I had an interesting conversation with my assistant today regarding creating awareness and helping individuals to understand that it's ok to have fear of change. While it is understandable to be afraid to remove oneself from harmful situations, it is important to use that fear as a means of gaining strength. In my opinion and from my personal experiences I have learned that when we face our fears, no matter how big or small, we gain strength to take another step. With each step, our efforts are stengthened which in turn enables us to overcome such fears.
He brought my attention to an issue with this process. In his opinion it's nearly impossible for change to be achieved due to the background of culture in general. As we both agreed, in various instances we mimic what we see and are conditioned or misled to believe that things or behaviors that are actually unacceptable are a normal way of life. Along with this, in the current state, we are seeing astronomical numbers of teens and youth in general following a path that is completely geared toward destruction. From my viewpoint, the biggest error on the part of our youth today is that they lack values and morals. I often find myself wondering exactly where we went wrong with this generation. Although I pose this question to myself often, as I watch the destructive behavior of my own child and that of other youth, I still have not reached a definitive answer. My assistant felt that most of this is due to lack of support from parents and family, lack of strong family bonds, as well as a lack of religion or the modification of religion to suit ones' own needs. To an extent I could agree, but not so much. While these may or may not be lacking, there are parents who incorporate these things in daily life and provide good support systems, yet their children fall short. Negativity seems to be the most prominent thing that is constant in society in general. Why? Because although we hear of positive, more emphasis is always put on negativity. Reports of crime at all levels, constantly in the news. Negative images of teens being shown as entertaining, rather than emphasis on how this negativity yields no positive results. In contrast, my assistant noted that some of this could be leveraged if it were not for the commercialization of such "foolery". As a society there is more emphasis on making a buck, rather than feeding positive images and examples.
With the prevalence of crime in general, but more so that of the increase of younger individuals, some earlier than that of a preteen, one can't help but wonder is there really any hope. In my spare time I watch a lot of court and crime shows. I was a bit taken aback last week while watching an episode of one my usual shows. Teenage boys ranging in ages from 15-19 engaged heavily in gang activity. Turf wars in a housing development where one rival gang is "controlling" one side of the street, while the other lurks to defend their side of the street. Really? How can we live in conditions such as this. These young men, the product of what's in store for our future, having no thought in taking the lives of one another merely just to show that they have some type of reputation. What they fail to realize is that this reputation that they strive so hard to achieve, is short lived and in most instances the end result is death. One teen was killed, another severely injured, and another innocent victim killed in cold blood as a form of retaliation. Who really won? No one. Lives lost literally, and lives lost to imprisonment. Families suffering, parents burying children and loved ones, parents losing their children to a life sentence in prison. But it's the attitudes of these youth that is most appalling. They have absolutely no fear. And as the one detective noted, these youth have been conditioned to believe that they have a short life expectancy anyway, thus the lack of regard for life and the destruction of it.
Collectively the current state of society is in shambles, but we have to have some form of hope for better. We have to determine ways to tackle this problem and strategically conquer it. As these problems will continue, we can not allow ourselves to be conditioned to believe that this is normal or acceptable. IT IS NOT!There is no room for loss of hope or complacency, after all, the youth today will be responsible for creating our next part of history.
~PhatPhat~
