So there I was on my way home from breakfast and some dude is honking at me because my old jalopy can’t get going so fast up and over the Mathews bridge and it got me to thinking about what has happened to our society as a whole. Well as you know we are so far off the tracks now I am not sure we will ever be able to just get along anymore and play nice again. It is the simple things that we miss, things like “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” http://www.heartwarmingstories.net/everything.htm) Well that got me to thinking - why are people so angry these days and I think I am on to something. First, for those old enough to remember you did not see a lot of road rage in the 60’s and 70’s, probably a few reasons beside my hypostasis but here we go……..
I believe the start of our society’s inability to be patient started with the advent of microwave popcorn and the removal of pray from school. WHHHHHAAAAAT you might be asking yourself, well let me explain. Popcorn used to be cooked in a pot that was shaken vigorously back and forth on the stove with a bit of oil. My hats off to those lucky few who may have gotten the jiffy pop with the really cool expanding top, in my family that was a luxury we were not afforded but I digress as that is a story for another day. My point here is that all good things require some effort on our part and not everything can be done instantly, cooking popcorn in a pot was a pain in the butt, but the work made it worth it the anticipation and wait. I could use other examples but you understand, all good things required effort.
Well on to the other part, in this country we also used to have something called freedom OF religion and not the freedom FROM religion we enjoy today (There are lots of reasons for that, again not the point for today’s story). For those not old enough to remember we used to say the pledge of allegiance along with a prayer every morning at school. Not that I was old enough at that time to understand the complexities of church and state issues I still remember liking both the pledge and the prayer. Looking back, I attribute that as a factor in my moral and ethical foundations that formed at a young age, the Lord’s prayer is very well written http://www.prayerguide.org.uk/lordsprayer.htm
So how in the world, you might ask, did I get from some knuckle head on the bridge to that, well let me explain.
With the dawning of microwave popcorn age our society as a whole started thinking our instant gratification was a God given right and not just a convenience. Over the last 20-30 years we have come to easily apply those principles of microwave popcorn (instant gratification) to other areas of our lives. Areas of our lives that those principles may not be applicable I might add. An example would be being instantly available to everyone, all the time. My mom would kick us out for the whole day and we could not be “reached” and we survived. Now I know that knucklehead laying on the horn had some Bluetooth gadget stuck in his ear giving the person on the other end the business as well. We must also have available to us 593 different kinds of shampoo, I personally use a bar of soap on my hair, sorry Jay no offense intended with the hair comment. We also need to have those 593 shampoos available at every store we go to, from Wal-Mart to Walgreens. There are millions of examples, 4 different kinds of coffee at the gate station and 6 different kinds of flavored creams. Anyway my point is this rush to immediate gratification started with advent of microwave popcorn, in my opinion.
So you couple that with the removal of prayer in school, that basically removed the moral compass we may have been receiving, for those who did not receive a dose of that from home as a kid. So now we have an impatient little kid without any grounding and what do you get, a bunch of grownups acting like a kid going through their lives in a constant “terrible twos” cycle, I want it now and I do not care what it takes to get it. Or in this case I want over the bridge one car length on front of you and I will lay the sauce to my horn to prove to you that is what I want, Nice!
You could see this as a case for legalizing marijuana, you did not see the potheads of the 60’s and 70’s acting like that, either that or as my friend Circe recommends, we need to add Prozac to the water supply.
So what were you thinking the last time someone honked their horn at you?
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