion was to feed our soul and books were to feed our brain.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms... We had friends that we played with, we had family activities that didn't involve the TV. We had to use a fast dying medium of imagination to entertain ourselves. It was not a chore or a punishment to sit and read a book. We had parents who taught us about the things they liked and encouraged us to create our own likes from nothing.
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our tenth birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment, and learn how to get better with practice. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
These previous generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past fifty years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
The generations raised in the last twenty years have had too many things handed to them. They have lost music and philosophy as necessary thought disciplines. Replaced by school sports and religion. We have actually started teaching our children that people, including school teachers, are hell-bound liars for not teaching the same things that the parents faith teaches; instead of simply explaining the difference between faith and science. Parents today have taught their children to fight at the top of their lungs (in the name of god) against things like equality, acceptance and tolerance for all, while completely ignoring the bigger responsibility of teaching responsibility, respect, common decency, manners and dignity. Those are not subjects taught in school, and it is clear with the attitudes of the younger generations that they are not taught at home much anymore either.
Because of the way these children today are raised by their parents ignorance and irresponsibility, we now have the most violent, disrespectful and mediocre generation of young adults this country has ever seen. And they are dying by the thousands every year because we don't stop them and correct them out of fear of being sued or assaulted. I weep for the future, and pray I don't live long enough to see this generation come to any position of power.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Creatures of Memory and Habit, part 1
The first fundamental question is this:
Why would world governments and organized religions (that are allegedly based on love, compassion and acceptance) spend their time, money, and resources restricting the list of people who can and should adopt the worlds discarded children? While limiting the people who can adopt to a group of people that seldom do, and requiring a rigid judeo-christian family structure for all applicants. It's common knowledge that family's with children of their own rarely adopt more.
It's like we are saying to the people who want to care for children: "If you want to adopt children in this country, you must have a family structure exactly like the diagram here shows." We are telling them to convert to our nuclear christian religion or no child, as if it was a priveledge in the first place. With the sum of money that has been spent fighting about this petty argument of who is fit and who is not, we could have completely overhauled the entire foster care and adoption system. Sparing the current and future generations the pleasure of growing up in prison.
But this is not the real question.
How can we have entire generations of children to whom the foster care system and it's revolving door of faces act as mom and dad? Instead of focusing on who can't take care of these abandoned and given away children, why do we not instead ask; Who is having all these children and then throwing them away? Why do we regulate who cant have children and not who can? Why are there no legal or financial responsibilities placed on people who undertake the creation of life? Is creating them and leaving them somehow more socially acceptable than trying to take care of them and give them a stable home?
Why do these governments and religions not say "everyone must be responsible for giving these abandoned children stability and love." If you can raise a child and give it a stable home and provide all the basics like food, clothes, education, oppertunity and spirituality, than you should. Because it is better than being raised by a business.
Must we remain forever unmoveable in our individual faith and the minute details, yet so blind to it's greater meaning? Family IS important, all families. The Family of Humanity. Progress is recognizing that life has become bigger than a set of rules in a book. And evolution produces situations that the book never even concieved of. The governments have adapted, changing with the progression of society. Religion has stopped providing any new value. All that religion offeres is a two thousand year old structure that recognized nothing of the growth of the human race. How can any religion produce anything meaning full when all it's time is focused on the begining events? Will there be no middle, no growth? There was a time when religion was a new thing, and the people who wrote the great religious books decided what tales to include for the maximum future value. There has been no forward thinking since then.
That conundrum has brought us to where we are now. Religion is now focusing of what is present and how we have evolved and how it was not talked about two thousand years ago, and therefore must be bad. Thereby skewing the faithfull into a fight of not what is just and good, but who is right and who is wrong.
Life is not about punishing others for being different from you. This is the cause of division in the country right now. Everyone is focused on religion and it's hold on the political structue.
What the religious leaders need to remember is that this country is free for all. Not just free for the faithfull. And though they may feel right in their faith about something, it does not make it right for all. This country and it's rights are for all that dwell upon it's lands. Faith is there to give us guidance for a peacefull life and to lead us to a place of serenity. It is not to be used as a weapon against those that do not believe. It would benefit the religions of the world to remember their cause. Sticking to their rigid unwavering structure weakens their longeveity, causes unrest, and eventually provides no growth of the soul in terms of present day reality. Their primary responsibilty is to mind and care for the human soul and give us spiritual guidance. The laws of man (as has been so often misused by members of both religions and politicians) should have nothing to do with the tending to the soul and spirit of a person, and so too, those who tend to the souls of mankind should not be allowed to write the laws.
Can we take the lessons of the book. Can we put into practice the parts that would bring about peace and not just pay them lip service by preaching about them. Society has skewed into a negative reality. The focus has become the different, the bad and the wicked. The miracles, the great works go unnoticed in this our age of misdirection and spin.
It is time now, for a great new dawn in America. Let us stop from the petty fights, and turn our attention to the bigger pictures. Humanity is suffering everywhere. We have the knowledge and the where with all to fix these problems for good. We could erradicate hunger and famine. The human race has come to that point... Where we can come close to truly curing some of the longest problems mankind has ever faced. Let us stop with the in-fighting. Let us now, finally, get to work on the good and the just.
Why would world governments and organized religions (that are allegedly based on love, compassion and acceptance) spend their time, money, and resources restricting the list of people who can and should adopt the worlds discarded children? While limiting the people who can adopt to a group of people that seldom do, and requiring a rigid judeo-christian family structure for all applicants. It's common knowledge that family's with children of their own rarely adopt more.
It's like we are saying to the people who want to care for children: "If you want to adopt children in this country, you must have a family structure exactly like the diagram here shows." We are telling them to convert to our nuclear christian religion or no child, as if it was a priveledge in the first place. With the sum of money that has been spent fighting about this petty argument of who is fit and who is not, we could have completely overhauled the entire foster care and adoption system. Sparing the current and future generations the pleasure of growing up in prison.
But this is not the real question.
How can we have entire generations of children to whom the foster care system and it's revolving door of faces act as mom and dad? Instead of focusing on who can't take care of these abandoned and given away children, why do we not instead ask; Who is having all these children and then throwing them away? Why do we regulate who cant have children and not who can? Why are there no legal or financial responsibilities placed on people who undertake the creation of life? Is creating them and leaving them somehow more socially acceptable than trying to take care of them and give them a stable home?
Why do these governments and religions not say "everyone must be responsible for giving these abandoned children stability and love." If you can raise a child and give it a stable home and provide all the basics like food, clothes, education, oppertunity and spirituality, than you should. Because it is better than being raised by a business.
Must we remain forever unmoveable in our individual faith and the minute details, yet so blind to it's greater meaning? Family IS important, all families. The Family of Humanity. Progress is recognizing that life has become bigger than a set of rules in a book. And evolution produces situations that the book never even concieved of. The governments have adapted, changing with the progression of society. Religion has stopped providing any new value. All that religion offeres is a two thousand year old structure that recognized nothing of the growth of the human race. How can any religion produce anything meaning full when all it's time is focused on the begining events? Will there be no middle, no growth? There was a time when religion was a new thing, and the people who wrote the great religious books decided what tales to include for the maximum future value. There has been no forward thinking since then.
That conundrum has brought us to where we are now. Religion is now focusing of what is present and how we have evolved and how it was not talked about two thousand years ago, and therefore must be bad. Thereby skewing the faithfull into a fight of not what is just and good, but who is right and who is wrong.
Life is not about punishing others for being different from you. This is the cause of division in the country right now. Everyone is focused on religion and it's hold on the political structue.
What the religious leaders need to remember is that this country is free for all. Not just free for the faithfull. And though they may feel right in their faith about something, it does not make it right for all. This country and it's rights are for all that dwell upon it's lands. Faith is there to give us guidance for a peacefull life and to lead us to a place of serenity. It is not to be used as a weapon against those that do not believe. It would benefit the religions of the world to remember their cause. Sticking to their rigid unwavering structure weakens their longeveity, causes unrest, and eventually provides no growth of the soul in terms of present day reality. Their primary responsibilty is to mind and care for the human soul and give us spiritual guidance. The laws of man (as has been so often misused by members of both religions and politicians) should have nothing to do with the tending to the soul and spirit of a person, and so too, those who tend to the souls of mankind should not be allowed to write the laws.
Can we take the lessons of the book. Can we put into practice the parts that would bring about peace and not just pay them lip service by preaching about them. Society has skewed into a negative reality. The focus has become the different, the bad and the wicked. The miracles, the great works go unnoticed in this our age of misdirection and spin.
It is time now, for a great new dawn in America. Let us stop from the petty fights, and turn our attention to the bigger pictures. Humanity is suffering everywhere. We have the knowledge and the where with all to fix these problems for good. We could erradicate hunger and famine. The human race has come to that point... Where we can come close to truly curing some of the longest problems mankind has ever faced. Let us stop with the in-fighting. Let us now, finally, get to work on the good and the just.
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