In the future, when the (hopefully) cyclical nature of 
educational standards swings back toward well-
instructed public school children, what will people of the 
world think about the United States, circa 1967-2010?

They will likely remember only a few shining lights that 
cast a shadow over the rest of the bulging masses of 
lazy, "entitled" slackers who cared more about comfort 
and entertainment than knowledge acquisition, work 
ethic or basic human purpose.

We will be remembered as not only the "me first" 
generations, but also as the "me too" generations as 
well. Original thought, for the most part, seems to be on 
hiatus, and it won't be generated by staring at YouTube 
for hours on end.

For many years, we have been socially engineered in our 
culture to celebrate everyone, regardless of 
achievement; then we pause and wonder why so few 
people strive to actually achieve anything of worth. It 
does seem a bit pointless to press forward when 
everyone around you tells you that the smart way to get 
things done is to just mellow out and take it easy.

Or better yet, why bother to try harder at anything, 
when "everyone's a winner!" We can all just sit back, get 
poor grades, have pre-adolescent sex at recess, practice 
lazy work ethics, let our bodies soften to jelly, partake of 
whatever recreational drug we think will paint a brighter 
face on our lives, play video games or watch television 
all day instead of doing something constructive, go to 
the casino and dump another paycheck into the hands of 
those who know you better than you know yourself. I'm 
sure we could all come up with more 
examples to add to this embarrassing list.

If all else fails, move back home. Hey, you can always 
depend on your parents' work ethic to save the day, 
right? They're used to working for a living. All 
that "get up and go to work" stuff every day is just way 
too boring, right?

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with watching 
the generations after me think they can make their mark 
on the world by some future, magical cosmic wish 
fulfillment. They will learn the hard way, as generations 
before them have, that there isn't always time to do 
later what needs to be taken care of now. All too often, 
time runs out.

We've now experienced decades of what appears to be 
a social experiment: no real consequences for under-par 
scholastic achievements, no serious standards for our 
school children to aspire to or to be held accountable 
for, physically and emotionally mollycoddling our youth 
out of fear of "trauma," taking authority away first from 
teachers and then parents, and allowing our popular 
culture to dumb down first our minds, then the minds of 
our kids.

Because of the sorts of jobs I've held for the last ten 
years, I've seen countless families in public settings. All I 
can say without going on too long, is basically that the 
vital art of parenting has been lost to all but a few. We 
have allowed the Enlightened Class of Psycho-babbling 
Intellectuals, The State, and the unscrupulously 
omnipotent Media Machine, turn us and many of our 
children into selfish, lazy, whiny, angrily disenfranchised, 
unproductive consumers.

What's the answer to this dilemma? We can't put the ills 
of the world back into Pandora's Box, so hoping for one 
thing to turn it all around is naïve. There is no 
single answer that everyone would find acceptable.

We have, in the last three generations, set the stage for 
the final act. However, I still believe that the show does 
not ultimately have to be a tragedy. I think there is still 
a way, however it may be accomplished, to insure that 
more inspiring possibilities can be wrought from this 
present disappointment.

Perhaps the new "playwright" will rise from the current 
consumer-zombie trash heap and find a way to get us 
looking at the world through each others' eyes again. 
Because definitely, when I look around me and try to 
find a common denominator in all this mess, I keep 
coming back to our collective lack of common courtesy.

Trivial as it seems, it may be a meter of how ill our 
society is becoming, since general civility consistently 
decreases year after year in the United States.

But isn't that something you can turn back up with your 
latest gadget?

No... and it never will be.