Entry #1 -- Hardscrabble Childhood

This blog entry focuses on some thoughts I had as a reaction to the Hardscrabble Childhood movie/video.

I think people have become so accustomed to focusing solely on the negative aspects of our society that as we get older, this focus overflows into our everyday thinking -- almost as though we have lost any hope we held for the good of humanity in general. The question was posed "Which kid, if any, might have a chance of making it?" I understood the use of "might" in the question to emphasize the possibility of hope while acknowledging the limitations/challenges that would be presented. When I voiced my opinion about hope for one of the children, I was met with a conflicting view originally focusing only on the obstacles (without acknowledging that they could be overcome) which seemed to present a sort of pessimistic/hopeless tone to the view that we, as adults, can usually view with objectivity, but it made me wonder how children (who have not yet developed a comfortable sense of self or self-esteem) maintain any sense of resiliency or hope when constantly faced with so many negative attitudes in their daily lives. In general, people have become quick to tell people why some thing can't be done instead of helping them to find ways to make doing it possible. I think some people forget the differences in optimism, pessimism, and realism -- with, in my experiences, a majority mistaking pessimism for realism. I understand the importance of acknowledging limitations, but I do not think that all limitations should be automatically accepted either. What hope do we have in changing our social problems, if we focus entirely on the negative components, including the "improbabilities" of overcoming the obstacles involved? In an age where most are determined to make as much money as possible, why is it that so few are determined to make as much of a difference to social injustice as possible? Many of us avoid political issues, I think, because then it is easier for us to claim ignorance of those issues than to claim responsibility for being a part of changing or not changing them.

So what/who is responsible for attempting resolutions? When we look at social issues such as poverty or a struggling education system, who bears the responsibility of promoting progress and resolution? Should we place our faith in our federal government to resolve these issues, or the state or local governments? Or, should we, as a community, find ways to work through our differences to enhance the lives of our families/children as a whole instead of what impacts a family individually? I think the shift to the idea of an exclusively nuclear family has contributed to some of the current problems with poverty and education issues in the United States. We have been programmed to be independent, to rely solely on ourselves to solve our own problems and to look down on or isolate those who are unable to do the same. Many make fun of the poor, judging them and making assumptions as to why they are poor -- when several of those are perhaps one job-loss away from finding themselves in a similar situation. Some make excuses as to why the poor are undeserving of help. Perhaps if we focused less on independence and focused more on balancing interdependence with independence, we will be more open-minded to finding better resolutions for some of the existing social injustices. And why have we, as a society, become so content with being reactive instead of proactive? We want change yet expect others to be responsible for making changes. Why have we not learned to work together in a more proactive manner to promote changes instead of reacting to the changes that we allow a group of people (who are oftentimes biased and not representative of those affected by the changes) to make for us?

I think we need to work on all levels -- individually, within our communities, and within our governments -- to find better resolutions, instead of temporary reliefs, to our problems, so that maybe we're not in a perpetual cycle of battling the same social issues throughout our generations. (Please don't think I am being foolish enough to think that we can solve every problem this way -- or that this shift is free of problems in and of itself, but consideration of the problems being caused and escalated by this focus of total independence with no sufficient progress towards resolution should allow for research and analysis of alternative methods which may be able to provide better resolutions to some of the more prevailing issues within our economic and education systems.) When we stop expending so much energy on blaming and making excuses and start shifting that energy on working together to alleviate our complaints, then we will feel more empowered as individuals and as a nation to add more optimism (and less pessimism) to our realism and to promote the changes we feel would make a positive impact on the world we are creating for our future generations so that hopefully we can avoid passing down our learned helplessness and perpetual cycles of making the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe we'll once again start adding thoughts about why we can do something to the thoughts about why we can't... hopefully producing more well-rounded thoughts capable of viewing the different sides of the situations and creating more well-rounded solutions based on the research of both the "strengths" and "weaknesses" or "positives" and "negatives" of the problems.