Eric Blumrich wrote an interesting essay on 'Politically correct', it inspired me to toss my own opinions into the hat.  I am neither as eloquent nor as well educated as Eric, but I shall do my best... All through high school I remember that people were put into categories, and oddly one way to be 'in' was to claim that you weren't one of them.  These self-proclaimed individualists wore the same clothes as everyone else, used the same catch phrases, and liked the same things as the people they claimed to want no part of.  their individuality went as far as "I want to be different, just like everybody else". Now that we are adults the same thing  goes on -- but at a much larger scale.  People "Go against society" by wholeheartedly accepting the beliefs it feeds them without much thought.  The thing that makes this so dangerous is that, as adults, our decisions have a far deeper impact than they did when we were children.  We are tricked into believing that we are thinking our opinions when in fact they are simply given to us, and encouraged by verbal pats on the back whenever we spout some happy little bit of rehortic. "Society" sets up a government, makes laws, and gives us guidelines in which to live by.  Our "go against the flow" friends tell us that government as a whole is bad and doesn't matter, most laws are stupid (usually just the ones that we don't like) and a concept like 'ultimate morality' was something set up by a bunch of stuffy pilgrims who just liked repressing us, and that true morality is different. The result is that we don't pay attention to our government, we just complain when tax time comes around and grump when election coverage eats into TV time.  Laws are stretched and tested or bent to fit someone's twisted needs, and morality becomes a couple matter of "don't make waves". With regards to the  government, I remember watching the impeachment hearings on TV and commenting to my friends about it.  The common response was "I don't care" or "I'm bored with it".  All of the problems within it are blamed on whatever branch we don't favor... even though it was our votes that put them in there to begin with.  The more we ignore the government, the more it will slip out of our control.  If all you can contribute is apathy, you should expect nothing  less when you need something from the government or when something you care for is taken from you by it. Laws are thrown in with the word 'authority', and society preaches to its flock that authority is bad.  We see the things that we can't have because of laws or can't do and raise a fuss, just like a child who's been told he can't have a new toy by his mother.  Nobody bothers to think that there might be a  reason for laws we don't like, or that a tantrum isn't the best way to deal with them. The morality issue scares me more than anything because it affects society the most.  It is considered to be moral to let a man deny life support to himself should he ever be in a situation where machines would be the only thing keeping him alive.  Yet left unchecked that can so easily slip into something more... as with Kevorkian, a dying man should be allowed to kill himself so that he will go quickly without suffering or pain.  Now bump that up again... a man with an incurable disease who will die in a few years would rather go in the prime of his life instead of allowing himself to become sick.  Another small nudge, a woman is dying of cancer and her hospital decides to 'let her go painlessly' against her own wishes,  claiming that she doesn't really know what's good for her and if she were in her right mind, she'd have made the 'right' choice (I didn't make this example up, kiddies.  Stuff like this is happening RIGHT NOW in Holland.).  Another bump... a man is depressed and wants to kill himself, why deny him the right?  Another... a family can't support their son, and there's too many people in the world already; the hospitals will do it quickly and painlessly so what harm is there?   You may consider my latter example to be a bit extreme, but it makes the point. We are afraid to speak up because doing so might isolate us from the precious flock.  We would much rather claim to accept everything and believe in nothing than to embrace the belief that there is a WRONG and a RIGHT.  It goes against society to tell someone that they are wrong... so our morals are stripped from us little by little because we do not stand up for them. I have explained the 'what'... but now I'd like to go into 'how' and 'why'... Firstly, America is LAZY.  We have short attention spans, we don't have to work very hard, and we've never had to fight to get what we want.  We're apathetic, lazy, and spoiled.  We are content to let others do our  thinking and believing for us because we are comfortable with how things are.  The end result is a bunch of people who are content to pick their noses and spout 'noble sounding' metaphors that are meaningless but don't cause conflict.  They are people who bend instead of fight and people who don't care what other people do because it does not directly affect them... until it's too late. To change this would mean we would have to pull our heads out of Sesame Street and look at the world around us.  It would mean thinking for ourselves and arguing.  It would mean believing in something and in doing such denying something else.  It would mean chucking the view of "Live and let live, don't make waves, everyone is right" and standing your ground when your views are questioned.  It would mean taking insults, being laughed at and ridiculed... and HURT by the fluffy 'accept everything' crowd.  We would have to spend less time watching TV and more time hunting for the truth.  We would have to seek a second opinion.  American journalism is America fixated, you can learn more by looking at what other people say about us instead.  Check facts, gather opinions, and accept what we learn even if we don't like it. Being right won't win you every argument, and it might make you look like a monster or a Neanderthal in the eyes of society.  But if you form your views because you want society to like you and agree with you all the time... well... why the hell are you reading this?  Go away and watch Star Trek. Click here to go back