A Cultural Change We Desperately Need

Written by Terry Mitchell


In his immensely popular book, "The Purpose Driven Life", one ofrepparttar major points that Pastor Rick Warren tries to make is that people must changerepparttar 132133 way they think before they can changerepparttar 132134 way they live. I believerepparttar 132135 same principle applies to cultures. As I've mentioned many times before, I do not believe morality can be legislated. Allrepparttar 132136 laws inrepparttar 132137 world against every imaginable immoral act will not make any culture or nation better or more righteous. Instead, we need a cultural change that comes as a result of modifying our opinion about certain things in our society. Specifically, we must changerepparttar 132138 way we view violence, theft, foul language, and personal responsibility. Sadly,repparttar 132139 culture of violence is so ingrained into American culture thatrepparttar 132140 two have become almost interwoven. We have come to accept violence as a fact of life. We wink at it. We even laugh and make jokes about it. I believe this attitude stems fromrepparttar 132141 fact that, for many centuries, we have blithely accepted idea that it is sometimes okay for a man to strike or assault another man for reasons other than to defend himself or someone else from imminent physical harm. For example, we seem to think it is sometimes acceptable for a man to give another guy "a good beating" for "mouthing off" at him. Some people refer to this attitude as "old school." Well, if that's old school, classes need to be shut down immediately! Let's look at what this mindset as led to. Since that kind of escalation has been accepted for so long, people now often escalate from hitting to shooting or stabbing, without thinking twice. Many young people today see no difference between those forms of violent escalation. In their minds, if one form of escalation is acceptable, then why not another? Of course, mobsters, gangs, and those involved inrepparttar 132142 drug culture have never had any problem withrepparttar 132143 escalation of violence, but now that sentiment has spilled over into mainstream society. Violence has become a staple of our entertainment industry. Violent entertainment, even in its most graphic form, and is considered socially acceptable. In fact,repparttar 132144 FCC cannot fine broadcasters for violent content as it can for sexually explicit or vulgar content. We need a whole new attitude toward violence. It should be completely abhorrent to us. Those who harm others with violence, other than in cases of self defense orrepparttar 132145 like, should be considered disgusting. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to see all manliness as well as manly sports erased from our culture. I'm not one of those fanatics who advocate such foolishness. In fact, football and boxing, what some people would callrepparttar 132146 two most violent sports, are two of my favorite sports. Also, if two guys want to mutually agree to settle their differences by "duking it out", that's fine with me. However, when someone resorts torepparttar 132147 use of unnecessary and unexpected violence against another person, it should be interpreted as a barbaric act and treated as such by our laws. Violence will never be completely eradicated from our society, but it can be greatly reduced. However, this will only happen when we begin to view it as unacceptable. As isrepparttar 132148 case with violence, our culture seems to acceptrepparttar 132149 inevitability of theft. It didn't use to be that way. There was a time when almost everyone respectedrepparttar 132150 property of others and would not bother it. However, people now have to keeprepparttar 132151 doors of their homes and cars locked to keeprepparttar 132152 contents of such from being stolen. In fact, we spend millions of dollars a year on devices that attempt to prevent would-be thieves from stealing our cars, breaking into our homes, and robbing us of other precious possessions. We sometimes excuse theft and take it lightly. We treat it in such a matter-of-fact manner that we assume that a certain (high) level of it is always going to exist. For example, most stores seem resigned torepparttar 132153 "fact" that a certain percentage of their merchandise will be lost to shoplifting. In addition, we often seem to hold everyone butrepparttar 132154 thieves themselves responsible when theft occurs (I'm getting to a general point on that later). For example, if a child leaves his bicycle outside, unprotected, overnight and it gets stolen,repparttar 132155 child gets yelled at for being irresponsible. Now, ifrepparttar 132156 child goes outside and gets molested by a pervert, I bet his parents wouldn't yell at him. Whyrepparttar 132157 difference? Because we treat child molestation as unacceptable while treating theft as somewhat of a norm. I don't mean to make light of child molestation in any way, but we ought to treat theft as unacceptable too.

Senior Authors Give Back

Written by Francine Silverman


As editor/publisher of Book Promotion Newsletter, I am fortunate in having an eclectic group of subscribers who number inrepparttar thousands. The ezine is interactive and subscribers are encouraged to share their innovative marketing techniques. What has impressed me most, however, isrepparttar 132132 tenacity and good heartedness ofrepparttar 132133 over-50 members of my list. Dr. Ted “Gorgeous” Borgeas is a retired, sports-oriented podiatrist and author of nine books. When he was appointed as a volunteer torepparttar 132134 Medical Services Division ofrepparttar 132135 Athens Olympics 2004, Ted thought it would be very informative and appreciated to initiate a volunteer translation project of his book, When My Feet Hurt, I Hurt All Over (Cameltrotters Publishing 1976; last revision 2004). His idea was to distributerepparttar 132136 book free torepparttar 132137 athletes in their native languages. To accomplish this, he recruited volunteers to translaterepparttar 132138 book into half a dozen tongues. Ted didn’t receive a penny on this project but his satisfaction is priceless. “The response was fantastic, encouraging and exciting…it was such a joy to be able to show some ofrepparttar 132139 athletes pictures and a translation of their problems.” http://www.atborgeas.com Miller Caldwell lives in Scotland. Even thoughrepparttar 132140 profits on his book, Operation Oboe (Authors Online 2003), are greatly reduced when he donates two pounds (approx. $1.5) fromrepparttar 132141 sale at every book signing,repparttar 132142 Scottish Police Benefit/Welfare Association and Alzheimers and Dementia groups benefit from Miller’s largesse. http://www.millercaldwell.org

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