Rude...
Millennials having an obsessive connection to the word "awkward" seems fairly justified to me. Social connections and their ever increasing ease of use have made most of us very socially awkward. I have said this many times, but I believe the more connected we are to our digital surroundings, and the more the entire world is at our fingertips, the more disconnected we become as people. What we seem to be missing here is the concept of social values. Technology and everything else entailed with it has put us in a world never before seen, nor imagined as possible.
Everything we do as a generation has "social" ties if we so choose to take part, and honestly, most of us do. We can tell anyone in any country that we just ate a burrito, or "check in" at an auto shop while we are getting the oil changed in our car; we broadcast pictures of our food, we take "selfies", and we express our momentary thoughts online in an effort to sound profound or educated more-so than to be inspiring. Yet, for some reason, we are still making an attempt to correct social issues by way of creating or attempting to enforce sets of rules. Why? Placing restrictions upon people has worked in history a total of zero times, but we are still trying to implement this method.
Have you ever heard the phrase "You're doing it wrong?" because we really are a shining example of those words in action. Maybe I am being harsh, but give me a second to explain myself.
We love a good, emotional high and love thinking we are doing something great in whatever actions we have recently embarked upon. When I was a kid, I would see people come into my church and get all hyped up in the moment, tell the congregation they had changed and they were going to live their life for the greater good from that point forward. Sometimes after a matter of months, or sometimes after a matter of years the majority of them disappeared and went back to exactly the same place they were in before the supposed enlightenment or even to a place much worse. Stepping away from the religious aspect, criminals who spend a few years in jail tend to become reformed while incarcerated and do well for a varying amount of time after being released on parole, but the majority end up going back to crime or returning to jail. Why is this? Simply put, people do not like rules if they were not brought up to maturity with a clear understanding of why they exist in the first place. Still, some do understand the implications and purpose of rules, but see them broken so often by those they look up to that they assume such things no longer apply. Being the "good kid" for a time and having a sense of momentary enlightenment makes anyone feel like they are on top of the world, but invariably, most cannot upkeep this lifestyle since the whole process is largely foreign to their psychological development.
Think back to primary school and how we were taught the principles of respect and giving, but by the time we became teenagers, those concepts began to slack off and we were given the excuse of it being a "phase" or "growing up" but rarely does anyone grow out of this lifestyle once we venture into it. With age comes that pivotal time frame where the concepts we were taught as children are either still implemented in our lives or entirely rejected. The scary part about this happening is that even the negative aspects of our new personalities are accepted because so many adults act in the same exact way. What? Those same people, those same mentors, those same teachers who taught us the values of respect, sharing, compassion, and decency do not practice any of it themselves? Some do, but many do not; at least not in their private lives.
Overall, I am not speaking about anything religious, sheltered, or biased. Agree with me on one thing, if there is nothing else you can agree upon with me concerning the values above, you must be able to believe that every person needs to know and practice having respect for others. Every other issue we can consider within any facet of social interaction as a whole comes right down to the principle of respect. One topic, one mindset, one simple concept. Respect.
You may want to get out your scissors because I am about to put my umbrella over everything social and give all of us Millennials a hard dosage of truth; you may want to destroy it. Just like I said, we can put respect as the main issue over human decency, tolerance, rudeness, bullying, ego trips, or any slew of similar actions. Every generation before us has tried to tackle social issues individually and create causes and awareness about every one of them on a personal level while missing the big picture entirely; and we are following suit. The problem is that by breaking down the attributes of the core issue into so many different puzzle pieces, we are creating rules. People hate rules.
Mankind has been creating rules since the beginning of time and we have not stopped. The problem with compounding rules set more and more heavily, generation over generation, is that more and more people find ways to skew or defy them; because they are new and because they demand a rapid lifestyle change. Just like I said earlier, nobody is a fan of personal submission enough to actually enjoy being told what to do. Sure, we can jump on the bandwagon of an emotional high when confronted with a sad story about why which ever social issue on the table should make us want to change our ways. The problem is once the high wears off and we come back down to reality, we find ways to justify throwing away the rules we swore to uphold. Think that over. I will be the first to say I have done exactly that in my life numerous times. Consider when someone disappointed you in a deep manner and what unwritten rules of decency within the situation were broken by them as the underlying cause. We all do this; continually. We are all guilty.
Every single social problem we have is rooted in one, singular life attribute we do not follow closely enough: respect. Instead of tackling our ever-increasing social issues one little piece at a time and creating more and more rules we are expected to adhere to as a way to make change and a better world, why would we not tackle everything as a whole and fix the ENTIRE issue instead of making life even more complicated and confusing?
We can, and I want to tell you how.
I will explain everything in detail in the next blog because I have made this one long enough as it is.
Nothing that impacts the world as a whole has a quick fix.
However, time can be helpful if enough of the world believes positive changes can be made.
Continued in Part 4...
Grace and Peace,
-Drew
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/drew.silvers
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/drewcoustic
Email: drewcoustic@gmail.com
.JPG)
.JPG)
0 comments:
Post a Comment