Sometimes I don't like to talk much I just like to listen to other people. It can be the best reality show you'll ever see. I listen to them talk about politics and religion. I watch how they interact with each other. I watch how guys treat their girlfriends and how their girlfriends talk about them when they aren't there. I see alot of people looking for answers to things but they don't ask the right questions. Some just don't even care. We have alot of problems in our society today but with all the smoke and mirrors some don't even know what they are looking at. We seem to be in the generation where nobody wants to work for anything anymore and nothing has value. The things that do have value aren't really worth anything and these things actually worth something people don't want because they aren't easy to get. This is why people will walk down the street past a good martial arts school and go to a crappy one because they are guaranteed a black belt in 3 years just for showing up. The other they'd have to work for so they don't want it. The problems we deal with in martial arts are a microcosm for the disease spreading through the society we live in. People may think some of my articles are unrelated to each other but in fact it's all relative. No one wants to look at the core of the problems we face because they are afraid. They are afraid they may have to take responsibility for something or that something may be asked of them. They talk about the symptoms and ignore the diseases simply because it's easier. Let's look at a few topics that tend to get bounced around.
Gun control is a very common topic we can use to illustrate the point. Some think if they get rid of guns then the problems caused by them will go away. This is fighting a symptom not the disease. Gun control laws are a pointless waste of time and tax payer money. Sure alot of other people say that but why is it such a waste of time? Well there's the usual arguments about how criminals don't buy guns at the store they get them on the black market. That may be true but that isn't really it I mean some do and some don't. It has more to do with the saying guns don't kill people. People kill people. You see a gun is nothing more than a tool. It's like a drill laying on a table. It just sits there it does nothing. You put it in the hand of someone on a mission then something could end up with a whole in it. It's not a political problem though it gets politicized. The criminal problem is the fallout after it's over. You see if you look deeply enough at the problem you'll see it's a social issue. More often than not it comes down to someone felt a lack of respect. You can't make a law for that. A guy gets in a fight at a party and gets his ass kicked. People are talking about him. He feels embarrassed and humiliated and goes and gets a gun to show them. If they don't respect him they can fear him. A kid joins a street gang because daddy ain't around and momma has to work. He joins a gang for a sense of family. They commit crimes to get money to get respect. They fight other gangs for respect. Some guy is cheating on a girl she gets a gun and shoots him and his mistress because she feels disrespected and someone has got to pay. Sure this isn't every situation but it's alot of situations and of course there are other issues at hand. Now there could be a billion articles written on the past few sentences and when bad people do bad things the bad things follow them and there is no excuse for bad behavior but the point is the lack of a gun won't change anything. This is a perfect example of dealing with a symptom not the problem. Let's say you outlaw guns. Then they'll use knives. Take away the knives and they'll use sticks, rocks, molotov cocktails, bare hands, or anything other thing they can get their hands on. Guns are not the problem. That's just something people say to make themselves feel better because the real problem will probably never get resolved. Everyone grew up learning the Golden Rule..Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Everyone knows it but no one abides by it because everyone is out for themselves. If everyone truly respected everyone then violence would decline. Think that will ever happen? Of course not. See why it's easier to blame guns? Attacking the symptom ignoring the disease.
Another way of looking at it would be more parrying vs intercepts. Now I could stand back and parry all day and hold my distance trying to counter punch. The problem is if I parry a punch the guy just punches again. The punch isn't the problem it's the guy punching. The punches are the symptom the attacker is the disease. If I can wedge my body in there and jam him up I can go to the source. If he's unconscious he isn't punching. Now before you flip out yes that is a very simplistic way of looking at it and there's alot of gray area. I'm not one of these big macho cro-magnon guys that think you can just do that all the time. I'm only trying to illustrate another way people never seem to go for the core of the problem instead wasting time on symptoms and never getting the results they need.
People just don't seem to want to take responsibility anymore for anything. Not to be provocative but look at all the school shootings we've had in recent years. In the 1950's you didn't have school shootings here. It comes full circle a kid is getting bullied at school(the disrespect thing again). The school does nothing about it and he shoots it up. Of course when you look at the parents on the news they had no idea he was having problems in school. He's a good kid. It all must be Marylin Manson or Snooki's fault. God forbid the parents would take any responsibility or any role in the child's life. When I was a kid my parents always knew where I was and always knew what I was doing. These days kids are left alone for hours alone doing God knows what because the parents sure don't know. Now we all have innate sense of right and wrong and of course there is no excuse for shooting up a school obviously this is trying but I just give my two cents on the why. That's why alot of states have adopted a zero tolerance policy for violence in schools, because apparently they feel they have to do the job parents aren't doing at home anymore. A guy gets arrested for smoking weed and blames the cop for harshing his good time(it happens). A guy blows his money on crap because his priorities are screwed up then blames everyone but himself when he gets evicted for not paying the rent. Perez Hilton calls Will.I.Am a homo and then wants to sue because he got punched in the face even though he deserved it. 30 people watch a woman get stabbed to death in New York and think it's a shame she's gone yet none of them would lift a finger to help. Someone living in a shack is pissed at society for holding them down even though they refuse to get a job and blow the money they got on drugs and alcohol. The list could go on and on all night but hopefully you get point.
The problem isn't guns,Snooki, the man, society, or any of that stuff. We are the problem. The problem is us. Somewhere along the line we lost focus. We got greedy and stopped caring about each other. We got so arrogant thinking of how much we've evolved yet we haven't really evolved much at all. People care more about status than each other just like the middle ages. The toys are different but the outcome is the same. Somewhere we forgot what mattered. We forgot to keep trying to make the world better. We got lazy and thought someone else could do it for us like the president, or the congress, the police, the governor, the church, or some other person. But they can't and they won't. We can make the world a little better but it has to start with us. It has to start with you and your friend in the mirror and no one else. Instead of facing the truth and looking at the problems we took the easy route. When it didn't fix things we didn't take responsibility and blamed others which started a vicious circle. A band aid won't work anymore. Until you understand the problem you can't find the solution. Until we take responsibility for our own lives and learn to dig deeper to treat this social disease instead of the symptoms we will get worse. Until we can admit to ourselves we are the problem then we can never be the solution.
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