At this season of cheer and giving, our collective hearts come together to find the general good in humankind. Well, that is the way that I wish it was. The more experienced I become, I begin to see the world with clearer vision. People can be really terrible to each other when it is easily within their power to be gentle and generous, considerate and compassionate.
I took the opportunity to sub for one of my coworkers today. Before any of you think that this was no great sacrifice of my time, let me assure you that giving up a prep hour as a teacher, well, one would rather taint one's honour, or face the perdition of one's soul (or at the very least give up a mess of pottage). But I covered for this teacher. (He's a good guy and this post isn't about him at all, I just happened to witness the event that caused me to think these things will covering his class.)
While watching this class, I found myself in a room full of freshmen. 14-15 year-olds are an interesting age group. They are so unsure of themselves as well as so egocentric that just reflecting on my own past causes me to cringe a little at how impossible thick I was at that time in my life. These freshmen did their work efficiently and effectively with little prompting and with little complaint. They were so efficient in fact that they finished their assignments early.
With time to kill and with the boredom inherent in teenagers, things became a little interesting. Superficial conversations sprung up here and there throughout the room. You know the type of conversations that teenagers have, a lot of he-said-she-said's. With the gossip of the school happening right in front of me, I also couldn't help see the tension that attraction caused in the room, especially in how it caused the collective IQ to drop.
Why is it that attraction causes humans to do some of the stupidest actions imaginable? I do not understand stupidity at the best of times. I especially do not see how it is possibly attractive.
A boy, I'll call him Jason, found himself in this state of mind, the stupid state of mind. For some reason, while talking to a group of girls, he thought it would be cool to slam the screen of his phone into the corner of a desk. If he was looking for a reaction, he got it. The girls reacted in a superficial way of feigned disbelief with cries of "oh my God" and "I can't believe you did that" when a normal, mature response would call out the stupidity of the wanton destruction of a 400 dollar phone. I half wanted to offer to buy the phone from him then and there, cracked screen and all, but for the belief that I harbor that people need to suffer from their own stupidity. (He has to live with his stupidity while I have fodder for a blog post.)
My attention was diverted from that little drama for a second when I heard a loud smack. I looked and saw this same Jason picking up his phone, now with a shattered, yet still functional screen from off the floor. The same girly protests erupted from the gaggle of girls. What surprised me was the udder apathy and complacent, nonchalance of his actions. Somehow his not caring made the whole episode cool in their eyes. My eyes held a much harsher judgment.
I suppose that I should chalk this up as yet another way a boy has done something stupid to impress a girl, but I can't do it. Every way I look at it, the shock of the experience still affects me. What had that boy's parents paid to provide him with that phone? How much prepubescent begging had taken place in that home for the boy to finally get a phone only to have him smash it? What consequences, if any, will fall on this young lover? What lies will be told to explain away the damage?
My contention with this whole story is how did we as a society come to this state, wherein we can smash our phones with little feeling or total apathy towards the end result. All in all, it's just a phone and not a human being or a home, but there is something in me that cannot help wondering whether we are headed for cultural disaster, headed for a moment where, culturally speaking, we will waste and be left wanting.
I took the opportunity to sub for one of my coworkers today. Before any of you think that this was no great sacrifice of my time, let me assure you that giving up a prep hour as a teacher, well, one would rather taint one's honour, or face the perdition of one's soul (or at the very least give up a mess of pottage). But I covered for this teacher. (He's a good guy and this post isn't about him at all, I just happened to witness the event that caused me to think these things will covering his class.)
While watching this class, I found myself in a room full of freshmen. 14-15 year-olds are an interesting age group. They are so unsure of themselves as well as so egocentric that just reflecting on my own past causes me to cringe a little at how impossible thick I was at that time in my life. These freshmen did their work efficiently and effectively with little prompting and with little complaint. They were so efficient in fact that they finished their assignments early.
With time to kill and with the boredom inherent in teenagers, things became a little interesting. Superficial conversations sprung up here and there throughout the room. You know the type of conversations that teenagers have, a lot of he-said-she-said's. With the gossip of the school happening right in front of me, I also couldn't help see the tension that attraction caused in the room, especially in how it caused the collective IQ to drop.
Why is it that attraction causes humans to do some of the stupidest actions imaginable? I do not understand stupidity at the best of times. I especially do not see how it is possibly attractive.
A boy, I'll call him Jason, found himself in this state of mind, the stupid state of mind. For some reason, while talking to a group of girls, he thought it would be cool to slam the screen of his phone into the corner of a desk. If he was looking for a reaction, he got it. The girls reacted in a superficial way of feigned disbelief with cries of "oh my God" and "I can't believe you did that" when a normal, mature response would call out the stupidity of the wanton destruction of a 400 dollar phone. I half wanted to offer to buy the phone from him then and there, cracked screen and all, but for the belief that I harbor that people need to suffer from their own stupidity. (He has to live with his stupidity while I have fodder for a blog post.)
My attention was diverted from that little drama for a second when I heard a loud smack. I looked and saw this same Jason picking up his phone, now with a shattered, yet still functional screen from off the floor. The same girly protests erupted from the gaggle of girls. What surprised me was the udder apathy and complacent, nonchalance of his actions. Somehow his not caring made the whole episode cool in their eyes. My eyes held a much harsher judgment.
I suppose that I should chalk this up as yet another way a boy has done something stupid to impress a girl, but I can't do it. Every way I look at it, the shock of the experience still affects me. What had that boy's parents paid to provide him with that phone? How much prepubescent begging had taken place in that home for the boy to finally get a phone only to have him smash it? What consequences, if any, will fall on this young lover? What lies will be told to explain away the damage?
My contention with this whole story is how did we as a society come to this state, wherein we can smash our phones with little feeling or total apathy towards the end result. All in all, it's just a phone and not a human being or a home, but there is something in me that cannot help wondering whether we are headed for cultural disaster, headed for a moment where, culturally speaking, we will waste and be left wanting.
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