Random Thoughts

These Times

‘’Life expectancy has increased dramatically; it is another matter that old people are finding more reasons for dying than for living. “

“In old age, suffering and sorrow becomes a long season.”

The Principal of an American school sent the following letter to his teachers;
Dear teachers,

I am the survivor of a concentration camp; my eyes saw what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned Engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, women and children shot by college graduates. So I am suspicious of education. My request is; Help your students to become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths and educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
 
Justice, morality, Society, social obligations—blind to all these --- a horde of parents drives down a whole generation.

The paradox of our times in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter temples, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy less.
 
We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less solutions and still less wisdom; more medicines, but less wellness.
 
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love seldom, and hate too. We have learnt how to make a living but not a life; we have added years to life, not life to years. We have been all the way to moon and come back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
 
We have conquered outer space, but not inner space; we have split the atom, but not our prejudice, we have higher incomes but lower morals; we‘ve become long on quantity, but short in quality.

These are times of tall men, and short character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food but less nutrition.

These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.

The young people of today are not quite enthused by ideological swings that promise to change the world. One can feel sorry for them. They are old right from the start. They take one day at a time, maturely weighing their options in their quest for more materialistic goals. What the young people of today aspire is more of the same—more money, more consumer items, more of the good things of life as they know them to be. It is not a qualitative change they are looking forward to but quantitative increments in their life styles.
 
Today, in the modern family day-to-day practical life there are more conflicts and little warmth, little trust, and very little mutual regard amongst its members. Children and the old feel isolated, neglected. Each one lives for himself. There is no time for the other. In the community life the culture of occasional get-together, of one standing up for the other has disappeared. A callous self-centeredness has taken the place of mutual concern and compassion.

 

03-Jun-2011

More by :  Ganganand Jha

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