No one pays attention anymore.
Okay some do. But not enough. (If you are reading my blog you are probably one of the few.)
The majority of the people I come across in my day to day life don't pay attention. They buy into society's belief that it is all about them. And while I understand everyone is the hero to their own story, their own life, there are other people in the world.
I titled this post with politics which this idea of paying attention will drift into, but it starts as basically as watching the people directly around you. I'm talking about coworkers, friends, strangers on the bus, other people on the road, anyone. I feel like ninety percent of car accidents could be prevented if everyone just paid attention to the road and to others. I understand about drifting away on your thoughts or talking on a cellphone. I do it. And I've had some close calls because of it. But I get frustrated that even back in college, waiting for the bus to come, people outside of the bus wouldn't pay attention to those who needed to get off the bus. Or wouldn't pay attention to those with crutches or wouldn't offer their seat to someone who obviously needed it. We don't look around and notice other people. And we should.
So do that for me. Start watching other people and try to pass on the idea to PAY ATTENTION to something else outside of your own head. This idea needs to be fed back into society because common sense is no longer common.
Now, following the same notion of paying attention to the people directly around you, also pay attention to cause and effect. Think about how one action will not only affect the direct object it is acting on, but how will it affect everything around it. Pay attention to the ripples that it causes. See how far out you can follow a ripple. It's a simple mental exercise. I thought about this idea in the shower, I write this post, I publish it on the web, you read it, you become aware at least for the rest of the day, you notice someone doing something and you react to it and help that person out, that person has a better day and smiles later thinking about you helping them, that smile causes someone else to smile or ask why they are smiling, etc. Within ten steps I have involved three other people with a single action that fed other actions. Now you may have noticed and/or reacted to whoever needed help without reading my post and you may not do the same even after reading this post. I don't care. It's an example. But the chain of events just illustrates a chain reaction. My post may affect you and anyone else who reads it and for each person who reads it there is a chance that maybe three people per person may be affected by my post.
A lot of people only focus on the effect or at least the very end or beginning of a chain reaction. But we need to look at the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that paying attention affects other people by incorporating them into your actions either by letting them pass you as you wait to get on the bus, by not hitting them when changing lanes in the car, by helping someone who needs help. The beginning action here is paying attention which is either caused by a natural tendency to do so or a heightened awareness that comes with someone telling you to pay attention. The ending action is that someone is assisted or at least not impeded. And from there, that affects them. Expanding that further, if everyone paid attention then the world would run more efficiently because everyone would be helped along or not impeded. Traffic would flow faster without accidents and with smart driving, bus routes wouldn't be a hassle, work would get done quicker. Everything would just be a little bit better if everyone or even if a larger percentage of people paid attention. That's a pretty cool big picture. So why don't people strive for that? Because they don't want to look at the big picture.
Looking at the big picture and going down those mental maps of chain reactions is difficult and complicated and annoying and you won't catch everything. So people don't. They only look at the world around them, only look at the world in their head, and only look at the immediate consequences. And this is where we get into politics.
Politicians know this, probably intuitively. They know that people only focus on the closest cause and effect to them. This is why a lot of current policies don't make sense, at least to me. They are focused on treating the symptoms of the recent effect without really looking into the cause. They don't look at the big picture.
I have a couple examples that will hopefully explain what I want to say.
There was an article about bringing manufacturing back to American soil from overseas production because of cost, innovation, engineering, and the speed of technological growth. This is happening for a majority of reasons that are intertwined because of the way the big picture works. American companies sent manufacturing overseas for the cheap labor. They lost a connection between the engineering and manufacturing which stifled innovation and created a loss of job in the US. Does that sound like it was worth it?
But instead of looking at the past, let's say that the GM plant starts up back on American ground. Now you have more jobs for Americans. You have a need for engineers. You get to have the engineers design with hands on abilities and look at the manufacturing process to streamline it. With the increase in technology and high-tech machinery, you need more skilled labor or at least educated labor. This need drives an increase in education. And then you could actually combine the need for specific manufacturing education with overall education and create an apprentice program between the local areas and the plant. That would open an avenue of learning for those who don't do as well with the standardize testing and classroom environments. The hands on learning would appeal to the experiential and kinetic learners and keep more kids in school or at least interested. And this would circumvent unions and push for union reform to create a better system there.
US manufacturing provides jobs and requires higher skill levels for cross functional work (design, engineering, manufacturing, labor). Higher skill level would help lessen the need for unions while driving the demand for better education. Better education would be extended to cover both static/current styles of learning and alternate styles of learning tied to manufacturing. Just a part time technical/apprentice class or work could also drive a value reform by encouraging hard work and responsibility at a younger age. And this would help the economy which would encourage more companies to return to American shores. US manufacturing pushes for better education which produces stronger workers who help with the manufacturing process which pulls more manufacturing to the US.
So why did we go overseas again?
This second one is going to get uncomfortable. I'm going to be drawing a bunch of ideas that no one wants to put together but it's that fact alone that causes the issues. My first topic is abortion. Paul Ryan just came under attack on my facebook for saying "I hope for a world where abortion isn't even considered." There is more to that statement that got him into trouble but that was the part that was headlined. People were up in arms about it but honestly, that's not a bad thing to hope for. Not because abortions would be outlawed and such but because as a society we would have evolved to a point that we wouldn't need them. That's how I read that sentiment. That no woman would consider an abortion because she wants the child. Some reasons behind getting an abortion are: medical/life-threatening risk to the mother/child, unwanted child due to rape, unwanted child due to economic/living conditions, unwanted child due to age of the woman, unwanted child because something went wrong with the contraceptives available. Now, most of these situations are avoidable. We can improve medical technology and procedures to reduce the risk between mother and child. We can improve poverty conditions and provide education and contraceptives to those who cannot support children. We can teach our children about the risks of having children young and instill values in them that will reduce teenage sex and teenage pregnancies. We can improve contraceptives to reduce risk. We can work to reduce rape.
That last one is also a touchy topic. There have been some high profile cases recently that have highlighted this problem. Recently a high school couple boys were sentenced for raping and photographing an under-aged girl. The media focused in on how the boys were affected by the sentence and how their lives were ruined and so forth without mention of the girl, the victim. This struck a lot of people as wrong but didn't get the resounding cry that it should have. A lot of people agree with how the media presented it. This goes hand in hand with how society tends to blame the victim in rape cases and how woman are treated, perceived, and taught. Victim blaming is never never right. It is never the victim's fault. They were not asking to be raped. No. Just no. There is a thing called consent. If you do not get it, if you do not get a resounding "Yes" then there is no consent and you can't have sex. This is for both men and women. Silence is not consent. Dressing inappropriately is not consent. Getting drunk is not consent. Being unconscious is not consent. It doesn't seem that hard of a concept does it. So why are there so many cases of victim blaming and cases where the victim knows there attacker. Rapists aren't always the man in the mask waiting in the dark alley. So why do these other situations happen?
It's because of how society reacts to women (yes I am focusing on women here to get the point across, there is a different argument for victims who are men). Society teaches gender roles at a very young age, unconsciously and purposefully. Boys are big and strong and women are the fairer sex. That's what we grow up with. Women are goals, objects, things to be desired, things for the men to woo. Women are held to strict social standards by both men and other women. There are strong differences between how men and women are supposed to act. If a man sleeps around, then he is congratulated by his friends. If a women sleeps around she is dirty and should be ashamed. But if a woman turns down a man, then she is being frigid. Do you see the conflicting ideas here? I could go on but this is already pretty rambling. What I am trying to get at is that society has set up differences between men and women that actually encourages the behaviors that lead to rape and to sex and to pregnancies.
So instead of attacking abortions which is one of the final effects of a long chain of causes, why don't policies focus on alleviating the causes? Teach consent, reform society, promote safe sex, instill values, encourage economic growth to reduce poverty, reduce the need or the want for abortions. Create a society where abortions are considered because every singe child is wanted.
That's the bigger picture but no one is looking at that. Why?
Wow, that's a lot of words for this topic. So I'm going to end it soon.
In conclusion, I want everyone to pay attention to the world starting with the people directly around you. I want everyone to start taking a look at the bigger picture for issues. I want the root causes to be solved to that the end effects aren't the only thing people are focused on. I want people to look at the complicated mess and work to simplify it into a better society for everyone. Just PAY ATTENTION.
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