To Live, To Give,
To Love, To Prove, To See, To Be
Updated:
December 2003
We were not born
with sunglasses – we were not born with sun block cream on our skin. We were created with the natural ability to
walk in the sun without a shirt on – especially as Africans. But our bodies and minds have grown used to
the artificial protection and no longer can we go out into the sun without this
protection.
What about
values, morals and principles – the old taboos?
Where are we
headed?
Will we be able
to cope?
At night the
flower buds close, by day the petals are open and follow the direction of the
sun.
We are reaching
a breaking point, and we have no knowledge of when or what the final straw will
be. On the one hand national
constitutions promote freedom to do anything.
Our constitutions do not provide a section on values and morals based
decision-making. The evidence of the
failure of our constitutions and past political practices are:
"It isn't
the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and
the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of
today."
- Robert J. Hastings -
What has
happened to zero-tolerance? What has
happened to the fences and boundaries that kept us safe in the in the years
when nobody had fences around their houses?
We can identify
out of the many issues facing the future of society, two very basic practices
which are fast disappearing:
CONTENTS
Introduction
A Slow Creep
Of Sowing And Reaping
Who Will Lie In The
Graves
How Low Can We Go?
The Day The Dogs
Stopped Barking
Experiment
A Light Approach to
Cultural Difference
Aggression and Intolerance
as a Demonstration of Strength
Monday Morning Actions
Epilogue
I marveled as I sat and watched
The little garden snail.
From where I sat I couldn’t see
Him move, I thought, He'd fail!
But when I got up, closer drew
So clearly I could see;
He persevered albeit slow
Noticed him move t'ward me.
Many things happen everyday
Results are what we do and say.
It is the very subtle change,
Which will our values rearrange.
(A Slow Creep
– C.D.Smith Ó 2003)
In the 1950’s,
when the song came out poking fun at the parent who goes “yakitty yak – take
out the papers and the trash”, we (not me per se, I wasn’t yet born)
laughed because it was so funny.
Then the white
little black boy sang about what a bad mother he had, and we were so shocked. When he stated in his best-selling song that
his mother wouldn’t have any of her children at her funeral, we sat up.
And yes, that’s
where we remained, “we sat up!” We did
not get out of our comfortable armchairs to see whether or not the snail was moving,
we rather sat and tried to observe from a distance.
The move from
moral high ground to moral underground is very slow, and we can hardly notice
the movement that is taking place. And
as one little shocker replaces the previous one, we hardly notice the
transition.
Using metaphors
to write about the current situation is great, but what does it mean for us.
The music
example provides us with the following insights into history:
-
1950’s
song; the young people were beginning to develop a “public voice”. They now had a forum from which they could
express their unhappiness with the “nagging” from their parents.
-
3rd
Millennium CE example; parents are not perfect. Nobody received a manual on how to raise children. Some parents have been known to put their
own happiness before the happiness and security of their children. The rapper in this song expresses his hate
for his mother.
What are the typical actions that we should take, IOW, how are we supposed to
get out of our comfortable armchairs?
In the 1950’s, social scientists should have conducted impact
studies of the new forum and studied the extent of the messages that were
coming out of the music. The problem
could have been isolated to either certain social groupings or to the public in
general. This could have been further
broken into identifying whether or not the children or the parents needed
education. It is essential to
acknowledge that there are and have been in the past bad (maybe even evil)
parents.
In the1980’s and 1990’s, fans of certain singers should have
alerted psychoanalysts and therapists of the potential dangerous reality that
could result from some of the songs that graced the “Top Ten” places of the
charts.
We laughed and so we accepted – we had changed.
The greatest example of subtle change is the Nazi movement under
Hitler.
A more recent
example is the adoption abortion in South Africa. Initially, while the proposed legislation was under debate, there
was much activism from religious and pro-life lobbyists. After only six months there were 13,000
legal abortions. I often read the
newspaper and sometimes watch the news on the television. The absence of news of the abortion issue is
speaking loudly:
“We have accepted, we have changed!”
[1] The creation of EthicSA is an institutional response to a worldwide recognition of the relevance and importance of moral renewal in all societies, as well as to the current value and morality crisis in our own society. Source: http://www.ethicsa.org