MentorWords

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 was always relieved to be able to send my older children off to school each day. It was a comfort to know they were someone else’s responsibility for the next six hours, and that that somebody else was far more capable than I of preparing my child’s mind for the rigors of the future. Once we moved to the southern state in which we currently live (and are moving away from), that relief turned to constant anxiety. The schools are a huge disappointment. The community is small enough that you have to know someone to get into the very limited number of non-parochial private schools (we didn’t), and I really don’t think most parents – no matter how educated we are – are the best option for educating their own children. So the only option was to turn my children over to someone else’s responsibility each day, but no longer with the comfort of believing they were in better hands than my own.