Russ Pitts said:
Editor's Note: No More Space Stations
The very drive that sent humans into space has, ironically, created a world in which space travel is no longer remarkable - but Russ Pitts wants his space stations, just the same.
Read Full Article
It does break the heart how flimsy the aspirations of our children are. I teach middle school, so I can corroborate what that study found. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, kids want to be rich and famous. Professional athletes, singers (rappers)... even the "nerds" want to be video game designers or computer animators. "Everyone wants to get into the act," so to speak.
I, too, remember a time when kids based their dreams on how "cool" a job looked, rather than on how much money or fame it commanded. Firefighters, policemen, teachers, important jobs. And if you look at it, it's not that different now--kids wanted (and still want) to be
the things they look up to the most.
In the history of forever, kids haven't changed a single bit. They still learn the same way, try the same things, and generally function in an identical way as caveman toddlers once did. Kids haven't changed.
Parents have changed.
Culture has changed. We're so obsessed with entertainment, and it colors our entire culture. The kids growing up in that culture learn that obsession earlier and earlier each generation. All play and no work makes the future for our kids very hollow.
The only thing that's going to get the result you're looking for is a major change of culture. We have to break the cycle: People demand to be entertained, the market provides, the people consume, the market learns what sells best and saturates the market with it, and the people's tastes become increasingly superficial to match... and still they demand to be entertained. It's a chicken-egg standoff, and I'm not sure who has to move first or how. Will people start demanding more from their entertainment in a culture that has taught them that sit-and-consume
is worthwhile entertainment? Will the media suddenly abandon the profitable method of pushing entertainment distilled down to the lowest common denominator? Will celebrities finally decide they're tired of being famous
for being famous?
Any movement of this sort has to come from the
people... but the people are held entranced by mass media, robbed of the knowledge of their power to change it. If we're to have any hope, the change has to start with the
kids, as cliché as that sounds. But how? They spend less than 12% of their lives in school (and that includes bathroom time). They spend more time sleeping than that. The parents are, by and large, products of the very system we're hoping to shake up, so they're not much help
en masse.
(It's sad when the best-working model for how to effectively change a culture from the ground up comes from the worst human being on record. Hitler knew full well, you take the kids
out of the current culture, and you have
tabula rasa. You can craft a new culture (for good or ill) and plant those seeds firmly. And then, of course, you can use the media to keep it entrenched for as long as you please.)
As a culture, we're losing our imagination. Anything that involves imagination is labelled childish, and we shun it. As a result, kids (who want more than anything to be like adults) are dropping it, too. Fame and money are the golden calves, and anything else is cast aside as stupid and useless. The more generations that pass, the harder it will be for us to ignite any sort of imagination--the media will just turn it into a product, and the people will demand to be entertained.
(Pro Tip: Rome had to
fall. That might just be what it takes.)
