The Very Last Priority: TV

Welcome me into the Third Millenium.  After 30 years, I finally got television- cable service hooked up at my house.  It took them thirty years to come down to a reasonable price.  I will miss the fun I used to have with the Dish TV and Satellite guys at their table displays in the Big Box stores.  When they’d ask me how my cable provider is working for me.  I used to say:  “They’re not because I don’t have cable.  Do the math:  multiply what I’m saving per month, times 12 months, times 30 years.”  Well, it’s not that I saved money; really my budget just re-directed it elsewhere.

I also remember the era of shopping for landline phone service.  Back in the day, we’d switch from AT&T, then to Sprint, then finally to USA Datanet.  And the latter drove my long distance bills right down to a do-able cost.  Ultimately, everyone realized they could do better and now everything is rolled-in or bundled or whatever we are calling that kind of extortion now.  It seemed like only yesterday that my grandmother would say to me, “Call me from College and just reverse the charges.”  This generation would not even know what that language means.

So here I am, probably the last of the dinosaurs to jump on board with television.  Yet after 30 years of not having one I find it very funny that I can’t fit watching programs into my schedule.  I have gotten so used to yard work, reading books, washing dogs, etc. that I might just have to plan when to watch “the tube.” 

My mother asked me the other night how I was enjoying television.  It’s only been activated for one week.  I had managed to see one program.  I winced for most of it.  It was on the network – which shall remain nameless – that is known for programming that casts men in the worst possible light.  I was only watching it because the story line was intriguing to me.  The main character was a woman who found herself in Belgrade as an expert in using computer hacking to the service of Good, when her daughter and friend were kidnapped in a nightclub.  Of course, the intent was that they would be forced into an Off-shore prostitution ring that specialized in providing American girls.  The police chief that offered help was actually covering up for the bad guys, of course.  The renegade private investigator that came to her help enlightened her:  there are two ways to survive in the Force - #1) you turn a blind eye; or #2) you become part of the corruption.  I have to say that although the story line was intriguing, when it was all over I didn’t feel good about men, cops, or Belgrade.  Frankly, in my Real Life, where I lived a week ago before the box got juiced by cables, I liked all three.  I’ve been to Belgrade in 1988 and found the city exciting and welcoming.  I generally think men are decent, with the exception of one or two.  And, I am a shameless supporter of the good men in blue as well.  So, um, yeah, my first foray into the world of the tube wasn’t what it could have been.  It was only loosely connected to my reality.

Saturday night I tried again.  After delivering groceries to two customers in the late morning, and then working in my yard doing what I consider hard labor for about three hours, I thought I could unwind before I crashed.  Nope.  I crashed in the middle of Tom Selleck’s current show.  And if you can fall asleep watching Tom Selleck, you should not be watching television at all, you should be lights-out in your bed with the dogs. 

Last night I thought it would be fun to watch a realtor help a few people who wanted to buy a house at the beach.  At least THAT was something I could relate to quite readily.   When he asked the couple what their budget was, they fidgeted a bit –  the guy squeezed the girl’s hand for assurance – “Oh, say, five hundred twenty five thousand…”  I believe I surprised my dogs with the profanity that came out of my mouth.  It roughly translated to:  “Are you kidding me?”  The only thing Real about that episode was the way the realtor responded:  he went ahead and booked them to look at a house that was TEN GRAND MORE THAN THEIR BUDGET.  That, my friends, is Real Life. 

They walked through the house on the beach and said, “wow, what a view!” followed by, “it’s kind of small, though.”  With 1400 square feet of space that apparently was tall, but not wide, there were no visible closets.  I don’t know what their issue was.  I always look for closets.  I look for a sump pump.  I look for evidence of termites.  I check the color of the water that comes out of the faucets.  And I can absolutely assure you that if I look up and see bamboo paddle fans, I am NOT going to be as excited about it as that guy got.  How weird?! 

Then the realtor took them to look at the house that was a cumbersome fifteen minute drive from the beach.  Really.  And it was in their price range, heaven bless them.  And it was only 4000 square feet.  They had the chance to ask the owner why he was selling and he said he wanted to just take a parcel of the back property and build there for himself.  Right then and there I would have said, NO WAY.  Who would want the pressure of the former owner looking to see if you kept up the shrubs to his specs or stopping by to borrow a cup of sugar so he could see if your furniture came from a designer like his or not?  Look, I forward mail to the people I bought from six years ago and all I can think of when I write their address is, “How the heck did she keep this kitchen floor clean?!  Everything tracks into here” and “They should have put on the disclosure sheet that dusting weekly was necessary, especially after the farms down the street shredded the debris from corn.” 

If anything the couples looking at homes on that program were so far from My Reality, they may as well have been from Mars.  It left me kind of sad.  I don’t want what they have.  I just loved looking at the homes on the beach and am sorry that real estate markets have made it so difficult to own a piece of heaven.  Eh, what can you do? 

Do you wonder what I am watching tonight?  I’ll probably be starring in my own reality show:  Bathing Spaniels and Cutting Hedges.  I cannot tell you which will be more exciting or fulfilling to me.  But I can say that I won’t be falling asleep in the middle of either of those activities.  I wonder when the non-contract runs out in eleven months if I will still keep the cable service, or will I jettison them and go back to crocheting and watching the snow fall?  As they say, “Stay tuned.”

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Preach it, Brother!

At first I thought that a radio preacher had taken over the talk radio station I listen to in the morning.  Then I recognized the President’s voice.  I had never heard President Trump like this before and I’ve listened to him a few times in these initial months of his presidency.  But now he was doing something historical – and he was doing it with passion and persuasion with the facts of history in his arsenal of speech-making tools. 

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard a president “go preacher.”  Barack Obama did it in the company of some African American preachers and it was frightening.  It was frightening because he was a man of poise and cultural presence, and tried to put himself in the shoes of preachers who shake, quake, bellow, enunciate, point fingers and sweat profusely.  I watch preachers practically for a living.  And he was as fake as a three dollar bill.  He wasn’t proving he was part of their “culture” because he wasn’t.  They may share a common ethnic heritage, but he didn’t have believability as a preacher.  I couldn’t remember what he said because of the way he was trying to say it.  And as I’ve said to friends on the other side of the political tracks from me, “Don’t tell me he is a great orator, or I will ask you what the content was.”   I found myself asking:  ‘Where’s the beef?’ every time he spoke.

But on this particular morning (6 July 2017), President Trump was giving a presentation in Poland and he was kicking arse.  He had used history and theology to galvanize the opinion of the Poles.  He was reminding them of a history that admittedly they could never forget, and instructing his listeners that were unfamiliar with that significant struggle for freedom.  He was telling the story of how a people hard-working, family-oriented, and faith-filled stood up against an oppressive political system.  I almost drove off the road when he summarized the source of their strength:  their faith.  Since when has a politician ever acknowledged the power of the human spirit as a credible source of motivation? … um, never in the last 54 years that I am aware of. 

He reminded them of that incredible celebration of the Catholic Mass held in Victory Square with Pope John Paul II – “their Polish pope.”  (If you want to melt the hearts of the Poles, just reference their Pope.)  He reminded them of the one cry of the people:  “We want God!”  They did not demand power or prestige from the political system.  They wanted the freedom to be human beings that had a say in their own personal destiny, because it is a God-given right. 

He reminded them of the bloodshed in Warsaw in the 1944 Uprising as Poles sought to hold back the encroaching Nazi-German army.  The people put themselves out there by trying to sandbag against the invaders.  Every time they tried to build up the blockade, snipers would shoot them down.  It was a powerful display of the resilience of the human spirit against the very real physical advancing of hateful ideologies.

He reminded them of the importance of hardworking immigrants coming to a country and the necessity to exclude radicalized terrorism from the gates of any city.  As if he slipped it in, he warned the current country-of-concern (Russia) of parameters.  However, it could be no accident that in a speech to Poland, a nation that had risen from the ashes of persecution and oppression like a glorious Phoenix, he sent a subtle but clear warning to a potentially world-threatening Super Power (Russia). 

He had finally found the balance in presenting a case.  Perhaps President Trump repeated certain words of effect too often for speech critics, and critics will come as sure as the sunset.  Yet he had finally brought forth a connection of the heart by appealing to the human spirit.  He looked at the history of a people and found significant lessons to bring forth.  He tied the issues of the past to the present and he was well received.

Now, to move forward from speech to lived-reality …

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Parenting in Public

She actually shoved him.  My mouth dropped open.  I scanned the other faces seated on the bus waiting-benches nearby and took in the reactions for a second.  While I continued moving away from that scene and towards my vehicle, I was gathering data in my head…. along with questions.  It began with:

Why did a mother shove her approximately seven year old son?  He was being seven, a rascally seven at that.  He had pushed a small shopping cart off the sidewalk onto the road where the bus would soon arrive.  I think boys sometimes do things to see them crash.  They are very much in the moment.  I know that many parents would swat a kid’s behind for doing something like that.  And others would do nothing but be mortified by the “scene” their kid was creating.  Still others would shrug their shoulders and let the kid win the day with his nonsense.  None of this takes into account the kids who would never pull a stunt like that because even though it was mostly harmless and brainless, their parents would go ape on them at home.  (I didn’t just say that, did I?).  And, yes, admittedly pushing the cart out is potentially dangerous.

But what is going on with that mother?  More specifically, you’d have to see the shove itself.  She shoved him in such a way that he sprawled onto the concrete. It wasn’t far for him to fall down because he was a small kid, but it sent a powerful series of messages.  She had a few words for him as well.  But I have to say I wouldn’t have given her an award for insightful parenting at that point.  She was out of control in that moment and childrearing “experts” (if Dr. Spok and Ted Tripp are still appreciated) would insist:  you never hit a child when you are angry.  Technically, she didn’t even hit the kid – she pushed him.  You may ask, “Was it harder than she intended?”  My worry is that it was SOFTER than she would have done if they were home alone.  She peeled back a layer of her life before us, a bunch of strangers passing through, and showed us she is out of control.  And even I, a non-parent, know that you never hit a kid in anger.  Some parents may swat a kid’s bum to teach cause & effect; but, with spanking itself, if you’ve got emotion, you can have a breaking point and do some harm.

How are we supposed to react to this?  The “Way of the City” is to just look the other way and pretend you don’t see it.  Don’t get involved – perhaps because that could mean lawyers or Child Protective Services get involved later.  No one on the bench moved.  No one around even said anything.  It was a brief vignette, as you would see in a role play of some sort, and the audience remained muted.  Is this style of parenting a culturally-accepted behavior in a community that I don’t live in? I hope not.  To be clear, the kid wasn’t broken or bleeding or wailing in any way, shape or form.  Most likely the worst thing that got hurt was his pride.  But my heart felt his pain as I passed through their zone.  I felt uncomfortable, yes, but I also didn’t want her shoving ME.  So I walked on through – while I was moving on the outside, I was paralyzed on the inside.

Is it time for more parenting seminars to be publicized and made available?  The cynical side of me says that people would not go to the seminars.  Single, frazzled mothers don’t have the time or patience to listen to someone telling them about other approaches to discipline.  Married couples probably would find it humiliating to admit that one or the other parent doesn’t have a clue on how to deal with kids except for the way their parents dealt with them.  “It was good enough for me in my day, and I turned out okay.”  Admitting weakness might create a sense of being a failure as a parent.  There are so many issues and hurdles.

Clearly, discipline is important.  Even the Bible says that the person who HATES his child is the one who refuses to discipline him.  Refusing to discipline or put behavioral parameters around a kid doesn’t prepare him for Real Life.  Real Life has rules.  When rules are broken there are consequences that are societal, as well as consequences that are natural.  For instance:  Society may say that you cannot walk on the ledge of a high up building – no matter how thrilling that idea is for you.  The societal consequences might include:  a visit with the police, an unintended stay at a mental health facility, or a financial fine.  The natural consequences are:  if you are a klutz and you fall, or you didn’t account for the changing wind, you won’t be around to do anymore dare-devil feats.  

Discipline is also a training ground for success in life.  When you heed the parameters around you, or learn to work WITH the powers that establish those parameters, you develop a good set of life skills.  For instance, Nick Wallenda the aerial acrobat and Evil Knievel the motorcycle dare-devil are two guys who learned how to work within the system and actually create careers out of their adventurous spirits.  In the latter cases, there is a win-win.  The person gets to live in the zone that they find exciting and they also have created an entertainment venue that teaches the values of persistence and concentration and bravery.

In a more every day setting, the person who can discipline herself to study, learn and pursue education while other friends are goofing around, can earn a degree or certification that opens up a new set of life opportunities for her.  The man who can take a cookbook and patiently follow directions creates the opportunity to impress his new girlfriend with a beautiful and delicious meal … or he can have his own television show!  The kid who has the patience to learn to hammer nails in perfectly straight on a piece of board can grow up to be a famous woodworker or home builder.  The possibilities are endless for those who can move within structure of culture, and self-discipline certainly plays a key role in that.  But kids don’t come emotionally hard-wired with self-discipline:  it has to be ingrained in them by loving, astute parents, teachers and community authorities.

So I guess my closing conclusion would be this:  I think the parent in this case failed to discipline wisely:  She just knee-jerked her reaction.  It is true, I doubt the kid will do this thing again – that is the “win.”  But the loss may be bigger than the win:  his respect for his mother will be squelched by the fear of her.  I watched two parents raise three children together.  The third child was only spanked once – by a relative, not by either of them.  And yet she grew up close to them as a loving, witty, engaging young person.  She was given gentle direction with words and example.  I don’t think she ever even sat in “time out.”  She is now a positive contributor to society and has never been in trouble with the Law.  Her relationship with her parents is one of respect and love.  She is perhaps one of the finest people I know.  The son at the curb will most likely not have a relationship with his mother like this young woman has with her parents.  I am a betting woman, and I still believe you get what you pay for.  Good luck, lady.  Maybe next time you will know a different way.

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More Than a White Ribbon ....

More Than a White Ribbon

“I fell into the door,” she said to me in an apologetic voice.  It was as if she was telling me she was clumsy.  But I was young then and hadn’t yet developed the ability to assess situations quickly enough.  It is most likely that her admission of falling into a door was at least half true.  She probably was punched in the face and then fell into the door, thus the black eye she was painfully sporting as I spoke with her. 

I remember driving out to her house in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful sunny summer day.  For some reason, it was a case when I was selling a bird and also delivering it, which I rarely do.   To this day, I can’t even remember which North Country back road even led me to the ramshackle house where she lived.  The man was more interested in the bird in the cage than she was.  She kept a quiet distance behind him as if she was a shadow – attached, and yet somehow removed.  He squatted down and talked to the bird in a friendly fashion and invited me to step into their kitchen.  There was no kitchen counter.  A stark piece of plywood covered the place where a counter would have been.  Actually, the whole room looked pretty torn-up.

I said something polite about how we all have our own home projects and left it at that.  In retrospect, I wonder how long that project had been in-the-works.  Perhaps the money he spent elsewhere had been earmarked for a counter top?  Maybe even his purchase of this bird was delaying a new counter top he had promised the woman?  I don’t want to think about it.

But that’s how abuse is.  We don’t want to think about it.  Whether we are a victim or an innocent bystander, we’d rather not acknowledge how terrible it is.  We’d rather call it something else, like an “accident” perhaps.  In fact, some people will go so far as to take the blame on themselves in order to protect the perpetrator, “I’m so clumsy, I should have been more careful,” or “I guess I shouldn’t have said what I said to him…”

There are few things which make me as sad as looking at broken, dysfunctional relationships.  Maybe that is because I have this mental construct in my mind of how things should be.  Happiness and living in peace doesn’t have to be a longed-for miracle:  it requires a decision from both participants to not make it tough, to not be self-centered, and to choose to be kind in all things.  It also requires that people deal with their own junk before dragging someone else into their life.  Frankly, it’s going to take more than a bunch of people wearing “white ribbons against domestic violence” to solve this problem – but awareness is a beginning.  Maybe then we can help some of the victims before they actually become casualties.  It’s odd how we read more in the papers about rescuing dogs than we do about rescuing humans.

A few weeks ago, I walked up a side street in the city and noticed a small dachshund mix dog hovering on the driveway of its house.  I say “hovering” because it didn’t seem to be quite 4-on-the-floor as the dogs at my place.  (well, mostly they are 4-on-the-floor, except when they are in mid-air jumping with joy).  I was at an eight-foot distance and just bent ever so slightly and used my doggie-soothing voice to say, “Hi there, and how are you?”  The dog gave me a wary look and raised one paw shakily in the air.  I noticed there was a dirty scrap of carpet or material that it was on, but no food or water was in sight.  It also did not seem to be tethered to anything.  Nonetheless, it gave off a vibe of suffering.  Its ribs were plainly visible and there was not a glint of happiness in its eyes.

I stepped into a home up the street where my friends were and borrowed a cell phone to call the police at 911.  No car came by in the 30 minutes that I lingered to see how it would go.  Friends reported to me that they later heard the dog howling.  The next day, I phoned the 911 call center to see if any action had been taken.  The officer read me a report that was inconclusive.  It never said if they even saw a dog.  It was not clear if they even walked the sidewalk for a closer look.  I assured him that in the future I would not call them and bother them with such a request – I will call the SPCA directly.   He agreed that was a better choice.  WELL, if it is a better choice TODAY, why didn’t you direct me to make the call YESTERDAY?!  

I get it that Police have bigger fish to fry than dog cruelty cases.  Yet I can’t imagine that I am the only person who has ever called 911 on something like this, so why wasn’t the call re-directed to help a resolution come to pass?  I believe that stream-lining the system to a channel that works immediately would be an obvious work-around to any call volume issues:  Type A calls go here; Type X calls go there; etc.  I don’t know, maybe I am a pioneer in my thinking, but I doubt it.  I know they transferred me to a non-emergency line, but I felt more like a postcard that got dumped in the dead letter office:  confident I’m going nowhere, ever.

This was much like the call I made a few years ago when someone’s little terrier was in the middle of 5 o’clock traffic on a busy hill leaving the area where I work.  The dog was in an absolute panic and cars were rolling and stopping so that no one would hit him as he scurried in and out of the center of the road.  To me, that would merit a patrol car coming out to rectify that scenario.  Again, the non-emergent 911 operator was a little more casual about the report.  Maddening.  I imagine other drivers, like me, were hesitant to completely stop traffic, get out of their vehicles and try to corral the dog somewhere else.   

So what is my point with these stories?  I guess that as I grow more mature in my “take” on life’s vignettes, I think we should be more aware of our surroundings.  One of the words we use to describe life as an adult is “Responsibility.”  If you break that word down to “response-ability,” it tells us exactly what the goal of personal maturity is: to get to a point where we have an ability to respond to what is in front of us.  The opposite is the mental stupor that is induced by living in a way that is completely self-absorbed and leisure-oriented.  We are so busy living for ourselves at times, that we forget our place as a member of the community of life around us.

We need response-ability for our interfaces with both people and animals – in fact, all of the facets of life surrounding us require our presence of mind.  I guess the harder task will be to ferret-out the things that dehumanize our perspective in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Godspeed to us.  We’ve got a ways to go. 

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Cultural Disintegration - Part 3.

Part 3. of Cultural Disintegration

The Language of Communication

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.  An elephant’s faithful 100 percent!”  This line from a famous children’s book reminded children (and the adults who read to them) of the importance of verbal integrity.  You say what you mean.  You mean what you say.  Anything more or less gets you in trouble.  Recently at work someone I don’t know well walked by my desk and asked me what kind of ice cream I like.  I told her.  She said she was going out and would bring me some.  She came back two hours later and said she had been sitting outside and it melted.   

I am a middle aged, adult woman.  Her little white lie shouldn’t have bothered me.  But it did.  At first I felt a child-like sense of disappointment.  Then I remembered that when she initially asked me it felt awkward that someone who owes me nothing was offering to do something outside the lines of the page I am coloring.  Then I did a little research and found out that this offer was part of a fabrication.  Her behavior was confusing to me.  But now I know I’m going to be a lot more cautious about anything that she says because her debut of words was initially dishonest.  Think about it, if someone is insincere or dishonest about a small thing, can you expect them to be honest and true about more important things?

I hear a lot of language during the day.  I hear communication of information that is needed (at work).  I hear junk that is totally unnecessary (on the radio, see above rant on the Media).  I hear people being kind and sensitive and I also hear people being frustrated.  I am often surprised that the word that was previously restricted to use by spray paint artists on bridges and uneducated bumpkins with no class at all is now used by practically everyone.  I have to admit that I’ve even “thought it” when the guy ran a stop sign and almost hit my vehicle –with me in it – last summer.  But we all need to ask ourselves if this makes it better when we vent it out in such a hostile manner.  That word has never been known to make a friend or diffuse a situation.  And I won’t even get into how incredibly sexist it is by implication…. We just need to stop.  I’ve even substituted my old Emergency Management Word with the word “sharks.”  After all, I have people who need better behavior from me – they need to see Grace Under Pressure, not Impatience at the Wheel.

Private phone calls in public places are a new thing out of control.  I was recently sitting three tables away from someone on their cell phone who went into all kinds of admittedly boring details about her love life as if it mattered.  She was explaining to someone who might have cared more if they heard less.  But I, in fact, needed to hear NONE of it.  Yak-yak-yak, YAWN.  But not only that, it was ear pollution.  If I wanted this kind of drama I’d turn on a television set and watch one of the Judge programs, at least Someone eventually tells them to be quiet.  People need to have some self-respect and keep their private world private.  I can assure you that when I am standing in the line at the grocery store, I do not want to hear you review your grocery list with your person on the phone; nor do I want to hear anything else.  As a culture, we have become so self-centered we don’t hold back on exposing complete strangers to our data.  Just STOP.

It’s like what?  When I taught high school, I used to say to the kids, “Don’t tell me what it’s LIKE.  Tell me what it IS.”  That is in response to the incredible over use of the word “like.”  If you listen to the like-abuse in context, it is almost always self-reflexive.  “It’s like I was saying that  ….” And, “You know, like, it was so mean of him to think he’s, like, all that and, well, whatever.”  Mostly these sentences are content-free…. which is exactly what is happening to language all around us.  

Language ceases to be communication when there is no content to it.  The art of communication used to involve encoding (I put a message together and convey it to another person) and decoding (the other person tries to make sense out of the data).  When there is NO content, the process breaks down.  What is left without communication?  Um, it’s like, dude, I don’t know.

So, truth, self-control, and clarity are things we need to guide back into our language system.  It will be part of creating a more nurturing, respectable climate.  It will set the tone for a peaceful civilization.  It’s about time, don’t you think?

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Cultural Disintegration - Part 2.

Part 2 of Cultural Disintegration

The Media in the Middle

In my university days, we used to ask the question:  “Does reality create the media; or, does the media create reality?”  Please note:  We have more television stations available, and yet the content has become increasingly more violent, sensual, and inane.  Has our culture modeled those destructive behaviors first, or has the media imposed those mores on us to shape our worldview?  Even in the 1970’s my mother could not mention the word “Hollywood” in a sentence without using the phrase

“sold their souls to the devil” as well.  The terms had become inextricably linked.  I don’t think she made a mistake.  For all the good that television could have done us: the joy of learning our ABC’s with Big Bird and his friends; the vicarious adventure of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom; and the open doors to other lands with National Geographic, we have mostly left those in the dust.  We’ve traded in education and pleasant viewing for violent crime scenes, complicated, immoral relationships, and judgmental, biased, divisive political ranting.  Somehow most of society feels they cannot survive without this intellectually and spiritually lethal viewing menu.

That being said, people have come to view “having” television on the most basic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  I remember thirty years ago standing in a meeting with a stranger next to me making small talk.  I said to him, “Oh, I don’t even OWN a television.  I don’t have time.”  He flatly stated:  “well, I don’t think THAT’s right.”  Don’t misunderstand the tone of voice – he wasn’t saying that I deserved a tv and should have one.  He was saying that I was violating Some Unwritten Cultural Rule by NOT having one!  I found his response confusing. 

Lately, when I am shopping in the Big Box stores and the satellite dish network guys standing at a demo table reach out and ask:  “How’s your cable company treating you?”  I get the biggest charge out of answering:  “I wouldn’t know; I don’t have one.”  Inevitably, the guy is in his late 20’s or early 30’s in a dress shirt and tie and leans forward to ask:  “Well who provides your television service?”  And I respond:  “No one.  Do the math.  I’m saving a minimum of $50/month times 12 months times 30 years.  Plus I’m living MY life, not watching someone else’s.  How much money did I just SAVE?!”  Most likely, it’s the first time for him to do math that high since school, and he chuckles.  I continue on to the dog food aisle, and we are all done with my comedy for the evening.   Yes I do catch a movie or watch dvd’s but nowhere near close to the hours that other people who have paid for service do. 

The Media is about the business of creating an alternate reality.  And that reality is generated in the hearts and minds of the people who are writing the script.  Case in point, I’m watching a tv series on dvd at present and this is how it goes:  Season 1 is flawless, engaging, and has spectacular character development and story lines.  Season 2 they throw in a few curse words (which is offensive to people of faith), and begin the moral decline of the main character with a woman in the hidden stacks of a famous library.  If you want to forget that you just saw that, wait a few episodes and they will reference that rendezvous again.  Then they will take the story line of one of the episodes of Season 3, and film a good 15 minutes of it in a strip bar – and you will see, albeit over the shoulders of the main characters, what the inside of a strip bar looks like… which is a level of voyeurism that decent people prefer to avoid.  It leaves us asking two questions at this point:  What next?  And/or do we give Season 4 a shot for the sake of otherwise “good” content?  The decision is still up in the air.  Where will the line be drawn on what taboo subjects will be shoved in the face of the viewing population?  Yeah, and the one you’re thinking of, they went there too.

No one thinks of the children amidst us anymore –or their innocence.  The Media did not hold back letting us know what the devil in the blue dress did with the man who was holding the office of President of the United States a few years ago.  I was sitting in McD’s having a meal when I heard some details overhead and all I could think of was, “Did I do something to deserve this news in the middle of my meal?”  and, “Wow am I glad I am not a parent eating with little kids who want to know what that term means.”  All of a sudden the entire country was privy to the immorality of the man who OWED IT TO US to be a decent human being with integrity.  He had the highest post in the country and shamed us all.

Currently as I write this a once beloved comedian is having his dalliances strewn about the media’s airwaves.  Just reading the brief description of the case in the newspaper made me nauseous.  I find it hard to believe the woman involved was truly a victim if she put herself in the location with him alone where this could happen.  What did she think they were going to do, drink tea and shoot the breeze?  And, I’m sure that went over well with his wife.  Not.  I am moving towards thinking that the proceedings of trials in the courtroom should now be totally restricted from public knowledge.  If a person is accused of evil and acquitted, it is still difficult to re-build their damaged reputation even if all the details are sealed.  If a person is found guilty and goes to jail, we don’t really need to know how bad they were.  The common city newspaper, both in print and online has basically dropped to a reading level about sixth grade or lower and the content level is on par with the tabloids.  So really, when our city paper goes through the process of evaporating, I say:  “Good riddance.”

Years ago, when the clergy scandals were plastered all over the newspapers, people got the impression that everyone in ministry was a potential perpetrator and that all the accused were automatically guilty.  I have a few friends who are in the clergy.  One of them shared with his congregation that he would be wearing civilian clothes until the emotional climate soothed a bit.  He explained that he had been wearing his clerical blacks and white collar in a grocery store and a woman physically grabbed her kid and pulled the child dramatically to her as if to avoid a kidnapping.  My friend is a gentle soul with integrity and a kind heart.  This action hurt him, but he understood.  As he spoke to us that morning in church he held his left hand up high to the left with a fist grasping an imaginary knot and said, “I have a solution:  a rope and a tree.”  Wow, someone who shared the outrage of the common person.  This is what people need to know:  it is not clergy vs. laity, a Them vs. Us.  It is good against evil.  We have to be clear what that looks like. 

In another case, a man I know was accused and arrested.  I read the 

article and my eyebrows lifted:  three kids in the same family, really?  First and foremost I can say from my conversations with him that he was a man of very high integrity and deep spirituality.  There was hardly even a shadow when he walked in sunshine, he was that solid of a person.  Secondly, he was handsome.  And it did not take much imagination to think that if an unscrupulous single mother made a pass at him he would have deflected it…. And she could attempt to “get even” by accusing him.  And I say this because if you study predators, they are not stupid enough to prey upon children in the same family because it ups the likelihood that one of them will “spill the beans” and the truth will be out.  So that being said, I wrote to the author of the news piece and told her:  “You are guilty of Trial-by-Media.  Every man is due his day in Court.  That is the American way.  You have maligned an innocent man.”  Her response to me was brief:  “Do you know something I need to know?”  See, she was not about truth, she was about more dirt to sell newspapers…. Newspapers which are barely worthy to have my pet birds crap on them.  

At which point will the Media be held accountable for detraction, slander and sensationalism?  When will the people stand up and say:  ENOUGH.  We want truth, not spin.  We don’t want details and sensationalism so you can sell your product.  We are done with you destroying the innocence of our children in the name of avoiding be censored.  We want you to serve the community, not undermine its values and malign its leaders.  We used to have a body or Commission that over-saw such things.  They haven’t ruled on anything in so long, I have forgotten what we called them.  Now it is up to the common people to organize leagues of decency to make sure that the Media doesn’t continue to make Itself Grand Justice and Jury.  They have stepped way out of their bounds.  We need to tie them back to the dog house where they belong.

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Cultural Disintegration - Part I.

Cultural Disintegration

I’d like to make the case that I think we are seeing the end of civilization as we knew it twenty years ago in the United States of America.  I think there are three indicators to this unfortunate reality and I would like to share some thoughts on each of them for your consideration.  

The indicators are these:

                Language/communication

                Media

                Morality

The Moral Shift

Thirty years ago in the United States, cultural commentators began to say that we were seeing the “breakdown of the nuclear family.”  Now, we don’t even know what the nuclear family is!  Perhaps if you asked kids in high school what that term means, they think it is people who live with the fear of nuclear warfare!  (Yes, we unfortunately have that concern too.)  But by “nuclear family” we are referring to a family unit that was comprised of a Mother, a Father, and any children under their roof.  The identifiers for nuclear family were:  eating a common meal together daily, going to worship on the weekend, typically a father being the bread-winner, and the mother being at home caring for the kids … at least until they were of school age.  The kids were told:  “Dad has his job; Mom has her job (taking care of YOU!); and your job is to do well in school.  If you give the teacher any static in school, we will give YOU static on your backside at home.”  There was an order to life and it tended to produce orderly results.

Now, all that has exploded.  Families eat on-the-run which can account for the proliferation of fast food joints across the country.   Some of that is because in the Land of Available Prosperity, you are either working to get “stuff,” or you are trying to enjoy the very “stuff” you worked so hard to achieve – be they vacations, participation in sports and lessons of various types (horseback riding, pottery classes), etc..  Our very eating habits betray the cultural shift.  For those who rely on fast-food (like me!) to make it through the week that is too busy to include real cooking, our bodies begin to look like what we eat:  fat.  For those who manage to eat healthfully, so much of their time and money is sucked up in that enterprise.  It takes some effort to shop and eat the right way – and to a certain degree, we are coming to see that as a luxury of the more solidly middle & upper class echelons.  

To the point:  blue collar workers and the under and unemployed struggle to eat correctly due to deficiencies in both economics and education, and the demographic of Overweight America is lodged more obviously in their arena.  Who ever knew that the What and How of eating was so critical to the health and relationships in our culture?!  In addition, people seem so preoccupied with every other thing of life – work or leisure, eating or dieting, survival or illness, etc. – that their spirituality has all but swirled the drain.

It seems that less than 60% of people who identify with a religion actually show up for services on the weekend.   (data gleaned from observing local churches’ quantity of registrations vs. actual persons in the bench.)  The figure is probably alterable relative to which religion we are assessing, as while Catholic and mainline Protestant Church attendance is down, evangelical Protestant churches are up – arguably, it could also be a shift of where those Catholics and Mainliners are going besides staying home.  As for the general drop off in attendance, we should ask:  What are some of the reasons this happened?  As one segment of the intelligentsia created a false dichotomy between religion and science, anyone who wanted to be thought of as “smart or educated” probably felt they couldn’t show up in a house of worship…. As if people of faith are necessarily cultural ignoramuses.  

Or maybe it was those problematic ten commandments – if they had been ten suggestions, would they have lasted as long before the pseudo-cultural-liberators demanded they be torn off the walls of our courthouses and schools?!  Yet if you look at every single one of those ten commandments, they seem to be the basis for the survival of a moral and thoughtful human community.  Could their damning by so many be the very reason that we as a civilization are imploding?

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