Home of Today's Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald December 14, 2008

The Christmas Season is upon us again! Strains of “Peace to men of good will” are in the air and the three Magi are about to present gifts.

Thanksgiving is now a warm memory of family around the table and the tastes and smells of turkey and fixins’.

I had many ‘thanks’ to remember, in that my health continues to improve, and that we were blessed with our first grandchild; a gorgeous little girl named Rowan.

To top it off, my son even found time to visit us from New York, for two weeks as well.

The times have changed enormously in how we all think of things; perhaps for the better perhaps not.

There seems that there are more different approaches to the prominent public conflicts such as right to life. Even within the local Catholic Diocese leadership the political approach towards abortion lacks clarity in that there seems to be some equivocation that supports immigration and government entitlements as having a priority over “right to life” as was demonstrated during the recent elections.

When I came to Brownsville from New York, well more than two decades ago, I was impressed with how courteous and respectful every one was. In fact I was shocked when I was driving down a two lane highway and as I approached a vehicle going much slower the driver pulled onto the shoulder and let me pass. My New York stunted brain had a tough time processing that.

Now, twenty-two years later, I am still in awe of the decency that generally pervades the community. It is astounding that here when someone asks how you are doing they genuinely care. It always raises my spirits and I reply that “if I was doing any better there would have to be two of me!”

I have come to love the Rio Grande Valley as it is much like the rural community of my youth, complete with foibles.

Political sides are focused on overbearing leadership, mismanagement of the school system or perceived corruption, ignoring one place or another with public infrastructure and on. All politics is local politics and very similar from one place to another.

What really concerns me more than the issues that will persist as long as there are two people on Earth to disagree on how things should be accomplished is the viciousness that pervades the public discourse today in general!

Political or community leaders or rulers are described as evil, criminal or worse because they advocate a point of view or act on an issue that is not in agreement with the particular “mainstream” that the individual belongs to. Rather than take the time to research the issue and determine independently what the issue really is, the perspective described by “the crowd” or “Comedy Central” is taken to be the absolute truth.

The reality is that the truth is somewhere between what the different postures and especially in real life, perspective changes and evolves.

One of the causes for this lack of civility is a sense powerlessness in evaluating a set of circumstances and making a judgment independent of the crowd.

Judgments as to what is the more likely a truth seem to be necessarily what the crowd thinks. Determinations and actions based on the information, alternatives in the event there are more ways to consider things, and consequences of those determinations and actions are just not thought all the way through – they pass right into emotion.

This ability to think is the result of real exposure to the liberal arts of good literature, music and art which seems to have gotten lost in today’s education.

If one reads about how issues are dealt with whether it be a non-fiction record of one person’s view of the past or a fictional record of what might have happened the ability to think is greatly enhanced.

Today the only way to be exposed to these things is to watch such things as the History Channel, Public Television and then it is mostly us old folks that do that. However, in many cases the information is corrupted by the prevailing perception of the presenter. This is particularly noticeable especially in descriptions of our adventures in Vietnam, and life circumstances in Asia; I have been there and the situation as I saw it was vastly different than that is often described.

Other changes are seen in the popular television we watch. The TV programs of my youth in the 50’s, like “Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver”, showed the social ideal of the family, even though it probably didn’t exist and no one could come close. Today – The George Lopez program shows us the reality of family; his father character was dyslexic as a youth and he shows the normal family problems with his son dealing with the same issues. The teen daughter is also shown with the same issues of today. To me this is a much better approach.

Through out history humanity continues to make the same mistakes – Are we really following the same path as the world followed in 1938 when Hitler was on the rise; are we really facing an apocalypse as the President of Iran says is their mission in his speeches to his countrymen? Was Hitler responsible for killing the groups of people that he blamed for his problems or is that just a conspiracy?

Without a well founded view of the real records of human thought – the literature of the ages – how can we evaluate anything?

The result of all of this is that since a rational analysis cannot be made of a situation the individual responsible is somehow evil as is anyone supporting him; not unlike the thinking responsible for blaming witches for the wrongs that befell early communities.

Today’s schools focus on the accumulation of technical skills and information and forget that one needs to know how to think and then put those thoughts into action. When that is not successful the focus is expanded to remove expectations of achievement and reward successes so that the young will not feel hurt.

The result is that there are less and less consequences for poor behavior. More and more young folks are finding themselves in trouble when all the signals given do not spell out an expected standard of behavior and a specific and appropriate consequence for a mis-behavior that will not be overruled by a board member or higher manager.

As a former law enforcer, my experience tells me that a preponderance of violators had no foundation of boundaries and expectations, nor any expectation that there would be real consequences for poor behavior. It has just gone out of style. Self realization and self expression mean nothing, if the individual has no point of reference as to where he is and where he wants to go. Few young folks finishing high school or even college today have a defined goal with a plan as to how to achieve that goal and expectations along the way.

As a dad I can tell you factually that everyone needs a set of boundaries and expectations to live by and develop goals with. These boundaries taken with a real expectation of consequences for violating them will replace the current insecurity born incivility with confidence and sense of purpose. An individual “moral compass” will help guide our young folks.

This is by no means an indictment of education but a challenge to the community to find out for your self what is really going on and consider the circumstance not the individual.

For our future and indeed our survival, we need to rethink how education accomplished; how the information is provided and how the abilities to make use of that information are inculcated.

Perhaps the educational system could strategically retreat to a point where we were doing well and do it over. We need the arts to return, in order to fully develop thinking skills and a set of boundaries and expectations to encourage a confidence and sense of order.

It is not an issue of money but of priority!

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