Ever since the inception of the United States of America our culture has had guns.
As recently as the 1960s when I was going to high school, many schools across the country actually had shooting clubs and ranges in basements.
Why weren't there mass murders then, like we're experience more regularly today?
In the decades after W.W. II those men who came home from Europe, or the Pacific, did their best to put behind them the horrid memories of that experience, married, or returned to their wives, to raise their families and work. Guns were still part of the culture, but there weren't the types of incidences we see today?
So, what's different today that we didn't have then?
In those post war decades Americans focused on building up its culture by focusing on social interactions and maintaining the long standing tradition of going to their church of choice where morals were focused on weekly. During this period there were a wide variety of community oriented social clubs; Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, Eagles, Bowling Leagues, Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, etc. which all focused on developing individual character and integrity.
When I point out social interaction, I mean such things as understanding the norms of the day when it comes to etiquette; how one was expected to conduct themselves, both within the family unit, and out in public.
Within the family, the man of the household - with the team approach support of the spouse - would spend time explaining, correcting, and even disciplining their child(ren) when behavior didn't meet the common social norms of the time period.
In public, certain behaviors were expected and taught as part of their upbringing; respect, conduct which reflected honorably on the parent(s), and even other adults in the neighborhood would often play a role in "parenting" when children were found to be misbehaving.
Today our cultural norms have all but disappeared. What has contributed to such a drastic change?
In my honest opinion what changed over the decades after the sixties is technology.
Television became a dominant influence by setting an attitude about various issues of the day. My mother used to refer to television as the "peephole to paradise", meaning that we were consuming the concepts which allowed us to escape from reality and accept that we deserved this, or that, even if we couldn't afford it.
But with the advent of the Internet, social interactions transitioned to social media and anonymity. No longer were expectations of conduct in a decent way part of the culture.
Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, you name it, it's become apparent to me that courtesy and decency has gone the way of penny loafers and sock hops of a by-gone era when families produced happy, belonging, and contributing adults to society.
I once drove by a group of about six people standing on a street corner, and every one of them were all looking into their cell phones; not one interacting with the other. It's jokingly shown in commercials on occasion how families sitting at a dinner table eating, are all looking at their phones and texting each other, instead of looking at, and speaking to, one another.
Yes, now we have young men who spend there time filling their minds with garbage that only causes them to feel detached from others and reality. Those before them have given them a copy-cat opportunity for notoriety and fame; even if they go out in the process of killing others.
We're now finding out that these few deranged are fueled by hate and warped ideals of white-supremacy, reeking havoc out in pubic venues by killing innocent victims and creating tragedy for many connect in some way to those lost to it.
And yet, today we continue to wonder why we have such horrible things happening.You might want to watch this video, it'll make it perfectly clear where we've ended up.
No comments:
Post a Comment