Tomorrow Starts Today -Song Whittington

    "Entering a new millennium, we face a historical choice. Standing alone on the pinnacle of economic and political leadership, the United States can continue to increase its material wealth while ignoring the needs of our people and of the people of the rest of the planet. Such a course is likely to lead to increasing selfishness, alienation between the more and the less fortunate, and eventually to chaos and despair."

Record Scratch

    Woah, woah, woah. This was written when?? 

Checks paper like I'm on a TV show.

    1998?? Hold on, hold on. Is this dude still alive?

One google search later

       He is. Oh my goodness he must be saying "I told you so" so very hard today. This was written 24 years ago (yes I had to use a calculator shhh.) Wow, I mean. Just, wow. This is so incredibly on the nose with American society today. I mean talk about prophecy. You can look just about anywhere and see this. Whether it be the 1% or how any weather or the like type scare results in mass buying. As my Dad says, "it's a microwave world," meaning I want what I want and I want it now. There's no time for waiting around. You see people buying new, fancy cars instead of keeping the one that still works well and instead investing that extra money in a charity. People hoard goods, stock up on weapons, buy lavish mansions, instead of giving to charities, donating to food banks, or buying blankets and the like for the homeless. I am genuinely astonished at how on the nose Dr. Seligman's address is. With this type of foresight, it makes me wonder how it was in his time. Not long ago really, only 24 years. Yet it seems that what he says here is a prediction, and boy did it come true. If I had the chance to speak with him, I would ask him about his thoughts reflecting back on this address and on today's society. Goodness, this is...wow. That's all I can really say is simply wow. 

Commented on Madalyn's and Lily's posts

Comments

  1. Lily CaswellApril 5, 2022 at 9:31 AM

    I definitely thought the same thing. It’s amazing to me that he knew even then what today would look like.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Samantha TApril 5, 2022 at 9:48 AM

    I had the same thoughts reading that line. He has summed up much of my issues with today's society within a few sentences over twenty years ago. He also prompts and predicts the resurgence in preventative care we can see the beginnings of today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A House Divided//Emily Otts

The words Jesus spoke in Matthew 12 remind me so much of this play: "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Matthew 12:25) King Lear, at the end of the day, is about a family being divided multiple ways. These divisions arise over greed and hatred for one another and cause the whole family to be ruined because of it. King Lear first divides the kingdom after his daughter Cordelia does not proclaim her love to him, so he banishes her. Later, his daughters go against him for not doing as they asked, believing he is unfit and unworthy to be king, secretly plotting against him. But all of this comes to a head in Act 5. After capturing King Lear and Cordelia, Edmund plans to have them killed. You would believe the sisters would be able to work together because their plan is working, but an even greater division has risen between them. Both of them wish to have Edmund for themselves, and they plot against each o...
Read more

The Plague in Everyone// Emily Otts

     In part 4 of the Plague , Tarrou tells Rieux about how he has had the plague forever. Except, this is not the same plague as the one ravaging the town. Tarrou speaks of how his father was a lawyer who believed in the death penalty, how he saw so many people support it and be comfortable about it, and how he had to witness the executions of prisoners. He explains how this sort of mindset is a plague itself, one Tarrou had been fighting for a long time. " That's why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death" (Camus, part 4, chapter 6). Tarrou wants to desperately not submit to such awful ways of thinking.      Tarrou does not realize it, but the plague he is talking about is sin. Everyone has it, some people give in to it and let...
Read more

The Thirst for Knowledge

     With Book Seven of Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael is continuing his exposition on Satan's apostasy. The plan is to expose Adam and Eve to the wretched fate of those who cross God's will. The more he shed's light on the subject, however, the more Adam is inclined to ask for more information. He wants to know everything about the subject, as well as God and His creation.      However, while the taste of such knowledge leaves Adam yearning for more, there are boundaries. It is like a toddler eating a cookie... and eventually begging her mother for the rest of the jar. Is it a coincidence that the one thing Adam and Eve are not to touch is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Most readers know how the story ends: these toddlers are never going to be content with a few cookies. They're going in for the jar.   There is a statement in the Bible that is constantly being repeated throughout the Old Testament: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of ...
Read more