I find it fascinating to watch a society deliberately flush itself down the toilet.
WHAT???? Yes that’s right you heard me. It Amuses me no end to see a society try SOOOOOO HARD to drag itself down and tear itself apart.
Although I do have to admit that I find it a little disturbing when this is happening in MY society.
Why would I say that our society is trying to tear itself apart? Simple… LOOK AROUND YOU!
Once upon a time we had a country, a society which strove to excel. We had people in this country who were proud of their achievements. They were strong and capable and they lifted us all up with their capableness. (yes I am making up words)
Children today are being told that what they do doesn’t matter as long as they feel good, the thing is that they cannot feel good without the accomplishments that lift them up. But Our society has too many people who will as stand in their way and tell them… “no no no you can’t excel you can’t be strong you can’t be smart because if you are then those who are not will feel bad.
I liken it to the problem that was becoming very apparent when I was a child in public school. Anyone who showed that they were smarter or more capable intellectually were made fun of they were called geeks and nerds and they were regularly bullied.
The bullies couldn’t stand to look bad so they had to find some way that they could hold back the ones who were… well let’s face it Better.
There is a peculiar mindset out there in some people… a lot of people, that if they want to look better they have to drag others down. This is the lazy way out. Instead of trying to grow and improve themselves they try to drag back everyone else so they look better in comparison.
It’s kind of like in the movie big with Tom Hanks.
When he gets a job working on computers in the toy company he finds the work to be so easy that a child could zip through it in no time at all. But the guy in the next cubicle tells him to slow down, because [hank’s] is making him look bad. The man was lazy and didn’t want to improve himself, so instead he tells his coworkers to do worse than they were capable of so he would look better.
Well I think that what has really happened is those self same bullies, with those attitudes grew older but never grew UP. And those are the idiots who are now trying to tell us, and our children, “don’t worry about being good or doing good… just as long as you feel good.
This attitude started coming out in the 60’s and is still going strong. Just watch TV ads and you will see what I mean. in fact if you watch long enough you will see that our society has now accepted mediocrity as the new “standard of excellence”.
Today it starts with commercials like Nike’s “just do it” campaign or Calgon’s “take me away” theme which promoted/s the self over all else… look out for number one don’t worry about others, don’t try to make things better for everyone INCLUDING yourself, don’t excel!” just focus on you and yourself and try to make yourself feel better in other ways.
Now we have McDonald’s commercials and Pizza hut commercials declaring “it doesn’t matter if you fail you can still feel good abut yourself. Come and get__________” (fill in the blank).
Whether it is a happy meal or a personal pan pizza the message they are sending is, “don’t worry about succeeding or doing well at all, as long as you feel good it is ok.
This is another one of those points though.
The people of the United States didn’t gain their independence by feeling good about themselves they got their good feelings from gaining their independence.
The Allied forces in WW2 didn’t free the captives of the Axis powers by going around feeling better about themselves, they felt better about themselves by going in and freeing the people held captive.
So our society is in a downward spiral, apparently because of the greed and selfishness of small minded people who refuse to grow up or become greater than what they are. And that leads to mediocrity.
That’s the only conclusion I can come to, because otherwise it makes no sense. If our sense of self worth comes from within, and what we have within is all our abilities and strengths then to tell us to not try to exceed, not to use our strengths and abilities and have satisfaction in a job well done is to tell us to be miserable, to not excel is to be miserable! And that is what they are really teaching us.
Think about Helen Keller. Her nurse could have done like everyone else had done before and let the poor girl suffer in her little world shut off from all others. She could have said like so many do today and like so many did then for that matter, “why make her try to improve she will only get frustrated or angry or depressed.” But that nurse didn’t and because she was NOT afraid to work and excel and to cause Helen to excel that girl was able to become someone who had the self worth to do a lot of stuff.
And that, by the way, is the stuff of which legends are made.
Some other examples of people rising above and having a better sense of self worth for it?
Thomas Alva Edison,
Abraham Lincoln,
George Washington,
Louis Pasteur,
Rudy Rudiker,
Benjamin Franklin,
Elvis Presley,
Jim Morrison,
Tiger woods,
Basically if you have heard of them in a positive way… yeah that’s the point.
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