Sometimes when I look at our species, at the things we do, the wars, the isms, the way we so easily cast aside opportunities to better our lives, I wonder are our brains fried? Have we no spiritual pride? Have we no natural instincts imbedded inside our hearts and souls that can lead us to be more loving towards each other and act as our moral guide?
Aren’t we aware that our children are watching at our side and they, like other animals, cannot survive if they don’t see a model for how they should live their lives?
Oh, to see a mother bird teaching her chicks to fly, a cheetah teaching her cubs just when to turn on the blazing speed, for how long, and why, a dolphin teaching calves how to hunt, how to best use their fins when they swim.
So called lesser animals seem to know somehow that to not teach their children what nature compels them to do has no reason or rhyme. They have to be careful what they do when their offspring are watching and they’re watching all the time.
So are our children but too often we act as though we either don’t care are aren’t aware that they will follow in our footsteps someday, that they will approach the world close to how they’ve seen us carry on day to day.
What do we want to leave them as a legacy? Now, if we want them to appreciate and love their world and its people then we’d better do an about face immediately. A people who care about the world is not the imagery we’re putting out there for them to see. No sirree.
For them to create a promising life in the 21st Century we mama and papa bears and the other bears in our sleuth are going to have to help our children get to a few basic truths, and to help us out we’ll need schools that challenge them to think critically.
Along such lines they’ll have to see us as discerning human beings, hearing us as we mourn the devastation in Japan, questioning nuclear power plants as a wise source of energy since some nuclear waste can easily cause a calamity that might last for what might seem like an eternity.
There’s so much both abroad and at home for us to do. I mean like how many more Gadhafis and Mubaraks will our children see us, with out well thought out consciences in place, chummy up to?
Shouldn’t we put an end to shenanigans like workers losing their bargaining rights to predators who see them as prey, taking what they’ve earned away while so many of us yell “Hooray!” as though our turn to be humiliated might not be a little down the way? What of value do our children learn when we act in such a way?
Wouldn’t it be wise if we ceased taking our hostilities regarding our wretched wounded economy out on undocumented workers, mostly Latinos, while the real culprit has always been and remains corporate greed? They took that bail money that had no stipulations attached and kept on being rich and fat while we scorn those who are truly in need, not putting ourselves in their shoes as people desperately trying to survive.
Our children can’t become concerned citizens without the ability to sympathize and empathize.
Do we want our daughters and granddaughters to continue making less pay than men at work every day and still be kept somewhat at bay politically and business-wise?
How about ending the hypocrisy of touting ourselves as the Land of the Free when gay people aren’t fully protected in our democracy, even rebuffed by national organizations like the Boy Scouts of America which professes to build character when there is no character development at all in discriminating against some of our citizenry.
Isn’t it time that we came to grips with the fact that: Christianity is not our country’s official religious belief; we’ve conducted illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without considering other forms of pursuing justice and peace; everyone has a history that’s intertwined with everyone else’s place in history, that sharing all the stories is the intent of ethnic studies that are so maligned by people with incredibly narrow minds?
Beginning the changes that will be needed if we’re to leave our children a hopeful world will require us to find all the love that we have inside to guide us, to keep us on track – for that’s what creating a better world is all about: love. If we love our world enough to want to change it for the good of all humankind our children will too. They will follow in our footsteps as loving human beings. That’s true.
Photo from tribalicious via flickr.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m Ernie McCray and I stand behind this piece.
Ernie,
You always have a way of putting into words all the jumbled up thoughts I have in my head everyday when I hear of some tragedy in the world – and they do happen every day – or of some terrible injustice being perpetrated upon another human being. Animals are better than we, I think. They don’t torture and hate; they do what they have to do to survive and to enable their young to survive and flourish. If only we could learn from them, but too many people see animals as beings to be exploited, too.
Exploitation, too often is the game – of everything. It seems we homosapiens have a need to dominate. Good to hear from you, Carole.
You ask the most important questions here, Ernie.
I thought back to that heroic guy who did a one-man protest of The Black’s no-class sticker… there was a kid who looked about junior-high-age with a sign saying “this guy’s not from OB,” which was clearly made by an “adult” who gave to the kid. Some adult who not only has no clue about how to be a role model, but is also willing to enlist a child in his or her pathetic hate campaign. Sad.
It is sad when we enlist our children in our hateful schemes.
Moral of this story: If birds of a feather flock together, be careful how you choose your birds.
Hey, I’m sure glad our flight patterns crossed back in Miss Daniel’s 4th grade class.
Hi Ernie;
In your article higher order thinking is clearly evident. The article adds clear insights to ongoing discussion of homosapiens perception. In humans search for meaning, we have been able to make sense of the world and to communicate about the world with our own species because we have the same circuitry, the same apparatus of perception; However, what we see in the exterior world is largely a matter of how we perceive it.
I believe the late Albert Einstein said it best when he stated, “The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert, sure understood a lot of things. And we’ve got some changing of thinking to do.