Lynch Pen : This age stays too busy to be informed
Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008
It is always delightful to spend time with family and even more pleasurable when you don't have the opportunity to visit with them regularly. My time in Wisconsin was my first spent there in over two years and it is amazing to see how a 31-month-old grandson has grown from a baby in his mother's arms to a classic example of perpetual motion. Being the youngest child with three older siblings, he has a near adolescent vocabulary and chatters non-stop to display it. If you have family, particularly grandchildren, close enough to see regularly you probably miss the dramatic change (yes, even shock ) of a child which frequent pictures cannot quite capture.
We take growth and its dramatic change to the landscape for granted here in northwest Arkansas, but we certainly don't have an exclusive market. Growth in the greater Milwaukee area has turned rural marshes and farms alike into mini-estates. The evidence of financial success, or the size of the homes and their lots, seemed to stretch out to distances that must impact some commuter's wallets. Gas was in excess of $ 4 per gallon and the new homes seem to all possess three or four garages. We may be economically fortunate in our area, but we are not alone.
Since I chose to drive, I also witnessed much of the excessive rains that have flooded Midwestern corn fields. What effect the floods will have on the future price of corn is uncertain, but I'm sure many of the affected farmers would like to see the fields dry enough to go back to plowing. In Wisconsin, I passed a sod farm several times that was just starting to turn from a very large "lake "to a visible land with small low spots of water standing in shallow ponds.
It is nice to get away, but it is certainly "good to be back home again. "As you can guess, there had to be some time devoted to political topics during my visit and one thing was fairly evident. The same problem exists for my sons as that which I experienced when I was their ages. There is very little time to devote to the actual "study"of the political environment. When children are active (their children, my grandchildren ) in sports, school, music lessons, church activities, etc., there isn't a lot of time for political involvement unless one is a career politician oneself. The situation makes me acutely aware of how dramatically the nation's political direction can change in one generation because of this problem. We generally use the term "apathy"to explain the lack of involvement, but after spending this time with the two families, I believe the term "very busy"more appropriately fits. Observing the lifestyles of two sons in the age bracket of 40 to 50 years first-hand was a shock back to my own activities at that age. It prompted a recognition that household economics demand a serious dedication to work, and a reminder of the need for those of us in the "retired"category to devote some serious efforts to protect our value systems on the next generation's behalf. I don't think it is a lack of interest in politics as much as it is just too many other things taking precedence since they are requiring time right now. Part of the problem may be the priorities we establish, but the choices seem overwhelming for families today.
There isn't much doubt that communications allow this generation in the workforce to accomplish more in the same amount of time than I did in my working years. They also travel more, and far greater distances, than most of us in my generation. In May, my eldest son spent three weeks in China, on college-related travel, and relied on his laptop for world news through various international sources. In June, his wife traveled to China, Singapore and Taiwan on business with another college that employs her. My youngest son works in advertising and travels to clients all over the United States which requires some serious schedule juggling of one's home life to accommodate those activities.
None of this was actual news. It was rather a wake-up call to me regarding my views of why our nation is no longer a true world leader in the eyes of so much of the world. When we are too busy, and in many ways too selfish, to involve ourselves in who is governing us and why we elected them in the first place, we are at the mercy of the political process. And, as surely as the statement that "nature abhors a vacuum"is true, given an opportunity, some politicians will take advantage of the voters' conditions to assume control for their own self-interest. It happened in my generation in politics, in the business community as management and the unions sought labor peace and in many ways in the churches as we have witnessed ordination of homosexuals and sexual abuse of children within the clergy.
The two weeks of encounters with my sons and their families, as well as seeing friends of my generation was thought provoking and a wakeup call to stay abreast of the nation's presidential election for the future's sake... ours and theirs.
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