Merry Christmas and a Happy New year! As we go into the year 2013, I offer best wishes to family, friends, and any stray soul who reads these musings.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
On Feeling Old, continued
(originally written the middle of 2012, not sure how I missed publishing it but here it is)
I do not have much sympathy for the young ones who feel that somehow the new world is all better than the old, or that they are ready to lead us out of the mistakes that the earlier generations made. This is the way I feel mostly because there are not nearly as many mistakes as the hot blooded, and hot headed, youth think there were. You youth speak as if you have real knowledge of the old world, as if you who have never lived without the electronics, the two income household - unless your parents were unable to make things work and split up - can have any idea of the realities. So many of you have a self centered attitude, a "me-first screw everyone else, I don't care about the country, traditions, manners, I am somehow knowledgeable enough to KNOW that there is no God, that you old ones are wrong, give me mine" belief. But, newsflash: you know nothing of the many wonderful things that we as a nation had even back just a few decades ago. Yes, there was much that was good and wonderful before today. We spent time together, with most people being decent hard working types who took care of themselves, their family, their neighbors, their communities. Our sense of country helped make victory in World War II, and in the aftermath possible. We grew, we prospered. We had a situation where most Mom's could stay at home and bring their kids up in caring homes instead of turning that task over to minimum wage strangers who in most cases simply do not care beyond doing the least amount of work possible. We had an educational system that did wonders with young minds, teaching them how to think, making success probable for most. We were strong, and helped countries all over the globe when they needed help, were willing to support our allies and our own interests. Our crime rate was lower, our rate of improvement for citizens was greater. Do not take my words out of context. Yes, many of the modern changes are for the better. The improvement of rights, better medicine, safer cars, more responsible use of the environment, etc. But the flip side of these positive changes are not so good, for example along with rights for more people has come the loss of responsibility with the selfishness associated with that sad change, with better medicine has come a loss of personal care such as staying off drugs, eating healthy foods, a more healthy lifestyle, with better cars comes sometimes idiotic regulations that drive the cost up at the whim of bureaucrats who have no responsibility to balance between regulation and cost, no accountability to the public, and the same with regards to the environment. How many regulations do we have that are politically correct and super expensive while gaining the people a very modest improvement or even a decrement? Too many by far.
Even though you youth have much that we elders have given you, you still do not have wisdom - you may know, but I have done, and I laugh at your assertions that masquerade as superiority while being in truth nothing but bluster. Seeing people who take the view that they somehow know better than others what is best for those others leads to some obvious questions. Such as: If it is wrong for me to dictate to you, how is it right that you dictate to me? Who appointed you to decide what is right and wrong? Since what you propose takes other people's rights away what do you offer to them in return, or are we just supposed to accept your lording it over us? When you run out of resources from having stolen from those who produce, what will you do when the next crisis hits? When you have finished insulting and destroying the America that has stood for liberty and equality for so long, what will be left to help move the world towards freedom? (Yes, yes, I know. We as a country have not always been wonderful. But, within our foundations there has always been the strength, both moral and in our spirit, to be better, to improve. Otherwise things would not have changed from the ways of the past to the ways of now, and your protests would be met with long prison terms and the real repression that you whine about but have never experienced.)
So, perhaps, Youth, maybe you should sit back and listen a while to the clamoring of Real Life, perhaps you should change from Do Now to Plan First because once you Do it will be much more difficult to fix mistakes, of which there will be many since Nature, or God, does not reward those who just hope for good results. Of course this takes time, you can't do this with the fast food drive-through mentality that so many of you have, but the results will be infinitely better. Do you really want to make the mistakes the Iranians did back in the late 70s, when they deposed the Shah, and gave up a secular country for the theocracy they have now? A place where fundamental religious dogma rules instead of law, where being different from what is decided by one of the worst examples of an old boys network often leads to a noose or waiting for the stones that will kill you to start being thrown? Yes, the Shah was hardly an example of the best a leader could be, but at least there were secular controls instead of fundamentalist terror, and given a few years and some reforms the Iranians could have taken their country into the modern world instead of becoming a terrorist state about to build nuclear weapons. Of course some who read this might think that with last year's Arab Spring that those problems have been solved for modern Arab states, they may even think that the high tech used to overthrow the more modern dictators somehow led to better results, but is that true? We shall see, but in Egypt, and maybe soon in Libya, there is a very real concern that all you received for the high tech revolutions was more budding fundamentalist states that will soon see their people pushed back into the middle-ages.
Continuing the thoughts for the Arab Spring: The problem is that no matter how wonderful technology is, that it is still only a tool, or set of tools. It is like having the best 4-wheel drive technology and than racing around on icy roads; when you crash because that high tech machine could do nothing to counteract the laws of physics you lose. Perhaps your parents warning you to drive slow on ice, found by years of experience, was not so out of date as you thought? It is up to the user to use those tools wisely. So, yes, you can Twitter your friends and arrange a mass protest to clamor for rights and throwing the dictator out, but if you do not have a plan for replacing the dictator with something better, than you are creating a power vacuum that will be filled with the people who are most prepared to step in and take over. And most often that will not be you wide eyed innocents who think that all will be well just because "the youth" are leading, instead it will be the shadow government that has been formed by those who want things to go back to the old ways, before religion was pushed to the side as the governing force. It will be the people who for years have planned and waited to take over when the dictator fails, since they know that the far biggest part of the population will stay out of making any choice about the new government, and that good organization and decisive effort by their small group is enough to win the prize. Twitter will not form a new government, will not write the law of the land in a way to be just to all, will not make all people's capability and persistence at work equal to what rewards they reap. And if you do not plan and prepare you and the people will lose.
Back now to the US and our situation: So, Youth, it is time for you to get this dose of reality. Stop worshiping the new technology and instead use it as the tool it is, stop being the naive and gullible fool that believes a charismatic but unrealistic man who is pushing this country into disaster, and do something to help us become strong again. It is obvious that the last few years have not helped us, that the socialism that has been forced on us by liberal ideals cannot ever work and "hope and change" is destroying us. Now use those few working brain cells that you have to force the fools in charge to get back to the foundations of our country - the Constitution - and correct the mistakes of the last few years!
I do not have much sympathy for the young ones who feel that somehow the new world is all better than the old, or that they are ready to lead us out of the mistakes that the earlier generations made. This is the way I feel mostly because there are not nearly as many mistakes as the hot blooded, and hot headed, youth think there were. You youth speak as if you have real knowledge of the old world, as if you who have never lived without the electronics, the two income household - unless your parents were unable to make things work and split up - can have any idea of the realities. So many of you have a self centered attitude, a "me-first screw everyone else, I don't care about the country, traditions, manners, I am somehow knowledgeable enough to KNOW that there is no God, that you old ones are wrong, give me mine" belief. But, newsflash: you know nothing of the many wonderful things that we as a nation had even back just a few decades ago. Yes, there was much that was good and wonderful before today. We spent time together, with most people being decent hard working types who took care of themselves, their family, their neighbors, their communities. Our sense of country helped make victory in World War II, and in the aftermath possible. We grew, we prospered. We had a situation where most Mom's could stay at home and bring their kids up in caring homes instead of turning that task over to minimum wage strangers who in most cases simply do not care beyond doing the least amount of work possible. We had an educational system that did wonders with young minds, teaching them how to think, making success probable for most. We were strong, and helped countries all over the globe when they needed help, were willing to support our allies and our own interests. Our crime rate was lower, our rate of improvement for citizens was greater. Do not take my words out of context. Yes, many of the modern changes are for the better. The improvement of rights, better medicine, safer cars, more responsible use of the environment, etc. But the flip side of these positive changes are not so good, for example along with rights for more people has come the loss of responsibility with the selfishness associated with that sad change, with better medicine has come a loss of personal care such as staying off drugs, eating healthy foods, a more healthy lifestyle, with better cars comes sometimes idiotic regulations that drive the cost up at the whim of bureaucrats who have no responsibility to balance between regulation and cost, no accountability to the public, and the same with regards to the environment. How many regulations do we have that are politically correct and super expensive while gaining the people a very modest improvement or even a decrement? Too many by far.
Even though you youth have much that we elders have given you, you still do not have wisdom - you may know, but I have done, and I laugh at your assertions that masquerade as superiority while being in truth nothing but bluster. Seeing people who take the view that they somehow know better than others what is best for those others leads to some obvious questions. Such as: If it is wrong for me to dictate to you, how is it right that you dictate to me? Who appointed you to decide what is right and wrong? Since what you propose takes other people's rights away what do you offer to them in return, or are we just supposed to accept your lording it over us? When you run out of resources from having stolen from those who produce, what will you do when the next crisis hits? When you have finished insulting and destroying the America that has stood for liberty and equality for so long, what will be left to help move the world towards freedom? (Yes, yes, I know. We as a country have not always been wonderful. But, within our foundations there has always been the strength, both moral and in our spirit, to be better, to improve. Otherwise things would not have changed from the ways of the past to the ways of now, and your protests would be met with long prison terms and the real repression that you whine about but have never experienced.)
So, perhaps, Youth, maybe you should sit back and listen a while to the clamoring of Real Life, perhaps you should change from Do Now to Plan First because once you Do it will be much more difficult to fix mistakes, of which there will be many since Nature, or God, does not reward those who just hope for good results. Of course this takes time, you can't do this with the fast food drive-through mentality that so many of you have, but the results will be infinitely better. Do you really want to make the mistakes the Iranians did back in the late 70s, when they deposed the Shah, and gave up a secular country for the theocracy they have now? A place where fundamental religious dogma rules instead of law, where being different from what is decided by one of the worst examples of an old boys network often leads to a noose or waiting for the stones that will kill you to start being thrown? Yes, the Shah was hardly an example of the best a leader could be, but at least there were secular controls instead of fundamentalist terror, and given a few years and some reforms the Iranians could have taken their country into the modern world instead of becoming a terrorist state about to build nuclear weapons. Of course some who read this might think that with last year's Arab Spring that those problems have been solved for modern Arab states, they may even think that the high tech used to overthrow the more modern dictators somehow led to better results, but is that true? We shall see, but in Egypt, and maybe soon in Libya, there is a very real concern that all you received for the high tech revolutions was more budding fundamentalist states that will soon see their people pushed back into the middle-ages.
Continuing the thoughts for the Arab Spring: The problem is that no matter how wonderful technology is, that it is still only a tool, or set of tools. It is like having the best 4-wheel drive technology and than racing around on icy roads; when you crash because that high tech machine could do nothing to counteract the laws of physics you lose. Perhaps your parents warning you to drive slow on ice, found by years of experience, was not so out of date as you thought? It is up to the user to use those tools wisely. So, yes, you can Twitter your friends and arrange a mass protest to clamor for rights and throwing the dictator out, but if you do not have a plan for replacing the dictator with something better, than you are creating a power vacuum that will be filled with the people who are most prepared to step in and take over. And most often that will not be you wide eyed innocents who think that all will be well just because "the youth" are leading, instead it will be the shadow government that has been formed by those who want things to go back to the old ways, before religion was pushed to the side as the governing force. It will be the people who for years have planned and waited to take over when the dictator fails, since they know that the far biggest part of the population will stay out of making any choice about the new government, and that good organization and decisive effort by their small group is enough to win the prize. Twitter will not form a new government, will not write the law of the land in a way to be just to all, will not make all people's capability and persistence at work equal to what rewards they reap. And if you do not plan and prepare you and the people will lose.
Back now to the US and our situation: So, Youth, it is time for you to get this dose of reality. Stop worshiping the new technology and instead use it as the tool it is, stop being the naive and gullible fool that believes a charismatic but unrealistic man who is pushing this country into disaster, and do something to help us become strong again. It is obvious that the last few years have not helped us, that the socialism that has been forced on us by liberal ideals cannot ever work and "hope and change" is destroying us. Now use those few working brain cells that you have to force the fools in charge to get back to the foundations of our country - the Constitution - and correct the mistakes of the last few years!
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