Change in the Air

In my childhood, we had respect for the law, our teachers, our parents, and our elders. It would have been unthinkable to make any showing of disrespect for these people. But that was the old days.

We've come a long way in changing our attitudes about blind respect and meek obedience and this is usually a good thing. We shouldn't follow blindly just because the power figure is bigger than we are but there is a fine line between questioning and combativeness.

It's a good thing to analyse the powers over you...the church, the government...the laws. Quite often you'll find that there's something just a little illogical about the rules they lay upon us. That is why we need our free press and our right to vote. We, as a large group of people, can use our numbers to nonviolently overcome repression.

There exists small contingencies of beligerant people who aggressively attack the establishment using violence instead of legal means. They use violence because they are such a tiny minority of the total population and wouldn't be heard at all if they didn't cause an uproar. They are a minority trying to dominate the majority. Sounds like tyranny, doesn't it?

But change does occur once enough people are able to open their minds to possibilities and are able to understand that some of the rules and laws that cripple them are unjust.

Not all changes are for the good, though, and I don't approve of the ever spreading lack of what I consider to be morality. I understand it could just be my own rigid conditioning that makes me feel this way but that's how I feel. The sweet innocence and purity of childhood seems to be lasting a shorter time now. Children are exposed daily to sexual content on T.V. and movies and it's making them mature faster than they should have to. Maybe I'm just behind the times and worrying needlessly about a natural societal progression but it's unnerving to hear about young children behaving like adults.

The good old days weren't really that good in many ways so we wouldn't want to go back to them. The world is constantly changing and evolving...but toward what? I wish I could say that, from what I've seen in my life, the change is always progressively positive but that isn't so and I can only hope that one day we humans will be able to find our way to utopia. It's possible but it's sad there are so many dirt roads we might mistakenly take to get there.