To the Editor:
We have now entered a new year. The last two were unlike any this nation has ever known.
When I was a young man, I looked to the future with great expectation. I had many plans and great ambitions. My whole life was before me. Little if anything was beyond my grasp. After all, I was born and raised in the land of opportunity! Anyone could achieve the American dream!
Today, as I approach 64, now retired, a father and grandfather, I realize that my grandchildren are growing up in a much different nation and world than I grew up in.
While mankind has made great achievements in technology, medicine, and so on, we have paid a great price along the way. With all these great accomplishments, technology, and convenience, we have lost, or should I say, sacrificed our humanity!
We have seemingly eliminated the intra-personal interactions and acts of human kindness that made us a community and society. There is a lot more to community than a group of people living in close proximity. There is a lot more to society than what we have around us today.
Community and society require people interacting, discussing, agreeing, and dissenting. More than anything, it requires people experiencing one another!
Today, the mom-and-pop shop, where the owner/operator knew his customers by name, has been replaced by Walmart or Amazon, where all you are is a credit card number! If you go into some areas, you don’t even interact with a cashier at the checkout. The cashier is a machine where you do everything yourself.
When was the last time you got gas in your car and had the attendant ask if you wanted your oil checked? How many businesses do you know that have closed because they could no longer compete with the mega-corporations such as Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, etc.? Yes, these places do bring convenience, but what have we lost along the way to gain that bit of convenience?
We have dehumanized the human being. We have eliminated the need for each other and replaced it with technology.
When I was young, we played outside as long as weather and daylight permitted. Everyone in the neighborhood knew each other, each other’s parents, and each other’s children. If we didn’t know what to do, we invented something. We went camping in the woods around our homes. We played ball, we rode bikes and we learned to do things because our parents taught us!
My mother used to say, “You may not always have someone to do things for you, so you need to learn how to do it yourself.” Well, by the time I was 13, I could put a full dinner on the table, sew my torn clothes, hem up a new pair of pants and iron them, as well. I learned very early that if I wanted something, I needed to earn the money to buy it. It wasn’t handed to me!
Yes, things are a lot different today. Things change! Sadly, not all change is good.
I have to ask the question: Are we certain this is where we want to go? What will come in future years? Do we realize what we are doing to our children and their children?
Yes, some progress is good. Some progress is shooting us in the foot! A wise man once said, “Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it!”
Are we building a utopia or a dystopia? I would rather live in the world I knew than in the one I see coming!
– BERTRAM HALBRUNER
Woodbine
