Shake Down The Trash Bag

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

Alvin Toffler
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I am a member of the human race. sometimes I wish I had a choice in the matter. With the human mind as grand and powerful as it is, why do people insist on not using it? I read the liberal press and the conservative press because I feel I have the right to know what people think. And what I find out is that most people don't think. They react and call it action. They hold beliefs which they call knowledge. They express opinions which they call truth. They condemn and call it justice. They hate and call it righteousness. They provoke and say it's civic duty. They practice vengeance and say it's equal rights. The attempt to deprive others of their civil liberties under the name of family values. They slap simplistic labels on just about everything so that they don't have to think about it. Instead of being original they settle for being a carbon copy. Instead of being an independent thinker they join a gang. They are squeamish, cowardly, depraved and morally corrupted, and they don't even know it.

There are those living today whose beliefs and opinions are solidified, cast in stone and set up in the cemetery of the mid 20th Century. One hopes and expects that worn out prejudices have disappeared from society only to find them cast up on the shores of the world like detritus from some sunken ship.

There are still cloudy minded folks who claim that the reason for homeless people is that they refuse to work. Others are certain that every effort to improve society and make it more compassionate is a move toward communism. I have read articles that claim any differing point of view as a conspiracy. People are stuck in the mud of old fetid ideas, washing in the swamp and eating the garbage they are fed by those who refuse to "learn, unlearn and relearn."

It's not that people don't look. It's that they don't see. They listen but they don't hear. They criticize everyone's behavior but their own. They make the same mistakes expecting different results, and when they don't get them they blame someone else.

I am a 20th century man. I was born during the second World War. I was in high school during the Korean War and the McCarthy witch hunt. I was a young man during the Viet Nam War and the revolution of the 60s. As I grew up I watched the amazing rise of technology. I know that old ideas were once new ideas, but now those ideas belong on the Antiques Road Show, not on radio, TV, the pulpit and the Congress.

DB
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Tomorrow: Brother Theodore
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