Why another blog? The Internet is full of blogs!
Because ours is different.
We are a group of American college-age citizens who have become concerned about the current state of affairs. More specifically, we are worried about where we are and where we are going as a nation. We think it is high time for someone to stand up and point out that the Emperor, as it were, has no clothes.
We are not partisan activists, nor are we religious bigots. We are open-minded, intelligent people who have good reason to believe that we're not on the right track as a people. The witness of history attests to this fact.
As a generation, we have become decadent. Obsessed with entertainment, we live for nothing more (or less) than instant gratification. We have become addicted to the internet to the point that our brains are literally rewiring themselves. Reading is becoming obsolete, along with intelligent discourse. Faith, hope, and love, the old-fashioned pillars of a working society, have become regarded as the obsolete totems of a dead world.
Instead of learning for ourselves, we allow media and academy pundits to tell us what, how, and when to think. Instead of thinking through social issues for ourselves, we allow the mass media to program our thought. Instead of learning essential knowledge and wisdom from the ages, we rely upon Google and Bing to find information for us, as needed. Instead of possessing self-value and self-confidence through basic competency, we have subcontracted every task imaginable. None of us knows how to sustain ourselves -- very, very few know the meaning of hunting, planting, or manual labor.
A generation has arisen, in short, that has learned to play while the "grown-ups" take care of the vital business of the day. Government, defense, medicine, etc. The problem, of course, is that those grown-ups will start disappearing in the next decade or so, leaving empty shoes to be filled.
And no competent adults to fill them.
And so we believe it is necessary to raise awareness of the situation and stir up the fires of self reliance (to borrow from a good fellow named Emerson, look him up); we want to stir up ourselves and our peers to stop following the dictates of the political elite and the mass and social media outlets. To resist the dehumanizing effects of technology addiction. To think for ourselves and work for ourselves and learn the meaning of those precious (but ever disappearing) words like dignity, honor, and virtue. Because without them, we don't have a society; we have chaos as a great society crumbles into dust.
And we refuse to let that happen.
What empirical studies support your denigration of this, the greatest nation the world has ever seen? It is common knowledge that no society has ever been so advanced as the one you fault.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, we would not deny the greatness of the United States - but first it is important to define greatness. Do we mean the greatness of deeds? Do we rest content in the greatness of our forefathers' achievements and claim their greatness as our own? Or do we take responsibility for our present time and situation, looking to the great deeds of the past as inspiration for our present time? We believe that the latter is the wiser course of action. Sadly, the majority of Generation Y is very clearly not concerned with such an endeavor -- we are too obsessed with Facebook, desperate housewives, and instant gratification of our materialistic and selfish impulses.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, greatness is not simply encountered in the historical deeds of a nation -- these deeds are, in fact, merely symptoms of the condition we strive to define. Greatness is, and has always been, found in the hearts and minds of the people - in their courage, virtue, conscience, and self-reliance; and then expressed in their actions. Unfortunately, the effects of Postmodernism and philosophical materialism have, in the past fifty years, resulted in a radical erasure of the ethical foundations of America (a core component of its greatness). The rise in wealth (in and of itself not an evil thing) correlated with a rise in materialistic lifestyle choices and the rise of "consumer culture"; the ennui of a society that no longer produced its own food, fixed its own machines, and hand-washed its own clothes; of young people who no longer had to earn in the same way as their parents; and of the burgeoning middle class whose new lifestyle lead to a vast amount of free time all contributed to an obsession with entertainment and the obtaining of newer, shinier consumer goods. The general ethos of hard work (which had defined America since the days of the Puritans) was thus eroded, along with self-reliance - and it was partly due to this that the Welfare State entered its nascence. The proportion of Americans on welfare has steadily risen, along with the proportion of money allotted to welfare -- a concept, by the way, that originated in Bismarck's Germany in the 19th century but which took years to catch on in our own self-reliant nation. The government, and increasingly the federal government, has progressively taken more and more responsibility. One example would be family affairs. Children are handed over to government teachers in public schools for at least eight hours a day, to be drilled in a government-selected curriculum (whether or not parents disapprove of various elements thereof, such as sex education). The parenting (or lack thereof) during the past few decades is actually at the root of most of our societal ills.
Obviously this is a vast subject, and since space is here limited, future posts will have to flesh out the particulars of the issue, but to summarize our position: America is a name that stands for greatness, because of its past along with its future potential. The problem is that our generation doesn't really care so much about the future potential and is ignoring the past (a recent survey found that an alarming number of college students in America do not know that George Washington was the first President of the United States, for example). If we do not embrace our past (the good and the bad), aspire to the greatness in our past, and step forward boldly into the future with a clear conscience and a determination to do our part for the history of our country, it is to be feared that this history will be all to short indeed - and if not short, then it will be too shallow and pusillanimous to be worthy of the dignity of memory. Though our technology is advanced, our moral center is not -- but more about that in our next post!
A very few helpful references:
"Is the Internet Making Us Crazy?" Newsweek
Deletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (see his interview with NPR at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370598)
A History of the American People - Paul Johnson
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Howl by Allan Ginsberg
Men to Boys by Gary Cross (along with all of his other books)
Modern Times by Paul Johnson
Fox News and BBC News coverage of Obama Healthcare debate