Why We Hate Us

Decency : proper observance of the requirements of modesty, good taste, respectability.

Courtesy: gracious politeness, considerate toward others, well-mannered.

Dick Myers, a journalist with National Public Radio, has a new book out called Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. I happened to catch the interview this week and I am so relieved. I thought it was just me being nostalgic for the days when we did not lock our front door and I left my coat, along with other students' letter jackets, leather coats, and book bags, on a communal coat rack at Muskogee's Central High School. And nothing was ever stolen. Ever.

Myers, who gets tons of emails each week from readers of his NPR column Against the Grain, has ample fodder for his research into discontent. Complaints range from corporations who profess to care about us while they steal our retirement funds or rampant rudeness and vulgarity among all age groups to uncontrolled me-ism. The complaints seem to be consistent across the racial, age, and socio-economic spectrums. People hate what our society has become.

According to Myers the solution to the disillusion is simple - a return to some of the values that pre-date the 1960's. Myers claims the '60's "do your own thing" philosophy transmogrified into unchecked narcissism. This is an ugly condemnation of the former youth culture members, today's moms and dads or even grandmas and grandpas. But, I've gotta say, who couldn't see it coming?

When I returned to Muskogee High School after college and began teaching, a marked change had taken place in the teenagers. They wanted to know what it was like to have lived through the hippie era, and only a period of four years had passed between the time I graduated from MHS and the time I returned. I'm pretty sure they were in middle school when I left, and so, should have their own memories of so-called "hippies."

But not only that, I could see right away, in fact had many conversations with the students about this, that the Baby Boomer generation differed in one drastic way: we had been raised with 1950's values, and even tho' we may have rebelled, deep inside we knew right from wrong, good from bad, rude behavior from good manners. It was blatantly obvious even 30 years ago.

I would like to return to some of the values of the 1960's, as Myers suggests, but not all of them. I can't say that I would like for all moms to stay home or only men to be doctors. I can't say I would like for girls to have to wear dresses only to school, the way they did when I was a sophomore, or for only men to have the right to vote. And, I don't want to be relegated to my rocking chair at 63, the way the "elderly" used to be.

But I can say that no matter what, I would like for people to be respectful of each other. I can say that no matter what, I would like for people to do the right thing, whether they're rich or poor, young or old, black or white. I can say that no matter what, I would like to see us return to a more graceful state, because I've never understood how thinking people can be given so much and abuse it so greatly. Society cannot function well without these values.

Today's teenagers are tomorrow's adults. They stand poised to inherit this self-centered, ungrateful society we have created. It is up to us to behave as adults and give them the tools necessary to navigate through life by modeling respect for others before something happens that forces us to our knees, makes us abondon out wanton ways.

As Myers says, "There's a place and purpose for public aggression, drunkenness and lewdness...Certainly the Romans enjoyed it in their decline."