Anonymous
@molly-malone, I certainly agree that today people rely for guidance on people who have no moral standing to guide anyone, not even a dog to the park. What we have to ask is how we got here and if there is a way out.
I think that what we see now is the fruit of a tree that was seeded long ago, probably in the period after World War 2, the period that many consider the Golden Age of America. That’s when consumerism started. When marketing became the tool to sale goods and ideas. When people started to want more than they needed and, to get it, they began to put aside what was really important. Dad’s were home less because they worked longer hours and the move to suburbia meant more hours commuting. Then one job wasn’t enough to pay for everything so, mom got a job too. As a consequence of this choice, sold as a win for women independence, the duties of parents were delegated to schools, after school programs, and television. As those children grew older and had children of their own, they repeated and amplified the errors committed by their parents. Not only, but they were even more susceptible to look for advice on how to live their life from third parties since they had not parents they could rely on. If mom could not tell them how to rise their children, there was a book available for sure that told them what to do, written by some PhD. If you have a PhD you must know, right?
In recent years, new technologies such as internet, smart phones, tablets made access to dubious information more available and easier to spread. While in the past an expert was someone who did things, now everyone who gets a few like on Facebook becomes an expert. People without knowledge crown the kings and queens of wisdom. The same way that people are sold that a new model of microwave is better than the last one, they are sold new ideologies and they reject all that is old. Change, growth and new are paramount and the wisdom contained in millennia of history is tossed in the garbage.
We have created a world without leaders, without morals and without direction. The human race has devolved into something that is hard to define, not a society anymore. We are all responsible for it, either for being actors in that change for the worse or for being passive observers. We did it when we voted for the lesser evil. We did it when we worked overtime rather than play with our children. We did it when we supported government policies that made the country less.
There is a way out? I’d like to be optimistic but I see today world as an old house: roof licking, foundations crumbling. The wrecking ball is the only tool that’s left. Rebuilding will come later.