(We will return to the series of posts on the Southern gentleman and the Boy Scout laws, oath, and motto next week. This is the first post in which the new email subscription feature has been enabled.)
The Consumer Culture has been getting its tentacles deep into the lives of our children. Do we truly understand what this means? Do we allow this attack on the lives of our children? In the case of some health issues, it is literally an attack on their lives. In the case of other issues, it is warping the perspective of future generations by making consumption the goal to be pursued at the expense of all others. This is the end result of the industrialist portion of Yankee culture. The polar opposite of this is Southern Agrarianism.
If we have any duty at all to our children, then we certainly have a duty to guide and direct how they interact with influences like this. Just because something is available through the media does not mean that we should allow our families to be exposed to it. No thinking man would allow his family to be exposed to a deadly disease, yet far too many would think nothing of exposing their family to something just as deadly to their character. Don’t let that happen.
An excellent and important post, sir.
Don’t misunderstand me. I think your contributions have all been useful and thought provoking. But this subject strikes at the heart of all that is wrong with our ‘nation’ and also suggests a path to follow in righting it.
Peter Kelley
Mountain City, TN
Give them to me young enough and I have them for life. Adolf Hitler and a lot of other folks in the past.
Even more problematic is the present technology which separates human beings. The cell phone – a former convenience and good for calling AAA if the car breaks down on the highway – now seems to be plugged into every ear. A local cartoon strip “Zits” shows a teenage boy and girl sitting right next to each other, each one TEXTING the other! This is a true statement but it’s not funny, it’s tragic. We are losing the ability to interact, to coalesce into a couple or a family or a community or a nation. And once we are all separated, it is so much easier to “coalesce” the individuals into the “hive.” And, of course, the hive is what is wanted in the society of the future.
Think of it this way: if you dump ice cubes into cold water, it takes quite a while for them to melt and become simply more water. But if you put CRUSHED ICE in, very quickly what little difference exists between the much smaller units of ice is nullified by the water. People who are connected in small units (couples, families, extended families, communities etc.) cannot easily be absorbed into a “one size fits all” social construct. On the other hand, INDIVIDUALS separated and alone are much easier to blend into such a social construct.
Violence and sex are far less destructive of humanity than is technological isolation.