What's the World Coming to

It seems like just yesterday I was listening to my parents lament the changes that were happening in society. “What’s the world coming to?” were words that stuck in my mind as I was growing up. At the time, especially during my teenage years, I didn’t really understand or appreciate their concern. My parents were just old-fashioned and, to me, didn’t get it. Well the times have changed and I guess I’m now old-fashioned too because I keep asking myself, "What’s the world coming to?"

Let’s consider the social aspects of television as an example of what I’m referring to here. In my youth, watching television was associated with many negative things, not the least of which was my mother’s constant warning that I’d lose my eyesight from watching too much TV or getting too close to the television set. I also remember many pejorative terms for television, including referring to it as the boob tube. If there ever was a time when television could more accurately be called the boob tube, then this must be it. Leaving little to the imagination, television programming in the 21st century has gone far beyond anything that I can remember watching in my formative, character-building years.

Whereas I was glued to the tube (it literally was a tube at the time!) watching such provocative shows as Leave It To Beaver, My Three Sons, and my favorite, Cheyenne, the first original television series produced by a major Hollywood film studio, Warner Brothers (I even acknowledged its star, Clint Walker, also known as the Big Guy in the movie, The Dirty Dozen, in our book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, for his meaningful influence on my life and for reading our book), the youth of today are constantly bombarded by programming that, in my personal and professional opinion, leaves much to be desired. It not only robs viewers of all ages from using their imaginations in ways that actually increase society’s individual and collective intelligence quotient, but also demeans what it means to be human—and all of the potential that comes with it.