ClydeStyle

Tag: taking things personal

  • Do you seriously care about causes?

    One of the great things about living in America is the freedom to protest. This government claims it will defend your right to do just that. I have to say “claims” because I still have the images of the protests during the Civil rights movement where water and dogs were used on peaceful protesters. Also, within the last 5 years with the Black Lives Matter movement and how brutal the police were to them.

    But my point is that causes are connected. It’s almost impossible to just protest one thing because chances are there are several issues within the cause you want to champion.

    Then, we tend to fail in the areas most important with causes — our solutions suck!

    For example, once upon a time teen pregnancy was shameful and the idea that you may get pregnant was a good deterrent for abstinence. Our country at that time was conservative and had a much better observance and reference for the word of God. There were government agencies that controlled what was acceptable over the airwaves and we made sure that what kids could see and learn in media would be something beneficial to their development.

    There were definitely protests regarding unwanted pregnancies and then adoption was the main source of handling them. Then some where the pregnancy dynamic became worse and some women (mostly poor and disenfranchised) sought their own methods of handling the problem (sometimes with a coat hanger of all things). Then Congress sought to solve this issue and put a bandaid on our unwanted baby problem and abortion was legalized. If you can’t beat them, join them philosophy.

    Now before abortion protests started, did we not see the deterioration of the American family? Did we miss how sex was overused to sell everything? Where were the protests for these because this is still happening today.

    We are depleting our resources, making animals that don’t belong to us extinct and using persevatives and additives in our foods that are slowly killing us. What’s our big cause again??

    The largest drug in America is not opiods, it’s sugar. Sugar is responsible for more degenerative diseases then anything else. Where are the protests?? Of all the “walks”, “races”, and “marathons” for cures, we haven’t cured a thing. Our health care system makes the majority of it’s money treating us instead of curing us and their prices are astronomical.

    Is it possible to have a cause of abortion, but not murder? Aren’t they the same thing. There are Christians in this country who are quick to protest abortion but won’t even speak of an unarmed Black man being murdered by police. We protest fur coats, but could care less about the treatment of pigs, chickens and cows.

    We would do well to check our causes so that when we protest (and I believe we should) we can be more productive with our solutions and actually make life easier for others. And above all else, we must avoid hypocrisy!

  • A network of togetherness

    There is something to be said for being together. Our closeness or unity or connection to another person or group of folks quenches the thirsty we have for belonging. As humans we need to be a part of something — good or bad we need to belong. We yearn for inclusion and to be entangled with other people.

    Togetherness is defined as a state or feeling of closeness and happiness among people who are together as friends, family members, etc. Some have several groups they associate with. In these groups you should find all you need to balance your life such as encouragement, support, wisdom, intimacy, family, networking and entertainment.

    Togetherness is so important that we should have a societal rule that everyone must be a part of a crew. You choose your own crew but your Togetherness will also be charged for trouble you get in. That alone would make us choose our friends more closely and truly be our brothers keeper!

    Togetherness greatly helps with mental health issues and it single handedly lowers suicide rates. In fact, overall crime goes down in areas where people cluster together in unity. Many foreigners to this country take their togetherness to a foreign land and excel! They live in close quarters together for a time to save money and get ahead. So two families may move together and live together here. All able-bodied individuals work and the money made is shared with the cluster. Each family helps the other get ahead and they slowly bring in more families as others advance.

    This just proves that we are better together. We were created to be a part of a pair that would have the ability to increase it’s nunber and the. They would all work together and look out for each other. We also call this a family!

    I remember the crew I had in junior high, high school and college. Then I had a different group of professionals when I entered the workforce. As far back as I can recall, I have never existed without a crew. And all of my groups were successful. How about you my friends? Do you have a crew? Do you support your crew? Is your group successful? Can you rely on them? These are very important questions if you plan to get by with a little help from your friends!

  • Forever chasing nothing

    Forever chasing nothing

    As a nation, we pride ourselves as being an advanced culture with highly intelligent people and as having the best of everything — pound for pound — the world has to offer. Sadly, I struggle to find anything we do as signficant to mankind.

    Now this is not a bash America blog! I used to say I love America but like many I could not tell you why. It was my only frame of reference so I loved what I knew. I assumed that people in government were looking out for the little man — looking out as defined as making laws and provisions for the little man to grow and develop into something more, not throw him a bone and keep him dumb.

    There was a study done in the 90s with 21k people across 7 nations to test there literacy. The study covered more than 30 tasks over a 45 minute span. The test takers were between the ages of 16 to 25 and the specific items on the test dealt with reading comprehension, following directions, reading maps, completing job applications etc. — things you would need to function and thrive in every day life. The results were astonishing (see table below). There were level grades from 1 to 5 where a 4 or 5 was pretty high functioning and of course a 1 was struggling. Sweden’s population of that age group were the brightest with more than 40 percent functioning at the highest levels. Only 18 percent of Americans at that age range preformed as well as the Swedes.

    What does that mean you ask? Well other than the obvious, it seems that the study has also proven that higher functioning was related to higher wages. When France talks about job creation and the US talks about it, those are two totally different conversations. France is only talking about a living wage where you can take care of a family with a modest living. In the US, we say a job is a job — better than not having one.

    Today we are in a literacy crisis. No one should be surprised about this but I don’t think we understand the effects.

     

    • More than 30 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or complete basic math above a third-grade level. —  Proliteracy
    • Children whose parents have low literacy levels have a 72 percent chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. These children are more likely to get poor grades, display behavioral problems, have high absentee rates, repeat school years, or drop out. — National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
    • 75 percent of state prison inmates did not complete high school or can be classified as low literate. — Rand Report: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education
    • Low literacy is said to be connected to over $230 billion a year in health care costs because almost half of Americans cannot read well enough to comprehend health information, incurring higher costs. — American Journal of Public Health

    Our problem: Politics. We constantly elect people who can not relate to the problems of the average American and they could care less about those problems. It doesn’t even matter what political party you belong to — both parties have failed the little man.

    It seems that we have disfellowshipped the word demand because we don’t demand anything — nothing of ourselves and nothing from those who rule the world. So we sit and take it — you live your life paycheck to paycheck and die in a sea of debt. In our country they tell you that you have the right to pursue happiness, they just forgot to tell you it was nearly impossible to catch.

  • Whose team is it anyway???

    Whose team is it anyway???

    You ever been on a team with less than faithful team members?

    Then you have members that challenge every direction you try to take the group and the really sad part is they never have an alternative and all it seems they want to do is veto your direction.

    Clearly the group is not on the same page and can’t be because some have already decided that they don’t like you. So that means anything you like, they hate. Anything you think is good, they think it’s bad.

    If we could freeze time in place we could go backwards and start looking at where things went wrong. Where did the misunderstanding begin? What made teammates keep records of wrongdoing or maintain a level of unforgiveness? When did the overall mission of the team get scrapped for personal reasons?

    Personal reasons. Oh what a sense of entitlement it takes for one persons view to go before or ahead of the mass group.

    Personal vendettas. Why in the world would someone get so entangled with revenge that you can’t see the bigger picture?

    You have to ask yourself would you rather see something destroyed before you will allow someone else to get credit? Would you choose to tear up something just because you can?

    Would you be petty enough to destroy the lives of many to pay back a few?

    Ok. I’m done asking questions but the leadership qualities were definitely not handed out to everyone and many are in positions of leadership who don’t belong. There is no speaking the truth in love nor forgetting the past to move on to a better future.

    A bad seed in a group is like mold on fruit — it reaches a point where it can not come back from mold so it must be cut off. So instead of wondering if you have the knowledge to be a great leader, ask yourself do you have the gall to cut away the mold for the sake of the fruit. Or will you just leave the whole thing and allow it to rot the whole thing??