MentorWords

There’s a lot of talk about how everything is changing. But popular analysis and reflection seems to stop just below the dermis of the issue, talking endlessly about jobs loss, the credit crunch, foreclosures, and the anticipated stimulus package. Not that these aren’t important issues, but given that we live in a 24-hour news cycle, [...]

The egotistical marketer designs for his or her own pleasure, and any communication that is done solely for the self is just another form of self-abuse (to use a polite – if somewhat Catholic – euphemism). If nobody else is actually involved, then it stands to reason that nobody else actually feels anything.

The class photo has morphed from a charming snapshot of a child’s grade school years to a staged and airbrushed representation of the perfect child. What is this telling our children about our values?

Are American advertising firms dumbing everything down because Americans are lazy thinkers, or are Americans lazy thinkers because we are confronted — no, assaulted — by a constant barrage of stupidity? When we find cultural leaders – thinkers – who respect our intelligence, we demand a great deal of them. And rightfully so.

In a culture consumed with celebrity gossip and reality TV, what is the impact on the people for whom the celebrity spotlight never wavers? And do the rest of us share responsibility for their fates when the attention goes too far?

Most of us do not understand the history of our religions, the social contexts in which our religions were developed, and the ways in which all of the sacred texts have been manipulated by various kings, religious leaders, emperors, and tribal chieftans to support their personal political agendas. We understand the religious history that was taught to us by our parents, their parents, and their parents’ parents, and we accept this verbal history as the truth.

I have been acutely aware as my peers, all of us teenagers roughly a quarter of a century ago, begin to judge teenagers for their clothing, their speech habits, and their music. I don’t have the best memory, but I sure do remember my dad bemoaning my wardrobe, my parents telling me to turn down my music and what-was-I-listening-to-anyway, and being constantly corrected and chided for using teen slang. As an adult I have had very entertaining conversations with my parents about how their own parents were convinced that they (my parents) represented the end of society as they (my grandparents) knew it. And while we didn’t turn out so bad, I have a sinking feeling every time I see an adult behave poorly in public, act disrespectfully to other adults in front of their children, and show up regularly on the evening news as perpetrators of a broad range of crimes. If we are going to ask “what is the world coming to,” shouldn’t we be asking it of ourselves?