| WHY ARE WE SO MEAN? What has happened to us as a society? We are rude, mean, short-tempered, hostile, impatient and often times violent with seemingly very little provocation. I�ve been pondering this of a while but the recent story of a woman in Seattle, Washington who was screamed at and told to jump off a bridge until she did just that has brought my concern to a head. What is the cause? Why have we become so self absorbed and instant gratification driven? One reason that comes to mind is that during the past thirty years we have become very involved in self-exploration. Think about all of the self-help books, psychologists, therapists, and counselors that have generated millions in revenue. Books and assertiveness training seminars have been telling us for years now that we must take care of ourselves. We must look out for number one. We must pamper ourselves. Above all we must think of our needs first. Then the �me� generation of the seventies produced a new generation of disconnected people known as generation �x� whose parents set the ME FIRST example. You can see evidence of this in the rampant drug use and violence that started to rise sharply about twenty years ago. We all remember the eighties don�t we? Cocaine seemed to flow freely down the streets. Trickle down Reaganomics set the tone of �who cares about the little guy? I want my money and I want to spend it all on me me me!� That era also set the tone of not caring about people who were dying of a largely preventable disease. But since the majority of the people who were dying were gay and drug users why even mention the problem? After all, as far as that administration was concerned, AIDS was killing insignificant people so who cares. Thirty years ago the baby boomers decided that the individual was more important than the whole. They went off to pursue their dreams and either left their kids behind or dragged them along. In either case the kids got the message that they were not important. It created an empty spot. Then when the GenXers started having kids they had very little education on how to be parents. They covered their lack of parenting skills with an over inflated ego. Basically, we have all become egomaniacs with an inferiority complex. If we are not stuffing our fear of incompetence with drugs and alcohol then we are covering it with aggressive behavior. We also have become an instant society. Faxes, email, instant messaging, fast food, one hour photo, one hour dry cleaning, express lanes, automated tellers and so on and so on. We can�t wait for anything! Least of all for a woman to make a decision about whether to live or die. �Just go or stay but get the hell out of my way!� We truly don�t care. We are completely disconnected from the human condition. Think about the woman in Seattle. She was obviously in a great deal of emotional pain. She had lost all hope. She wanted her pain to end. But here�s the rub; she wanted help. People who have no doubts about suicide don�t do it in a public place where there is a chance they could be stopped. This woman wanted someone to reach out to her. To tell her that her life was valuable. Instead what she got were people who reinforced her feelings of worthlessness. She was not a person to them. She was just in their way. Look at the man in Texas who was so disconnected from his own family that he didn�t notice that his wife was psychotic and about to kill all of his children. The reports say that the house was a disaster, his wife had been on anti-psychotic medication. Yet he still didn�t think about whether or not it was a good idea to leave her alone with five small children. What about the people in Littleton, Co. who were so far removed from their children's lives that they didn�t notice that the kids had made pipe bombs, acquired several automatic weapons and planned to take out their whole school? We need to start paying attention to something other than ourselves. We have been given some pretty powerful wake up calls. We need to start seeing others as human beings and not just obstacles and annoyances. If we don�t we may all find ourselves the last obstacle in someone's way. |
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