Raise the Hammer

1) The average marriage seems to be lasting about seven years. People are putting off marriages. People are just living together...long-term...then spitting up. Bottom-line: people aren't taking basics such as relationships seriously. Besides, you seem to be missing the point: people don't generally CARE anymore. You might think with the amount of energies expressed here, on this blog, that they do. They don't. They're quick to GET ANGRY...but that's not action. You know, there's a writer's adage that goes something like this: 'A person's true character is revealed not in what they say...but in what they do.' The fact is that people have become far more insular, far more self-referential, far more 'Me, me, me!'...even as the tools to 'connect' with the rest of the world expand. I'm not dismissing or reducing even to the least degree those instances of when people reach out (such as with Haiti), but really; the belief in the notion that we have become a 'kindler and gentler world' makes me suspect that the person stating this lives in a bubble. And I don't want to believe that you or anyone else here does.

2) No, you don't mandate people into mindsets, you can't legislate morals, ethics or any of that. Seriously; if you actually believe that...then we really are diametrically opposed. I'm actually a little flabbergasted that you embrace the notion of 'the practical first. Unless... Unless we're talking semantical gymnastics here: 'engagement' having to do with how we raise children and how we interact within our communities, the general 'quality of Life' package that we effect in the way we move through the world.

(Here are some examples of 'mandating' that haven't or probably will never work, to varying degrees: littering, cell phone use, smoking, bad eating, bad 'activity-levels-pertaining-to-health-and-fitness' practices, sexual fidelity. Pass all the laws you want, but if it's not engrained, if people aren't inculcated with values, if they're not embraced out of choice...then they're in effect, practically worthless. Um... How many thousands of years have we had The Ten Commandmants...? Those people that 'do right', conduct themselves this way not because of any decree. At least not one from a government.

Comment edited by schmadrian on 2010-02-09 18:55:22