Common Sense and Logic: The Introduction

In the current era, through the advancement of technology, people are becoming more isolated from one another. The idea of community seems lost. Interpersonal interaction has been reduced to text messaging, cutting off other roadway users and stepping out of the way of people who are listening to their MP3 players as they walk down the street. Even a technological advance as simple as an automatic garage door opener has forged a rift in person-to-person communication. Now instead of visiting with neighbors who are outside as the driver gets out to open the door, people can get their cars parked inside the garage with nothing more than the push of a button.

Children of today can maneuver their way through the maze of the latest video game, but they have only a loose grip on what it means to have manners--a sense of propriety--and who can blame them? To most of their parents, manners and a sense of community have only been seen as relics of the past. Just two short generations after the Greatest Generation, parents are abandoning parenting in an effort to be their children's friends...mothers trade clothes with their daughters instead of teaching them, fathers tell their sons to get with hot babes instead of showing them how to respect womanhood through honoring his wife.

This epidemic can be traced through the 60's to the Second World War, and from the Great Depression to the period immediately following the First World War. After WWI, plants, manufacturers and farmers continued to produce goods at the same rate they had been during the war. However, with European industry picking back up, the demand for US products in the international market was reduced. The lack of self-control (not government-control, but self-control) on the part of the producers resulted in surpluses, which lead to over-speculation and economic disparity.

Over-speculation was one of the main factors that brought the woes of the Great Depression into the average American home. The people who survived the worldwide financial crash of 1929 are the same Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation. They knew what it meant to "go without" and to skimp. They overcame the worst financial scenario known to the United States and emerged, several years later, victoriously from World War II.

With their new-found prosperity, most of the greatest generation determined to give their children everything they themselves never had. It was that determination that produced the entitlement mentality borne by the Baby-Boomer Generation. Entitlement lead to a lack of respect, and that lack of respect opened the door to question everything. Such a notion may sound noble and wise, but that is only true when the questions are noble and wise. Unfortunately, the majority of question-raisers were overly self-assured students who abused their bodies by ingesting chemicals and participating in "free-love".

The Sixties turned citizens into "non-conforming" individuals who, interestingly, only followed the crowd. Open-mindedness became their mantra, but thoughtlessness is what they practiced--they would believe anything that opposed their perceived opposition. Diseases were spread and minds were opened, but only to certain, very specific notions. Once these live-for-the-moment, forget-about-consequences children from the Sixties had children, there were very few substantive values for the rising generation to admire or acquire.

Today, the new generation of parents give their children names that are suitable only for pets and produce. They dress their offspring as if they were taking them to clubs looking to "hook-up". Young girls are brought up to display their bodies as objects to attract whatever male will notice them.

The issue follows a simple cause-and-effect pattern. The catalyst is, and has been from the beginning, a lack of self-control. Each generation is exposed to new challenges to propriety and virtue. Every generation will continue to fail to overcome those challenges if they don't study history and exercise good judgment, self-control and Common Sense in the execution of their day-to-day lives.