Modern Complacency

       I mentioned my father a couple posts ago, and I mention him now because he helped bring about this one.  See, my father doesn't live with us because he works in China.  So naturally when he visits, the two of us have a lot of catching up to do.  We used to fight a lot-most everyday, actually-but I've grown up considerably in his absence ( I like to tell myself that, anyways), so now we have actual conversations instead of spats.  
       Earlier this evening we had a conversation about America vs China.  This is a pretty broken-in topic, as we two are of those two cultures.  I like to think that I have the better perspective, because I grew up an American, in a Chinese household.  My father believes that he knows better, because he's older and has seen more of the world.  It doesn't matter, really.  
       But anyways, I just wanted a written record of that conversation.  It's true that a lot of non-Americans don't think too highly of them-us.  Not just in China, either.  It's a popular misconception that all Americans are arrogant and lazy.   While it's certainly true that there are lazy Americans, laziness is not uniquely an American trait, although I know quite a few of us that must have majored in it.  As for arrogance, it's the same thing.  However, if one has to make a sweeping generalization, one may find it more accurate to say that Americans are ignorant, rather than arrogant.  Specifically, the younger generations.  My friends, not the friends of my parents;me, not my teachers.  
       The first part of this is isolation.  Think about it.  After the Civil War, how many wars of that magnitude were fought on American soil?  The World Wars never really reached our little haven, did they?  Sure, the Cold War spread the fear of nuclear annihilation here as much as it did everywhere else, but it was never about us.  It was a struggle for power between two nuclear giants: Russia and the USA.  It wasn't about the people as much as it was about the democratic US distrusting the Communist USSR, and vice versa.  So, how many actual battles directly disturbed American living?  This means that even if women and children sent their fathers, husbands, brothers, and lovers off to battle, those that stayed behind didn't feel the effects of war the way those in Germany or Japan did. 
       Back then, those wars were at the center of life.  Especially as radio and video footage from the front found its way in the living rooms of people all across the nation.  Although far from the fighting, both showed the reality of war, the so called glory of men killing other men.  The American youth these days don't seem to know much about war.  Perhaps this is our parents' and grandparents' way of protecting our fragile minds.  But that breeds complacency, which, dear friends, is the whole problem.  
     Imagine: the battle-weary soldier returns home to his wife and his home.  The war is over and he vows that his children will never have to witness what he did;they will never know such horrors.  They will grow up without food rations,and by george if they want cake for desert everyday of the week, they'll have it!  They will have what war took from him.  He buys his daughter lots of dolls, and then dresses and ribbons to hold back her pretty curls from her sweet, dimpled face.  His boy receives all sorts of action figures, and those dime westerns about cowboys and roping steers-you know, a proper  boyhood.  The soldier has a nice job at some plant or other, very stable.  He is proud of his wages, proud of his lovely wife, his beautiful children.  He is proud that they are unblemished from that which left him...somehow lacking.  The THING that wakes him in the middle of the night, sweating and trembling.  Eventually, his beautiful children  have beautiful children of their own, and the new parents shower them with gifts, with opportunity.  The soldier's grandchildren do not understand war.  How can they?  They grow up as the elite privileged.  The wars that rage even now...what do they care? The newest model of the iphone just came out.  And for heaven's sake, did you see what Sarah posted on Twitter!? And did you see what Jake said?? #craycray
     Are you starting to see the problem? The period of prosperity after the World Wars and after the fall of Russian Communism in 1989 in the US made people feel secure enough to neglect teaching this crucial bit of history to their children.  The collective memory of America is beginning the fail us, and will continue to decline if we, the youth, continue to  remain ignorant.  How many protests do you see today? We have no flower children, or hippies...just hipsters (who are all "different" in the same way, might I add).  Complacency is ruining us all.  
     Sometimes people tell me I'm rather smart.  After I get over being flattered, I realize that I'm not especially so.  It just happens that I'm pretty well read, compared to a lot of my peers. I used to read all the time, all sorts of things.  I did not discriminate between novels, poetry, histories, fiction, nonfiction... After all, it takes a genius to formulate an original thought without being exposed to the original thoughts of others first.  And how much geniuses walk amongst us these days? The thing is, not a lot of Americans are as well read as say, Europeans.  We aren't as cultured, as refined (again, a ridiculously exaggerated statement) as they are.  They know it, they all say so but it's not clear if they realize that the culprit is complacency.  What need have we, in a time of peace and the Kardashians, to know the world? 
     Ugh. I could go on and on, but I think I'll save it for later.  Hopefully organized into a more cohesive argument, anyhow.



Disclaimer: I might not know what I'm talking about.

"Someone told me there's a girl out there/with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair"
-Led Zeppelin