"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 2 October 2015

WITH DUE RESPECT


"Social media is a revolution unlike any other. The swell continues. The elite certainly feel the chill.
As they should. They do not easily surrender advantage. They never have. It's so much more comfortable to keep things as they are."
Who are these elite and what are they being asked to surrender?
It's wonderful how bright your young grandchildren appear. But what are they going to do by way of honest toil when it comes down to creating a life with its necessities such as food, clothing, housing? It's unlikely their familiarity with Facebook and Twitter is going to sustain them.
Evelyn, you are out to sea on this one, completely and utterly, in a leaking boat with nary a paddle or oar.
**********************************

With respect and appreciation for the comment, you are missing my point. 

My observation is about children in general. They are not smarter than they have always been. Simply stated, they have an additional learning tool to hand. The tiger is out of the box.

My grandmother died when I was fifteen years old. My grandfather, six years later. Except for my first seven years,I grew up in their home. They were both born in the mid-eighteen hundreds. 

My mother was born in 1902. I was born in 1928. My first child  in 1949. I had seven,the last born mid sixties. I have eighteen grandchildren, and seven great-grand-children. 

Of the lives of children, generations before and after mine, I know whereof I speak.  

As a boy my grandfather walked miles to Sunday Mass in  bare feet with  boots hanging around his neck by the laces. To save leather. So the boots could be passed down through the family. 

Mass was celebrated  once a month in The King's Arms by an itinerant priest.There was no church.The pub is still there. 

Employment opportunity for young women was domestic service around the clock for little more than room and board.   My grandfather's proposal to my grandmother was the option to make a  home together.

It was the practice to buy a plot in the cemetery at the time of marriage. No-one expected to raise all of their children. There was no birth control. Childhood infectious diseases were rampant. 

They lost two of their ten. Wee Jeannie, their third child, not even a toddler, died in her mother's arms in a fit of whooping cough. 

James, their first born, on a blood soaked beach at the Dardanelles in Turkey, His twenty-two year old body ripped to shreds with machine gunfire, the newest weapon of war.

His remains are there still. 

I will not bore you with all I know of theIr lives.  Suffice to say, they could never have imagined the  change within two generations let alone six. 

So listen when I tell you. We have no idea how today's children might influence their own lives and world affairs with the World Wide Web.

There already have been changes. For example, jobs shipped overseas for lower costs  and greater profit. Recently a Royal Bank employee gave an account on social media of how his job was shipped to India  and he was obliged to train his replacement. The story went viral. Clients closed accounts and the Bank had to recant, apologize and try to get lost clientele back. Whether successful we do not know. Nor do we know if they resumed the practice of shipping jobs overseas .

What we have learned is the power of social media. The revolution is twenty years old. 

A Toronto police officer is currently on trial for murder of a disturbed youth on an empty bus.

Apparently ten officers were present. The youth was a danger to no-one. He was shot ten times by one and his lifeless body tasered by other officers. 

A passerby with a cell phone, going home from a pleasant dinner with his family, captured the horrifying event on video.  

Do we think the police officer with ten others doing nothing to stop him, would be facing murder charges without photographic evidence ?  I do not. 

Do I believe he will be found guilty of the crime on the basis of  evidence ?  I have no such confidence. 

Do I think all decent self-respecting officers have the same brutal sadistic inclinations? I do not. 

But I do believe sadistic people have power over our lives and regularly abuse their authority.

They are the entitled. ..those  who lust for power and want nothing to change.They are not solitary. 
 
Social media will change the social order. It already has. And so it should. It should continue to do so though It may not be  orderly,smooth,even, comfortable or particularly enjoyable. 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone else find it funny that the (often-accused) 'stuck in the past' Ms Buck is extolling the wonders of the modern world?

Anonymous said...

Sometimes the social media has a positive impact. Other times the exact opposite effect.
Crowd psychology and mob behaviour has always been a problem and now the entire thing is generated by the rapid
exchange of information, often faulty information.
No one can predict how our offspring will turn out but it certainly is a scary place that they are inheriting. They have
only to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anonymous said...

No. Not at all. I don't find her stuck in the past at all. Ms. Buck has many stories from the past. Stories that include lessons. Lessons that could and should be used in todays "modern" world. Yet people continue to discard these lessons like old wives tales.
And continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Anonymous said...

It's really very complicated in this busy life to listen news on TV, thus I simply use the web
for that purpose, and obtain the hottest news.

My web site ... Xtreme Antler Reviews

Anonymous said...

That street car shooting is sure taking its time getting to court. I cannot see how it could be that complicated
but then I am not an expert.

Anonymous said...

In the States, the warring factions are completely rigid. One can be attacked for being either too moderate or too extreme.
We are fortunate to have enough parties to soften effects like that.

Anonymous said...


Our maples and our birches and our oaks and our elms are now exploding in a riot of colour as they prepare to wish another year adieu. They are preparing for that long sleep that will grip the land in a harsh blanket of frost and snow. But with the sun's warm rays in the spring new life will issue forth with the fresh green that will gladden our hearts.

Our lives are not like the seasons of the trees. We are born, we live and then are no more, no fresh green.

Sometimes I wish I was a tree, standing proudly on the shore of a northern lake, listening to the haunting call of the loons and the mournful howl of wolves.

Anonymous said...

16:00
Nothing about you is " funny"
You are like a guest who demands your host re-arrange the furniture to better suit YOU

KA-NON said...

Ummm, @07:18, I am pretty sure that 16:00's comment was supportive. You know, pointing out the irony in what Evelyn is often criticized for by her detractors.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Evelyn. I do love it when you write like that.

Anonymous said...

KA-NON
You could be right. If so, I am sorry for swinging at a friendly.

Anonymous said...

Ummm, you're wrong, KA-NON, but the deliberate wording did get the comment published. *winks*

Anonymous said...

Re: Technology and Kids of today

I spoke with someone over the weekend that was telling me about the cell phone bill that he had. Multiple phones on the account and one of them is for their late-teens age child. Curious to see what the usage of the phones were, he downloaded the detailed event log from the provider. The text messages for the child's phone if printed from Excel would have created a document 96 pages long - for one month! Given each page hold about 35 events, that is over 3300 events or over 100 per day. So, while the youth embrace the technology, they certainly don't have a grasp of how to effectively communicate.

Wouldn't it be nice if someone could invent a device that allowed you to press some buttons and speak to someone through the device, no matter where they were?

Anonymous said...

@ 8:04
That person needs only to put the kid on a plan that limits such nonsense. Phone stays in the kitchen overnight. It doesn't
take long for the lesson to be learned. No one wants a motor-mouth in the family anyhow.

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