I remember events from when I was, maybe, say, five years old or so…
I think some of it I remember because my parents had a Super-8 movie camera and a projector, and the oldest of my siblings and myself were often featured in home movies, usually participating in some family function or another.
But it’s not so much the events from those times that I now enjoy reminiscing about; it’s a memory of a feeling, or a sense of well-being that surrounds the memories I have of that time. Or perhaps, to some degree, it’s an awareness that time has left us here at the dawn of a new millennium after speeding us past all the simple, wholesome days of Mayberry and Ozzie and Harriet and “The Beav”, into a sophisticated, progressive, harsh environment of greed and selfishness and hostility to all points of view other than one’s own.
I’ve been thinking lately about how it really only takes a single generation to shed a time-honored tradition or a moral standard, or a belief system, given the right circumstances. Those circumstances over this past century (which spans several generations, and therefore several episodes of devolvement of the standards we once knew) have been a motivated progressives’ push, and a general populace who were happily going about their lives, unaware that the world around them was being prepared to be fundamentally transformed when the groundwork had all been laid.
It seems ridiculous to talk about a conspiracy, and talking about it actually does open one up to ridicule, but that’s just another part of the groundwork, when it comes down to it. “Oh, you’re one of those kooky conspiracy nuts!” Don’t want to be labeled with those guys. It’s probably nothing, anyway.
When we finally become aware that we’ve been duped for all these years, the façade just falls away, and we can start to see the manipulation for what it is. To a large degree, we participate in our own deception, allowing a sly and calculating Shylock to lead us to a conclusion which we would not have reached, had we been aware we were being lead along this path.
We can bet the billions of dollars spent on marketing over the years have not been wasted, at least from the marketers’ point of view. We have all been blissfully semi-aware of the in-depth psychological studies of consumer spending habits and cues we take from different sales pitches that give them access to our souls more and more every day. Although the primitive attempts to deceive with subliminal messages were quashed early on, their persistence has paid off over the years, as unscrupulous pitchmen with tongues trained in the art of psychological manipulation have perfected their arguments and continually sought the precise phrases that would grab our emotions at the deepest level, even deeper than those subliminal messages that reached our subconscious minds years ago.
There are more sad parts to this tale of woe. We allowed these various messages to be continually planted in us over the years, for the pleasure of easy, comfortable, convenient and effortless entertainment, from the comfort of our very own recliners. We’ve allowed ourselves to be conditioned to respond, like Pavlov’s dogs (google it, if you don’t know who that is) every time we’re asked to buy this, or vote for that, or like this, or dislike that. And we’ve been convinced over the years that it’s more important to make sure we keep putting one foot in front of the other and plodding along through whatever kind of existence we’ve achieved, than to stop and take stock of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Therefore, it’s more vital that I consider the price of gasoline, because if it goes up another five cents a gallon, I’m going to have to cut down on my cable TV service so that I can afford to get to work, than it is that I consider whether I’ve been told the truth about the school bond levy to pay for books and new curriculum to help my kids become better adjusted in this brave new world we’re entering. And if a sadder tale could become even more woeful…
For years, even where we’ve resisted much of the manipulative tactics of those con artists, although we may have had a few spirited conversations about the evils of being overly influenced by the world and its evil devices, we perhaps did not make enough of a point to our children or give them sufficient tools to counteract the effects of those devices. In fact, how many times did we use the boob tube for a babysitter, and pooh-pooh the “prophets of doom” who would try to convince us that someone in that box was trying to sway us to their evil views? Too many, I would suggest. How many times did we agree to allow them to partake of the fruit of that sullied world, telling ourselves that they had the sense to avoid temptations that, deep down, we knew they would succumb to?
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that many of us, most of us in fact, did not, and I would assert could not, see most of the consequences inevitably proceeding and even abounding from our lifestyle choices over the past fifty years. My father used to like to make the point that his mother saw unbelievable amounts of change in her life, having lived from a time where transportation was horseback or horse-drawn, to watching men land on the moon; actually, that’s all about vehicles and propulsion. What about the change from looking someone in the eye and telling him what you believe, to hiring a lawyer to go and convince him of something totally different? Seriously, that’s the kind of change that causes a little ball of nausea to form in my lower gut, and a huge lump to form in my throat.
“Progressivism” suggests progression, not progress. And the progression I’ve seen over the past several years has been the most vile, corrupt twisting of the moral standards we once knew.
“But don’t you care about women who just made one little mistake? Should they have to pay for that for the rest of their lives?”
“Don’t you care about those men and women who happened to be born this way, and have this love for another person of the same gender? It’s not their fault. Don’t they deserve to have the same opportunity to share a life together that regular married couples do?”
“How is it fair that huge corporations can pay CEOs huge bonuses even when they fail, and then charge unreasonable prices for their goods and services to make up for their losses? And don’t we deserve a share of the proceeds if they succeed? After all, it’s our money that’s making them rich.”
“This politician said he’d take care of me if I voted for him. I expect to have everything he promised me. Don’t I have enough to worry about, what with the earth overheating and the ozone diminishing?”
The thing I hate most, is that as we’ve gotten further away from having things taken care of at the most local levels, and as we’ve relinquished more and more of our responsibility to governmental agencies, so that we could spend more of our time in front of the TV, those things we used to do as a matter of course, such as helping out a neighbor or cleaning up the street in front of our house, we now watch going undone, and either point a finger of accusation at an irresponsible overspending government for trying to step in and take up the slack (usually for the benefit of garnering a few more votes) or merely complain about the conditions the way they are, and make excuses about why we can no longer do anything to remedy them.
So being politically conservative in this day and age, means arguing against the very things we used to strive to do: feed the hungry, bring justice to those who have no voice, help the sick and destitute, and offer hope to those who are perishing. And we barely know how those things have been co-opted. Or have they been abrogated? Did we gradually give away our responsibility, for “freedom” from the hassle of mundane social causes, or did a coup take place, gradually over many years and decades, as more and more people were being convinced by left-leaning progressives that they were being disenfranchised, and needed to join unions and activist groups to fight against the injustices brought upon them by greedy so-and-so and fascist such-and-such?
It’s probably better for ourselves, if we simply admit our laziness and force ourselves to do the right thing, until such time as we may actually be able to recondition ourselves to behave responsibly. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that it will ever result in a beneficial outcome. There are certain people laughing at us even now, that we would actually be bothering to try. And they may very well be completely accurate in their belief that they have already taken us beyond that tipping point. Still, we have an absolute duty to behave responsibly, even if we know we will not gain or benefit in any way from doing so. It’s part of what our Creator asks of us, as members of His society. We who want to belong to His family, once we do join His family, are called to do even more. But at the very least, we should all behave responsibly. And “Love covers a multitude of sins.” But it doesn’t let us off the hook from behaving responsibly. And did I mention that we all have a responsibility to behave in a way that a responsible person would behave, living within a civilized society?
So go forth, and behave responsibly. And, if you are called to do so, behave generously as well. (I mean it; if you are called to do so, and you don’t, it will be very painful. Trust me. Been there, done that.)
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