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A time of Noble Ideas and Deeds
The haze of our dailey distractions, which are many and important, we sit with nothing to drive us forward. We trust no one who leads us. We assume their greed and lack of personal integrity. In our day we work with many. We know nothing about them or their motives. We live in a world of constant distraction and more distraction is being sold to us every day, the machines we connect our lives too. Bringing us a constant flow of information for the purpose of distraction. Are our lives so meaningless that if we were allowed even a moment of self-introspection we would be so unhappy? Only you can answer this question for yourself.
All I know is I hear very few words of Noble thought around me. It is all pragmatic. We have moved into this Age of Meanness with little concern for truly making a better place. We buy our social activism by buying the right car, the right steak, chicken or eggs. We have been taught that our dollars are our voice and that it is enough.
I recently watched the Occupy movement move listlessly through our news seemingly without direction or purpose. No leaders rose up to lead those that were willing to vote with more than their dollars. I watched as our police forces abused them, someone sons and daughters without true reproach. Is this a leaderless generation.
I remember as a boy in Alaska believing in something important. I am no longer sure what that something is. I remember vaguely talks about ideas involving words like justice, loyalty, truth, compassion and hope. These were hangover thoughts from the 60s, most likely. I made the mistake of reading Arthurian legends and believing in quest. But these all became role-playing games. I remember when we talked about needing leadership that believed in something. I remember reading about a statue that sat in New York harbor. I remember the golden rule. Not the one where those with the gold made rules. I remember when even those with the gold felt some level of responsibility. Maybe these were all the fantasies of a boy in the 70s thousands of miles away from the rest of America. Maybe I made it all up, hoping that there was a place of Justice and High ideas.
So growing up this is how it went. I supported men I thought had high ideas only to find them pushed aside by their own personal desires. I have become disenchanted with the political system here, and now abstain from voting. There is no one with ideas high enough to believe in.
If we are pragmatic, I have to ask is this all we have? Is this all we are? What happened that made us take the art out of life, and the dream from our souls? Where is the leadership or are we simply a mob moving from one loud shout to another? My soul is tired and I know most peoples are.
Should we return to God? As of late there seems to be no one with a strong enough spiritual agenda to lead us back. I was raised Mormon, and even there where Noble ideas are espoused, the church’s, financial, social and political agenda have blinded us all from the light. It has become a troop of robbers, stealing the freedom and sometimes even the lives of its own children, in the name of a holy purpose. The suicide rate in Utah is frightening. And they spread hopelessness with political dollars. So I walk away sad.
Every Noble idea that was my country has been tossed away along with due process, freedom, protection for the government itself, health and even neighbors. We assume that our government is doing horrible things, and we are okay with it. We hear about these things in the “news” and we are okay with it. We listen to the millions without jobs and we are okay with it. We are pragmatic. It has to be this way, well because it is.
I do not agree. I feel strongly that right now we need Noble ideas. And though as a country we were never perfect, we were growing towards high concepts of justice and freedom. It took the deaths of 100 of thousands in the late 1800s so that Martin Luther King could march in the 60s to legitimize their sacrifice. Now we attach immigrants, and anyone who is not American. Our government attacks its own citizens even executing them without trial. We’ve seen the news. We have removed due process now for anyone labeled or declared a possible terrorist. I can only think of Germany’s use of the word Judin and what it resulted in.
Maybe I am wrong, and we need to be pragmatic. Maybe I am wrong about the direction of things, though we listen to the news and celebrate the events of late. Maybe I am wrong about Noble ideas. Maybe we have never stepped from the dark ages where suffering was justified as the will of God and torture defined truth. If I am wrong so be it. I would rather be wrong and believe in the Noble possibility for mankind.
tired