Which way are we as Americans and as human beings headed? There are only two ways to go - either forward or backward; we cannot stand still.
In the fields of science, medicine and communications technology to name only a few, we are making unbelievable strides forward. The media is saturated with all the latest developments. There is no need to recount our progress here. In the area of verbal communication we are undoubtedly headed backward.
Among the top one percent of the population are those with a decent education, those in the forefront of leadership, innovation and discovery. These people know how to communicate effectively and intelligently. The remaining 99% of the population are among the lettuce heads, what I call the gonna folks - bless their pea pickin' hearts.
The 'gonna' people are members of the slop generation. Any old thing is good enough for the 'sloppies'. "Like I'm gonna go see where she's at". The sloppies have dragged our language down to new lows. The motto 'Do your best' has been replaced by 'Do what everybody else is doing'.
Did sloppies go to school? Of course, but did they learn anything, that is the question. In the 'slop generation' schools don't teach and students don't learn - they copy. My momma graduated high school but she didn't learn nothing. My daddy never had no time to teach me nothing. The world has progressed from negative to double negative.
In today's world our most important faculties are sight and dexterity. We see everything that goes on around us, and we are quick to respond. Hearing is next, providing, of course, that the sound is loud enough. We can hear very loud music, but words of wisdom seem always to be spoken in a foreign language. Lastly comes verbal communication. We don't use that much because we don't have much to say. Bad grammar is bad enough but when it's mumbled inaudibly it resembles the language of goldfish - it's there, we just don't hear it.
So where are we gonna go? Down, down, down, in a ring of fire. But not to worry. Things can't descend forever. There must be a bottom somewhere. Like everything else, there is always a turnaround. The pendulum swings both ways. Sadly I ain't gonna be here to see it swing the other way.
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Comments: 21
We have no leadership plan to get people motivated for anything long term other than to make enough money to enjoy the short term ... most examples provided from our "authorities" show greed and deceit as the modus operandi ... competition between winners and losers ... dollars and cents ... capital and debt ... capitalism, business as usual.
I sort of lost track of where I was going with this ... but I will just cut to the chase and get to the bottom line I was reluctant to state earlier ...
Our earth world is now just too electronically and transport interconnected now to any longer ignore the plight of so many that live in "third world" conditions ...
It is past time for "nationalisms" to exist, based upon dog eat dog competition and the concept of dualistic divisions between winners and losers (+/-) where those on the "wrong" (-) side of the divide (/) are considered less because they are deemed lazy and therefore deserving of less in every way, even death by disease, starvation, and genocidal wars.
The examples this nation shows the world, in reality, not what we tell them in propaganda lies, has basically amounted to "do as I say, not as I do" ...as the message sent out to all. 9/11 should be a glaring example of such "blow back" repercussions ... but our leadership in their duplicity, lies to us yet and tells us it was only because "they" hate our freedoms ... the truth being that "they" hate our excesses which come from the freedom of our multinational corporations to make deals with corrupt leaders set up by our wealth in "their" third world nations, to rape the land and people of natural resources at "their" expense (losers) for our gain (winners) ...
The capitalistic game of life in the form of "big business" is highly "rigged" and lied about ... most of the rest of the world knows this and highly resents it ... we here in our nation prefer to believe what we are told by our leadership ... that we are good, would do no such harm to others in the world, and that it is only, because they are lazy and ungrateful for all we done for them, do they hate us ... and thus they deserve everything bad that happens to them ...
We promote the flag waving, our young sign up to "pay them back" and off to war on terrorism we go, to conquer the world and make it free again ... free enough for the multinationals to continue raping as before ... business as usual ... out of sight out of mind ... what a way to run a world.
World is a key word here ... it is our world and it is their world ... we share it physically ... we know that, yet we seek to better the powerful ones as we make the others weaker by competition rather than cooperation world wide. Somehow we think that the neglected will just "go away" ... but they will not ... but they will, bite back like 9/11 ... and like gorilla action now going on where our military is active ...
Our actions in this world are allegorically like the human body brushing it's teeth, combing it's hair, washing it's face and smiling in the mirror saying "how nice" ... while having ignored wiping it's butt ...
What is now "out of sight" and now "out of mind" ... cannot be ignored forever, it is a connected part of the whole body (world) and must be properly maintained ... or it can (will) eventually turn cancerous and destroy the whole body (world) ...
We have ALL been DIVIDED mentally by propaganda in every way to think that dualistic competition between the "good guys" (winners)(our head and face) can go on forever, where the "bad guys" (losers) (our butts) can be ignored completely ... as IF there were no real connection, either physically ... or spiritually ... the latter being actually really more important than the other.
There is an unseen "leadership" hiding behind it's excessive wealth, wealth that provides them power and benefit, they reside in anonymity pulling the strings of the purchased leadership we have elected, the very puppets provided from above, in so many cases, for us to "think" that they were actually selected and chosen from the bottom up, rather than the top down, via long range planning by "their" think tanks.
The point I hope to make, is that these hidden leaders, out of sight act like god(s) all-powerfully pulling the strings of control here on earth ... if they are, or were, "gods", they would be the "evil" kind ... because they only have concern for their own bottom lines and ultimate survival of them and theirs ... to hell, they think, with the rest of this world ... as "they" live in a MATERIALISTIC "heaven" ... and so many others here on earth do live in a materialistic hell. (+/-)
This is all because of dualistic competitive advantage based upon the method of hiding out of sight manipulating those others in a "divide and conquer" ploy, where both "sides" of that resulting division BELOW (+/-), are actually controlled by what they are told and what they are given, to relate to each other on a competitive basis ... even calling each other the "enemy" ... all the while, most important, the real movers and shakers above control it all out of sight basically.
The excessive evidence of "them" is occasionally seen, mostly on TV programs, as opulent riches in the world such as huge yachts anchored in exotic tropical locals around the world and life styles, even above that of the "Rich and Famous" that the TV program has shown us ... which of course are meant for us to believe that if we stay focused on the treadmill, that we also can live like them ... uh huh, sure thing.
Bottom line, end of story, the REAL TRUTH :
That is all the playing out of a rigged duality (+/-) called healthy competition ... winner/loser.
There REALLY IS a GOD ... we call it God (+) ... God has a SPIRIT (=) that is everywhere, even right INside of us all, interconnecting the entire world and universe together ... that, world physicality is what we see as creation in the objective physical sense, what would be (-) in relationship to God and Spirit ... all together a TRINITY of (+=-) ...
THAT IS THE TRUTH OF OUR UNIVERSE ... a COOPERATIVE SPIRITUAL TRINITY ... (+=-) ... NOT a dualistic competitive winner/loser (+/-).
The Spirit (=) of God (+) bridges the voids between man (-) and that which is truly heavenly and truly good ... WANTS US ALL TO BE PROSPEROUS IN EVERY WAY !!!
That is the MOST IMPORTANT message we should all learn ... IF ... we really want a better world for our offspring ... it is really our choice whether we wipe our butts or not ... ain't nobody else gonna do it for us ...
i wiped my ass...but our toilet is broken. (i believe this is my roommate's fault...but which one? -i have three.)
feces is eternal.
so is corn.
I don't think the low lifers are at 99 percent yet. I do think, however, the number of them will increase as the number of responsible people decreases.
The low lifers are the takers. They don't need to care about "nuthin" because the responsible people are forced to keep giving. So the low lifers will keep complaining about how minimum wage isn't enough, how they have to live in crummy neighborhoods, how unfair it is that others have so much more than they do. And responsible people will be forced to give more and more.
As time goes on, there will be fewer people for them to take from. (I know, Thomas, I ended a sentence with a preposition.) That's because the responsible people will figure, it doesn't pay to be responsible. Why not lean back and let someone else be responsible?
And then what will happen? Look at Europe. They have a head start on us.
Not sure if I can drum up enough negativity to comment on this article! While there is great truth in many of the things you have stated, and with Donald and Jerry's comments as well, I reject the idea that people are any different than they ever were or that the percentage of "dummies" is anywhere near the proportion you feel is accurate. (Although you've modified it somewhat.) Or that things are anywhere as desperate as it sounds.
Now, I don't know vast numbers of people, but those I have known over a 70 year lifetime, including the younger generations, are nowhere near as bad as depicted. Like I mentioned in another thread, it comes back to the home, and what is learned from parents at an early age. People who can't read will produce, preponderantly, children who can't read. There are exceptions and I've seen them, a parent that never liked to read but who took the time to spend virtually hours with his somewhat dyslexic daughter, who is now an excellent reader and does it for enjoyment besides getting great scholastic results.
But this is an exception to the rule in my opinion. The population of the country is expanding greatly. Non readers have just as many babies as do those who read proficiently. Therefore you are seeing more kids who can't read.
I know teachers, and others who are simply parents or community active persons, who are striving to make the next generation the most educated generation in history. And I believe they will succeed!
The young people I know are, by an large, great readers and excellent scholars. Sure, I know of some that are anything but that. And I am seeing a return to good morality. How else do you explain the reduction is youth who smoke, drink, or have sex? These youngsters are more moral than my generation! You know, back in the days when a virgin was an ugly third grader.
The people who do wrong today are promoted in the media as they are the news! Those who are working hard studying, living withing the rules of society and preparing themselves for a good future are hardly newsworthy as there are simply too many of them.
Our schools are turning out more doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists and other learned students than ever before in history! This is not something about which to be negative, is it? I will acknowledge that the emphasis right now is on the hard sciences and social sciences rather than on the literatures and writing professions.
I have, over the years, been amazed by some of the apparently "dumb" persons I've known and how brilliant they actually were! And just how much general knowledge about life, the sciences and such things they actually knew. The vocabulary of some of these is astounding as well. Their grammatical capabilities may well be deficit. I can scarcely knock that as my own leave something to be desired.
I retired from a position in which my ability to communicate was paramount to my employment. I knew many other who had the same requirements in their lives. They were equal to the challenge!
All said, I have a great deal of faith in our nation's people, in our young people and in our future! Don't sell our people, or our youth, short without looking a little farther!
Yet that does not automatically make this a better world overall when so many others are turning out the opposite way with ever increasing proportions in number ... maybe you don't get, or never view, the channels on TV that are aimed (successfully in the eyes of the industry) at our young people on the cable and satellite programming area of MTV and the like, or the many big screen movies they regularly go to see, not to mention the trash movies on TV they watch ...
I do not watch very much TV really, but I have two big screen units set up in the media room, one for my wife who uses wireless earphones and the other for me so that for a few hours in the evenings we can sit together and watch our own programming using our "two" remote controls ... after she goes to bed (much earlier than I) I take over her control and channel hop to my hearts content always keeping an eye on the other set for something more interesting ... bottom line, I cross through countless channels of crap that someone out there must be watching ... and so much of it is NOT mentally healthy.
In knowing what they, of course not all of them, but huge numbers at ever earlier ages, are watching, it can be correlated with a lot of the things we actually see kids doing with their lives, or not doing ...
But of course there are different ways of seeing things, such as the glass being either half full or half empty, positive or negative, based upon perceptions, each may well be as valid as the other ...
James, I can only hope your "view" is the correct one, but I sure don't "see" it that way.
Just think of how much better it would be all around if our leaders really consisted of more like the good ones you see ... think of the numbers of people and the thinking involved that selected (supposedly, and if not, the kind of thinking involved anyway)the present president two terms running ... what we are doing in this world and really why ... and yet that man has still a sizable number of supporters, and his potential "twin" replacement still stands a chance of succession ... that alone should say something about this country, and that it could use some correction ... but as in half full, one mans garbage may be another's treasure ... there is no accounting for some peoples taste (not aimed at you). :-)
I have two small TVs, one in the living room and one in the exercise room that we seldom watch and don't qualify in your league as TV watchers! But I understand what your are saying.