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Change the World<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n When I was in high school and later, college, my friends and I all thought the establishment consisted of a bunch of rich, old, gray-haired men who sat upon velvet thrones and decreed idiotic and senseless decrees to all us peons in the world. We were not going to let that continue once we grew up and took the reigns. We were going to make the world a better place. <\/span><\/p>\n We were going to change the world!<\/span><\/p>\n Yesterday, on the way to breakfast with an old friend, I stopped at a local gas station\/convenience store to pick up a copy of \u201cUSA Today\u201d. While I was parking in front of the store, I noticed a dozen or so metal posts \u2013 filled with cement \u2013 placed strategically between the store and the parking lot to prevent crazed, mentally irregular drivers from intentionally \u2013 or unintentionally \u2013 driving vehicles into the store and hurting people (and let\u2019s not forget property).<\/span><\/p>\n Being that now I\u2019m getting old, these bright-red concrete-filled metal posts reminded me that we failed… we did not make the world a better place. We changed it all right. But we didn\u2019t make it a better place, instead, we made it a worse place \u2013 but the jury will always be out on that, I guess. It’s my observation. But when I was growing up, I sure don\u2019t recall businesses and public buildings being targets of crazed drivers. No big red poles back in those days.<\/span><\/p>\n In retrospect, it seems my generation was more interested in bicycle helmets, car seats, seat belts, and not offending anyone, than making the world a better place. If the establishment I grew up with was motivated by excessive greed, then it seems my generation only made it worse. My generation is full of people who worship money and will do anything for money… and\/or power.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not so sure if that\u2019s so different than past generations or if it just seems so. Maybe it was worse in the age of the Robber Barons\u2026 the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Flaglers, Cookes \u2014 or maybe there were just fewer people that had a lot of money?<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not how it was supposed to work out \u2013 we were the generation that believed in love and peace and the brotherhood of mankind. We were going to change the world…for the better.<\/span><\/p>\n Peace out, brother! How did that work out?<\/span><\/p>\n Not very well. While we the \u201cyounger generation\u201d wearing tie-dyed t-shirts, peace symbols, and singing \u201cAll we are saying is give peace a chance\u2026\u201d, as the war in Vietnam raged on.<\/span><\/p>\n And today, we live in a world that was shaped by my generation. We could have made it better, but we didn\u2019t. I\u2019m wondering if today\u2019s young people, once they pull their heads out of their smartphones want to change the world and make it a better place world too?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The only thing it seems my generation changed successfully was making it a societal taboo to offend someone \u2013 even if what we\u2019re saying is true. Our grandkids eat more healthy foods in school than we did… I think. They wear bicycle helmets and seat belts to keep them safe, but we can\u2019t keep them safe in school. Now schools have what they euphemistically call “active shooter drills”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I was in high school the older folks were rolling their eyes and sighing \u201cWhat is this generation coming to?\u201d But that\u2019s because the boys were wearing long hair and the girls wore miniskirts. But one thing I never worried about in school was being shot and killed. <\/span><\/p>\n That came later. I had the draft board to help me with that.<\/span><\/p>\n My high school and college days coincided with the Vietnam war. Back then, many people were in an uproar \u2013 the ones who opposed the war versus the ones who supported it. My world was torn apart by a distant war, but I never had to endure \u201cactive shooter\u201d drills in school. We had fire drills and we had tornado drills\u2026 and we protested the lousy food in the cafeteria -mostly just a puerile attempt to rattle the elders.<\/span><\/p>\n It is hard to admit this, but I have to: My generation planted the seeds that led us to now. Controlling guns won\u2019t control killing \u2013it’s the people who are out of control. Maybe it\u2019s because there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Maybe it\u2019s because the once-powerful, “silent” majority we used to call \u201cthe middle class\u201d is slowly being eviscerated and now is in danger of disappearing leaving only the super-rich and the super-poor with nothing but a dark abyss in between.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I was growing up, television shows reflected not so much our middle-class values, but more what society so much wanted to be. If you\u2019re old enough to remember \u201cOzzie & Harriet\u201d, \u201cLeave it to Beaver\u201d, \u201cFather Knows Best\u201d, \u201cMy Three Sons\u201d, \u201cThe Donna Reed Show\u201d, then you\u2019ll remember halcyon days when dad always wore a tie and mom a dress at dinner. And everyone ate together at the kitchen or dining room table. And only on Saturdays could dad toss the tie and mom exchange the dress for slacks or \u201cBermuda\u201d shorts.<\/span><\/p>\n That was the American ideal. But it doesn\u2019t work that way anymore. In every one of those shows, mom stayed home and kept the house and made dinner — and dad made the money. And dad would come home from work and expect dinner on the table. Those were the good old days. Really? I\u2019m sure many ladies would not agree with that.<\/span><\/p>\n But changing the world and making it a better place is something we all want \u2013 and want to do. It\u2019s just not that easy. Maybe it\u2019s not the generation \u2013 maybe it\u2019s just human nature. Perhaps the world will only be a better place when it gets so bad even the rich and powerful are down and out, oppressed and powerless. Perhaps only then will it really change.<\/span><\/p>\n One thing is for sure \u2013 my generation changed the world but we certainly didn\u2019t make it a better place. <\/span><\/p>\n Millions of people are still starving, people are still dying in wars, kids are getting shot in schools, and greed still rules so much of our world. And as long as money equals power, I don\u2019t see much hope that the world will change for the better.<\/span><\/p>\n We can still change the world and make it a better place. No matter how old or young you are, or how rich or poor you are, how powerful or powerless you are — you can change the world and make it a better place starting today. <\/span><\/p>\n Today, you can do one nice thing for someone you don\u2019t know \u2013 a stranger. Do something nice because you want to. I am pretty sure they won\u2019t expect it. I bet you that you will put a smile on two faces \u2013 the face of the stranger you helped\u2026 and your own.<\/span><\/p>\n If every one of us did one good deed or one kindness for a stranger every day, the world would be a better place despite all the bad things going on around us. Maybe many things are out of our control. Maybe we can never change the way the world is, but each of us can make the world a better place.<\/span><\/p>\n We can all do something today that can change the world and make it a better place.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Change the World When I was in high school and later, college, my friends and I all thought the establishment consisted of a bunch of rich, old, gray-haired men who sat upon velvet thrones and decreed idiotic and senseless decrees to all us peons in the world. We were not going to let that continue once\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24110,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24103\/revisions\/24110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}