"CiviliZed?" by Jamie Berk

In a world full of people making their own trends and their own ways, it’s hard to not be rude and disrespectful. Our great Country is no longer ewwhat it once was due to our moral values being shambled almost beyond recognition. We as an American civilization go through daily life wanting to find the easiest and shortest route to the end of the day. Even though it’s of our own making, it’s not entirely our fault. Through history we’ve strived as a people to find the simplest ways to get through our daily tasks. With new iPhones and Droids taking the world by storm its easier every day to avoid human contact and not even notice it. We have the internet, which led to most newspaper companies going under based on the simple concept of making life easier and faster. Just as a people we have come to not respect our fellow man because we’d rather make our own lives flow more smoothly when it’s true that what goes around comes right back around.

What happened to the simple days, when we could leave our doors unlocked and not even have the concern as to it being locked? Times when we didn’t have to worry about something as far as our identity being stolen, cars and homes being broken into or just being blatantly disrespected on a daily basis. The worst part is that now a day people don’t even realize how rude they’re really being by texting you from across the room or messaging you on Facebook when a simple conversation would be just as easy. What happened to when we sat down every morning and read our newspapers, we got our information from reading instead of it being “streamed” into our minds. Instead of instant messaging or texting each other, why not sit down and have a good talk? This alone is without a doubt the greatest problem to manifest itself into our society. We’d rather let an emotionless message speak for us, what happen to the good old days?

There are simply too many afflictions in our world and as hard as it may be to face, re-vamping our values may be too late. The truth is with all the technology we’ve grown accustomed to our “simple lives” are nowhere near “simple” by any means. Everyone has a problem but no one is willing to actually stand up straight. It would seem we have become fearful of one another, rather than embracing our brother we’d rather push them out of the way. Everyone is willing to point a finger but never at ourselves. The fact is our own brainchildren have become our downfall. We have worked so hard to make life the way it is today, so why change now. We have become comfortable with the way we live so why change, why go through the strenuous chore of making the world a better place when its “okay the way it is, why mend what’s not broken?”

The question is and will remain “is it too late for us to fix this?” until as a people we strive for better nothing positive will come. We know as American people that until something gets started nothing can be finished. Considering we are a country based on the beliefs of being the best and willing to share our greatness with whoever is going to work for it to be theirs as well, why aren’t we? We have become a people of careless, egotistic and vanity driven values. It seems to be more about what the next person thinks of you than what you think of yourself now a days and at the rate we’re headed it may too late to steer a stray. The simple concept of change has become so blurred because we would rather do better than the next guy rather than just do the best for ourselves. When we pride ourselves on how we look rather than how we act, nothing but negativity will result. Even though our economy is “rebounding” and we remain one of if not the top nation in the world, I ask, “Are we civilized?”