Something to ponder: reaching out to the young(1)

I have always found myself reaching out to the younger people. This is because so many of the past two generations have been born into what I think of as a "context lacking" family and society. They are the future hope, yet they lack such basic information that often the young people are the most challenged in finding hope. I'm not just referring to spiritual matters here, but also the "brass tacks" of the way things work. ("Brass tacks" is an expression that refers to thumbnails or tacks made of brass that are used to hold materials together, such as fabric onto the seat of a chair. "Getting down to brass tacks" is a classic expression that means you get down to the fundamentals of how something is put together and it's bottom line reality).

This expression can give you an insight into how the generation that you have been born into is so different than the ones that came before. "Getting down to the brass tacks" was a popular expression because virtually everyone did work with their hands, either labor on the job or on the farm or at home. So to reduce something to its basic truths was to "get down to the brass tacks." This expression has been replaced by three substitutes that reflect the shift from labor orientation (and mechanical based reality) to financial and entertainment as "the new reality." The expressions that replace "getting down to the brass tacks" are: "what is the bottom line" (total financial profit orientation, rather than how one gets there), "what is the punch line" (the entertainment of fooling someone or being fooled), and "cut to the chase" (the best part of the "movie" is the suspenseful and violent part).

Young people (and I really mean anyone under forty or so), you have been raised by a very rash generation that do not care about "getting down to the brass tacks." This is one of the ways that you have been very seriously cheated. Your parent's parents were, for the large part, very interested in "getting down to the brass tacks." They were a quiet and thoughtful generation that did not take short cuts in anything that they did, whether it was work, family, or recreation. For example, just about every family had guys who would spend their spare time stripping down the carburetor themselves in the family car. Or doing repairs around the house. At work, even if they were white collar, they never cared only about the "bottom line." They cared about every line, every decision, and every penny that was under their responsibility. They learned jobs from the bottom up, and cared about each step. This was why that generation, both men and women, could come together after Pearl Harbor, arm the country, and win the war. These were no wusses; they had their fun and were wild people in their way. But their wildness was a choice that was made once in a while against a background of much diligent and careful thought, and understanding "how the world worked." That generation and the ones before were much more "realistic" than these cynical generations who think they are "realistic," but who instead live in unbelievable fantasy, lacking even basic understanding and perspective about life. By "cutting to the chase," caring only about "the punch line," or the "bottom line," your parents' generation neglected to pass along to you their parents' knowledge of slow and careful contemplation of detail, and caring about each step in a process. Thus, you have been cheated of savoring much of the normalcy of life, including facts and truths that are well understood. Most important, those generations were not puppets to being manipulated. These past two generations seem to live only to be manipulated in order to be objects of consumerism.

Now I am not against consumerism or even luxury. {I'll write more about that in another post.} But you see, your grandparents were the drivers of what they bought. They bought what appealed to them. They were not manipulated to "want" or "need" things. I'll give you an example that I think about often whenever I'm out in my car in the next post. So let's not be distracted by thoughts that I'm talking about the culture of consumerism here.

Instead, I hope you learned something from this about how the mindset of people have changed, dramatically and remarkably, almost beyond comprehension by people like me who remember "before" and "after." With my little lesson about how I've observed a part of language has changed, I hope you understand what I mean about how it's not the language, but the change in the brain and mindset that underlies it that is a concern. Even wild guys who drank and raced cars and did crazy things back in the days of "getting down to brass tacks," were more like the characters you see in the Jimmy Stewart movies (thoughtful, silent, step by step, understanding how things really worked) than just about anyone I know today. They did not live in a world that is ruled by bottom lines, punch lines and chase scenes. They lived in the real world, and then when events would naturally occur that required laughing at a joke, or doing something crazy, or balancing the check book, they did so. But those were punctuation marks in a very understandable and in many ways more serene life than the artificial life you are all forced to live in now, where we are all someone else's punch line, bottom line, or bystanders in some power broker's chase scenes. Today, you are not taught what your grandparents were taught about the ways of the world, and the serenity that comes with even the difficult times. Instead, you are taught that "you are in charge of your life" but instead, the truth is that you are being taught to be either the small change in the bottom line, the punch line, or the stooge in the chase scene, or to be the one who calls the shots with the bottom line, the big joke, or egging on increasing addiction to the stimulation of getting pawns involved in the chase.

I hope this gives you something to think about. I think this generation has been unbelievably cheated, and it's getting worse as far as I can see.