IN THE 1960s, many of us saw the materialistic lifestyle being lived by our parents and knew it was bad – there was a common theme of “keeping the outside of the cup clean” so that everyone thought you and your family were perfect . . . and we knew that was not possible, it was fake, it was hypocrisy!

We wanted to change that world – we wanted to tear down that fake image and live as “real” people and we knew that the only way to do that was with love, unconditional love for everybody.

We MADE A MISTAKE . . . we thought we had to destroy everything so we could build our world as it should be, you know, throw the baby out with the dirty water.

Without getting into the deeper problems with human nature, the government introduced LSD into protestor groups to see if it would work as a truth drug, and the walk toward a “better world” was derailed and many were pulled away from their original mission by drugs and the lifestyle choices that naturally follow.

SO INSTEAD OF BUILDING, we destroyed much of the undergirding of society, the rules governing behavior, and traded unconditional love for “free” love which meant physical expression with no commitment, lust without relationship, and without investment, we cheapened the foundation of family and set ourselves up for self-centered indulgence “justified” because we were being “real” and not fake like our parents.

In my opinion, our destroying of standards is evidenced in movies like “Grease” where a female comes to a high school as a “goody-two shoes” and is deemed successful when she accepts and becomes like the rebellious teens around her. The message is pretty clear . . . but mixed in reality. Accepting those around her that were different from her was good, but adopting their disregard for rules and their irresponsible lifestyle choices as her own just so she could be accepted as a part of the group was not good—peer pressure made “bad” good.

Our CORE VALUES are no longer clear, they are mixed and our human nature is used against us to destroy our world as we are “sold” a world that will cater to us (or so we are told) and all the “unfairness” in our lives will be “made right”! WE will get everything WE want . . . “victims unite” and throw out everything that supports the past we see as treating us wrong and redefines anything that makes a profit as “good business,” even if it is unethical or harms others!

WE MUST HEED THE CALL
• to higher standards, shared values
• to do unto others as we would have them do unto us,
• to hold to the strength that comes from working together,
• to a focus on building, fixing flaws, and not on tearing down or destroying,
• to valuing all human life,
• to protecting our world, not just our money,
• to helping each other when a storm hits and threatens any of us,
• to sharing what we have so we can all survive
                    SELF vs COMMON GOOD
               choose:  every man for himself OR . . .