Our Responsibility in a Godly Society

"The World will not be destroyed by those that do evil; but by those who watch them without doing anything." -Albert Einstein

While perusing today's headlines I stumbled upon the story of the 3 "Dark Knight Rising copycat" terrorists".  As I always do, I skimmed the story and went straight to the comment section.  There I found this comment which I'll paraphrase a bit:  " The world has gone insane because people have gotten lazy and believe the way to settle every issue is with a gun or simply with force. The art of conversation, compromise, discourse is lost as we cease to educate ourselves and in fact disdain education and the educated opting for brute force and weaponry to solve the smallest issue from a perceived affront on the highway to the truly psychotic who have been lost because of an underfunded mental health system." Now while this comment does cover an abundance of issues I'll break out a few that concern my thoughts today.  I was asked by a friend to do an entry regarding the topic of education being frowned upon and ignorance being lauded.  I don't know whether I'd necessarily agree that ignorance is particularly lauded but I get the gist of the topic.  Let's try to break this down shall we...

"People have gotten lazy and believe the way to settle every issue is with a gun or simply with force."  While this is not a new development, it's a way of life we'd supposedly evolved from.  We've been taught that through the ages we've evolved as a species and with technology have the opportunity to evolve even more so.  We've been taught that different discoveries both in ourselves and in nature have given us insight on how to act and re-act within our culture and society.  We were taught that we were once a savage breed (not a concept I ever agreed with) and through knowledge have become a more peaceful and civilized society while at the same time using said knowledge to create every manner of destruction on earth.  So the question is, is what we say as convincing as what we do?  The answer is emphatically no.  Some of us members of the human race are innately savage beings.  There are many theories as to why but the fact remains for some of us it's simply in our nature.  Whether we think it's a primitive thing or learned behavior the fact remains history is heavily ladened with an abundance of "evil."  In fact much of lauded history is considered important because of the level of evil it has reflected.  Think about it, compare the good history lessons you can recall immediately to the evil ones and tell me which out numbers the other.  We have always used force to achieve our goals and judging the current state of world affairs, this won't end anytime soon.  Syria anyone?

"The art of conversation, compromise, discourse is lost as we cease to educate ourselves and in fact disdain education."  I'll address the beginning of this sentence by stating my opinion of the art of conversation and compromise.  I've always thought these "civilized" tools were reserved for the educated.  Mind you I'm not talking necessarily about formal education as in books and classes.  I'm talking about the education and life skills passed on through the generations from father to son and mother to daughter.  As I stated above for much of society it is our natural instinct to reach our desired conclusion by force.  The difference in the educated/uneducated or civilized/savage is which tool we choose to use to reach our desired conclusion.  We are told that the uneducated/savage tends to use brute force.  Much the way the "uneducated/savage" use their hands in their work i.e. physical manual labor, so do they use their hands and physical attributes to solve their problems.  However society has sunk to such a low that the "uneducated/savage" are now too cowardly to resolve issues without using a gun.  Gone of the days of fisticuffs, we now have to one up each other with hand guns.  Again, this is what we're TOLD by society and the media.  Which offers no explanation why some of the worlds most dangerous weapons are developed by the educated/civilized but we digress.  But keep in mind again, this is nothing new.  I'm pretty sure the history of evolution is summed up thusly, fire, the wheel, agriculture, weaponry.  Weaponry was developed for 2 things, Securing food i.e. hunting and securing the tribe/family i.e. killing anyone or anything who tried to steal the food from our families.  The question now becomes, what do the uneducated/savage possess?  What do they value enough to secure by taking another mans life?  Well I don't have to offer an answer here as the answer many will give you varies.  Some value their property or space.  Some value their families, much to them like property or space.  Some even value their possessions again, property or space.... 

"a perceived affront on the highway to the truly psychotic who have been lost because of an underfunded mental health system."  And then we have the nutzo's right?  I'm sure if you've read any of my other blog entries you know I have one constant belief and that is there is nothing new under the sun.  So here again I charge, there has been mental illness since the beginning of time.  It is my belief that we do perpetuate a level of neglect regarding mental illness until Oops, it's too late, someone has seemingly snapped and committed a massacre, I think our treatment of people with mental illness bears the bigger blame here.  We as a society want to medicate everything instead of changing the issues in our community and society that many times lead to mental breakdowns.  Mental health is a multi-faceted science and can not be boxed into one category so I'll refer to those events where people snap or breakdown do to the many issues they face in life usually at an accelerated rate.  You know the man who loses his job, his home, is faced with the idea of having his family put out on the street who in turn kills his family (including the family dog, hell fluffy ate too), then goes to work & kills as many as he can only to turn the gun on himself.  After the man has expired and all these unfortunate details emerge society wants to blame mental illness and cowardice for the mans actions.  But never does society take responsibility for those incidents that lead to the tragedy.  You see as long as it doesn't affect us personally, we'll hope for the best for the next man's situation but never consider the urgency of it until it becomes our situation.  Nobody was concerned when people's homes were being foreclosed & they were forced to become homeless because "it was their fault for taking on such a burden."  Nobody puts in a good word at the job for the neighbor with 3 kids who just got laid off because it means possible competition for themselves.  But when that neighbor burns down the house because he snapped, while also causing considerable damage to your home then it's "oh let's hang him, screw him and his family."  But where were the resources before hand?  It's one thing to be able to find a free mental health facility ( a job in and of itself ) and talk to someone about our issues and how to handle them or worse, be medicated into a sense of handling them by not giving a dayum about them (as if our society does not have enough functional addicts).  It's another to find resources to help the person to replace the gainful employment he lost in the first place so he doesn't feel so desperate that he wants to kill everyone.  In his mind society didn't care about him so he knows they won't give a hill of beans for his defenseless family.  While I understand that this argument covers two different areas of science Mental and Social health,  there's no reason the two shouldn't be addressed simultaneously.

Why is education devalued:  I think education is devalued in alarming rates among our young because quiet frankly, they see no pay off in it.  Not all young people are devoid of the ability to invest in their long term future.  Not every young person wants it NOW.  Most young people actually acts the way they do because they are concerned about their futures.  Quite frankly as the youth observes it's older generations, both productive and counterproductive they begin to see the capitalist society in which we reside for what it is.  They see that many have gone into debt that may not be cleared within their own lifetimes with the hope of at the least financial security and at best an opportunity to garner financial security while doing something they love.  Only to wind up in either a 9 to 5 that they come home to complain endlessly about or complaining about the lack of support for their dreams.  This seems to be a sweeping generalization but I dare you, double dare you to give me an example of someone you believe actually loves their job.  Go ahead, I'll wait...Bottom line is, our youth don't see much hope or future in an education.

So where does that leave our future?  I don't have to tell you the ways society needs to improve.  We all have our own theory about what needs to change.  It starts at home.  It starts with you applying your individual theory for improvement.  It starts with us bucking the system.  We control government not the other way around and when we finally start demanding our due and supporting each other we'll be that much closer to living as God wants us to.  We're capable of separating good from evil.  We know it when we see it.  Let's start standing up for what's right and living accordingly.  That's all we're expected to do.

-JMarie