"The Culture of Cruelty"
This is what David Brookes of the NY Times said about American culture on a talk show after the tragedy of the VT shootings, and I've been ruminating over this for the last week or so, and I must agree. We, obviously by how highly they are rated, love watching the humiliation of people on reality shows, the Simon Crowells of the world making snide and outright devastating remarks to contestants that are willing to be bashed in front of millions for their thirty seconds of infamy. This humiliation is forgotten in an equal amount of seconds by the audience, but probably is never forgotten by the unfortunate victim (of course, as we see it, he or she "deserved it" because "no one is on the show against his or her will"). We tolerate the Don Imus's and the Howard Sterns—we love the way they taunt and belittle people; we love violent films, the gorier the better; we embrace the business culture that says you have to be a bastard to get ahead, or "You're Fired" by some side-combed egocrat that is just that much more Machiavellian than you are.
The NRA has one thing right. It's not the guns that kill people; it's the downright ugliness of our blatant disregard for our fellow countrymen, let alone the entire world. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
What causes this penchant for violence and vulgarity? I can offer one possible reason. Education, or lack thereof. We don't teach history, so our children don't learn from our, let alone ancient, mistakes. We don't teach them anything about foreign cultures. As I noted in another post, most of my students, in high school, didn't study any history other than American history, and a bland, dessicated version of American history at that. We have stripped the arts from our schools' curricula because our schools are underfunded. Towns won't pass millages, states won't raise taxes, and the federal government—well, if you have a president who brags about being a "C" student, then that sets a precedent. Crassness rules, art is liberal sissy stuff. And history? Who needs it when you make it. If we read history, we would understand all too well what happens to civilizations who acted and thought as we do presently. They became irrelevant, and self-destructed, as T.S. Eliot put it, with a whimper not a bang.
I'm tired of the culture of ignorance, of cruelty, of crassness. This is not JFK's New Frontier, or Johnson's Great Society. It's not Reagan's City on the Hill. It is madness. Self-centered and ultimately self-destructive.
This is what David Brookes of the NY Times said about American culture on a talk show after the tragedy of the VT shootings, and I've been ruminating over this for the last week or so, and I must agree. We, obviously by how highly they are rated, love watching the humiliation of people on reality shows, the Simon Crowells of the world making snide and outright devastating remarks to contestants that are willing to be bashed in front of millions for their thirty seconds of infamy. This humiliation is forgotten in an equal amount of seconds by the audience, but probably is never forgotten by the unfortunate victim (of course, as we see it, he or she "deserved it" because "no one is on the show against his or her will"). We tolerate the Don Imus's and the Howard Sterns—we love the way they taunt and belittle people; we love violent films, the gorier the better; we embrace the business culture that says you have to be a bastard to get ahead, or "You're Fired" by some side-combed egocrat that is just that much more Machiavellian than you are.
The NRA has one thing right. It's not the guns that kill people; it's the downright ugliness of our blatant disregard for our fellow countrymen, let alone the entire world. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
What causes this penchant for violence and vulgarity? I can offer one possible reason. Education, or lack thereof. We don't teach history, so our children don't learn from our, let alone ancient, mistakes. We don't teach them anything about foreign cultures. As I noted in another post, most of my students, in high school, didn't study any history other than American history, and a bland, dessicated version of American history at that. We have stripped the arts from our schools' curricula because our schools are underfunded. Towns won't pass millages, states won't raise taxes, and the federal government—well, if you have a president who brags about being a "C" student, then that sets a precedent. Crassness rules, art is liberal sissy stuff. And history? Who needs it when you make it. If we read history, we would understand all too well what happens to civilizations who acted and thought as we do presently. They became irrelevant, and self-destructed, as T.S. Eliot put it, with a whimper not a bang.
I'm tired of the culture of ignorance, of cruelty, of crassness. This is not JFK's New Frontier, or Johnson's Great Society. It's not Reagan's City on the Hill. It is madness. Self-centered and ultimately self-destructive.
posted by mariestaad at 6:08 PM
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