It is often said that “HATE” is a strong word.
But what else encapsulates the feeling that we are forced to contend with when we encounter actions that are the opposite of LOVE?
The news headlines that flash across the screens of our computers, tablets, smart phones and the like become more sordid by the moment.
You try to turn away, ignore it, redirect your energies elsewhere, but like a train wreck you can’t help but to have your eyes glued to what is certain to be, disastrous.
Often the solution to our most pressing societal problems is what many people gloss over as too simplistic. We are up to our necks in endless depravity, and like a broken record we always seem to be asking why?
The why is that something obviously went wrong in the process – on an individual level.
And.
I am inclined to point at the forgotten art of parenting as the solution to the problem.
Common sense would seem to dictate that parenting isn’t an optional or part-time endeavor, but nowadays this is how the most important job in our society is treated.
It is possible that I came from an era where the belt was the focal point of discipline… But, it wasn’t the belt that kept me and my peers on the path to meeting the expectations that my parents & family members held for us, it was love…
As a child I did a tour of duty as a”bad kid”, but it was the “perfect love” that my family unselfishly showered me with that ultimately served as an amazingly redemptive force.
This is what plaques our society now – a pronounced lack of love.
It is the absence of this essential element as people are simply reflecting what they are fed. My Dad used to always tell me “It starts at home and spreads abroad.”
Like it or not, Social media serves as a microcosm for our society and much of what I see is heartbreaking at best.
Not too recently I had the misfortune of seeing a YouTube video of a woman getting Tasered in front of her children by a security guard after she attacked him, prior to this she was encouraging the children to hurl insults at him.
Accordingly, most of the commentary poked fun at the woman while supporting the security guard, but it is the children that are truly the victims. Ultimately, it may be this experience and probably a host of other deplorable experiences with their mother that will serve as fuel for them to be future “menaces to society” and the only thing we can do is laugh…
Or is it that we are laughing to keep ourselves from crying?
Is it too much to say that I HATE? I abhor stupidity, maybe because it scares me and that I realize that if we neglect to do nothing, before we know it, we will be overrun by it and it will become the norm rather than the exception.
Rather than applauding and poking fun at it we should expose it for what it is. I’ve mentioned previously in a past missive, that one of the dangers that social media provides, is a veneer of anonymity that gives people license to say what they don’t have the courage to say in public.
Earlier today I was privy to a news headline that turned this logic on its head, as I was surprised to hear of a man striking a 19 month old child who was crying during an airline flight. Sadly, common sense was overridden by too much alcohol and maybe it lead this person to do what was truly in his heart.
As a rule I bring my headphones to drown out what I would prefer not to be a party to, maybe this is the approach we should employ towards stupidity as a whole… Putting on our proverbial headphones to insulate ourselves from it (stupidity); while knowing that it is there.
But, if we choose not to hear or see it does it mean that it isn’t there or is this taking cognitive dissonance to the extreme?
Ultimately, something has to give.
Shun P. Writes... dot com 