Instant gratification

We want everything and we want it now. Instant everything. Instant messages, email, fax, internet. Instant food, the faster the better. Instant education, job, wealth. Instant medical service, diagnosis, and an instant cure. Instant family. Instant travel. Instant information. Instant banking. Right or wrong, good or bad, we want it now.

Technology was supposed to make life easier, according to The Tri-City News a proliferation of new “time-saving devices” should make life easier and free up more leisure time. We don't even want to light our own matches anymore, but need a special device to do it for us, if we even use old fashioned matches any longer.

Some people can't walk down the street without a cell phone to their ear. They can't drive a block down the street without calling someone. Kids can't communicate face-to-face because their fingers are too busy text messaging. Waiting on snail mail is unheard of, email, fax, express mail, same day delivery. Now, now, now.

Some young people graduate from school and instantly want everything their parents and grandparents have worked a lifetime to acquire. They not only want the same things their parents have, in some cases they want what their parents have. They feel their parents are obligated to share what they have, continuing to support them year after year after year.

Of course this doesn't apply to everybody. We've seen incredible young people this week, we've seen heroes this week, and we are proud.

But in recent weeks, college students from Rutgers University, Duke University and now Virginia Tech displayed a level of common sense and dignity that not only reassured, but also exposed the shallow shortcomings of our mass communication culture. --The Stamford Times

Virginia Tech made the mistake of relying on instant communication this week, and in many cases it failed. After the first two innocents were shot, the university sent out electronic messages to students who would be attending later classes. But instant communications were not read in time to save the next 30 students. It's not the universities fault that the students didn't get the messages.

Seung-hui Cho in his multi-media package to NBC, railed against the wealth of other students. This was his excuse for killing 32 innocent professors and students. And yes, NBC almost instantly started airing the videos.

During the attack, students dove under desks and rushed to the windows as holocaust survivor Professor Liviu Librescu headed for the door, blocking the gunman from entering, as shots rang out. Out of the 29 other people in the class, not one was willing to step forward and try to help Librescu. Not one. They all ran, hid, and jumped out windows to save themselves.

Our modern culture has reversed the commandment, "Honor thy father and mother" to "honor the child by giving him everything even before he needs or wants it." ... Family's wealth is redistributed to their children through relentless giving which produces children who feel they are entitled to everything instantaneously with practically no appreciation for anything.

[snip] ... forcing a person to eat their bitters before having their sweets is a good metaphor for teaching a person to become a mature, responsible individual. - -Dr. Domenick Maglio

Girl on the Right says

His manly and able-bodied engineering students hid behind desks and jumped out the window. [snip]

Thank you, and rest in peace.

Thank you to a man who faced evil as a young person and chose to face it again at age 76. Nothing came instantly for this man, except his decision to step between a killer and the killer's prey. Librescu is a hero. This generation needs to acknowledge that, ... instantly.

Comments

[Butch]

Debbie,

Tried to send a tb but typepad has blocked it via the captcha check... Will keep trying of course...

Nice post!

[StormWarning]

I thought that I had read that Professor Librescu is the hero because he blocked the door [[SO]] his students could escape. I'm not certain that the students simply "cut and ran."

[Martin]

Wow, what an incredible and true post, Debbie. Well-said. I wonder who in that class - or at most universities - even knows what a Holocaust-survivor is. Or was. I'm sure more students would have blocked the door had their favorite MTV show not been on that night, or perhaps it’s for another reason: Maybe if public school kids weren't trained from early on to be herded about like cattle, some of them might have developed a plan when they heard the first gunshots ring out; a plan not for running but for cutting the shooting spree short. We need more cowboys and fewer boys.

[Rastaman]

The house I lived in as a boy had a prominent porch that was fairly close to the sidewalk, with side pillars that had seating areas, and occasionally some elder would stop and rest there for a bit before walking on. Sometimes I'd sit and talk with them, so it happened that in 1946, about a year after the War, a skinny old man stopped to rest and I engaged him in conversation.

He told me about the German death camps and how the Germans put a tattooed number on the wrist of every inmate, and then he showed me his.

This sunk in deep. The horror and suffering that the Jews endured, and that ended most of their lives, is incomprehensible to most people today. The courage of that Holocaust survivor in protecting the students in his care can't be measured.

When I heard about him I was filled with admiration. What a great man! Good for you for giving him this eulogy. There is an entire class of young people who will remember this fine man and his example and sacrifice for the rest of their lives and no doubt some will pass the story on to their children and grandchildren.

His memory may not live forever but it will live for generations yet to come.

Rastaman

[Debbie]

Thanks everybody.

Rastaman, what a great experience you had and it has influenced your life, it's obvious.

Butch, don't worry about the trackback.

Martin, you know that some schools (not in the US yet) have stopped teaching about the Holocaust, because 1. it is disturbing to children, and 2. Muslims are offended.

[Rex]

good post, I want the next one RIGHT NOW.

[Thomas Hamilton]

I can't help but think back to my childhood and how things were then.

If we got 3 channels on the TV we were lucky. Of course with the antenna sometimes we would get interference from distant stations, but we didn't seem to mind. My favorite show was Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford as Dan Matthews. In this show there were the bad guys and the good guys and Dan Matthews always got his man. I still watch it today and enjoy the old cars with fins on them.

This was back before interstate highways and a trip to Memphis or Nashville was an all day thing, but I remember the drives being pleasant. We saw a lot of things and stopped at a lot of different places along the way. I remember what fun it was to read the BURMA SHAVE signs along the road.

If we ever needed to make a phone call, oh the inconvenience of having to find a phone booth, but then again I don't really remember having to call anyone during the trip. How nice to take a trip and just enjoy the ride.

I also remember when our phone number was only 5 digits long, we were on a party line, and you had to dial zero to make a long distance call.

When we got sick we took aspirin and home remedies. If we got really sick the doctor gave us a shot of penicillin, but we usually didn't go to the doctor and we never went to the emergency room and I don't guess there was any such thing as a convenient care clinic. In spite of all this, I am still alive 54 years later and no worse for the wear.

I remember how horrified my mother and father were at the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Fortunately they passed on before the advent of ganster rap.

There were two theaters in town, each with a single screen. 50 cents bought you a double feature with about 5 cartoons at the beginning.

I don't remember any stories of mass murders or killings at schools or other public places. For the most part everyone seemed to more or less get along.

What has happened to us?

I could go on and on. Sure would be nice to turn back the clock if only for a day or two.

[Douglas V. Gibbs]

He got what he wanted - endless fame for his dasterdly deed. He should have been deported or locked up the moment they knew Cho was unstable (courts claimed he was unstable, gave him some drugs, patted him on the back, and let him free).

[Martin]

Well, that Debbie and "Holocaust" has too many syllables and doesn't show up on the SAT. ;)

[Stormwarning]

Debbie: Holocaust denial and all of the attendant cr@p existed long before September 11th.

Thomas: Nice trip down memory lane. Growing up "back East" we also had 50 cent movies and dime popcorn. We also had a bowling alley (10 pin) where periodically a red pin would rotate to the headpin and if you bowled a strike, you'd get a free game.

We had our own phone, but it (the one extension) was in my parents' bedroom, so imagine how difficult it was trying to call a girl for a date. We had a "Happy Days" type ice cream parlor. One thing that many people outside of the NY City area wouldn't remember was that you could go to the "Roadside Rest" (Nathan's Hotdogs) and get one for 5 cents (it got to 25 cents when I was a senior in high school).

My parents, too, were outraged by Elvis. My 2 brothers and I shared one bedroom in the finished attic that until I (the oldest) was about 13 or 14 was unairconditioned. Somehow my dad convinced us that if the window fan was pointed outward it would pull the hot air out.

Times are no longer simple. Time has compressed on us. And the Internet has changed everything.

[nanc]

i cannot tell you the number of times we've been in restaurants and there've been families with children at the table texting, playing handheld games or just being regular pains in the arse - our own will look at us and say, "why do their parents let them get away with that?" all while the waitress is putting their uneaten meals into go containers. the parents remain oblivious to their own cell phones...ARGH!

[Richard]

"Some young people graduate from school and instantly want everything their parents and grandparents have worked a lifetime to acquire. They not only want the same things their parents have, in some cases they want what their parents have. They feel their parents are obligated to share what they have, continuing to support them year after year after year."

Oh really and some like me are struggling hard looking for jobs and saving every penny, get a life.

I love instant gratification too but that don't make me some psycho who is going to kill a bunch of people, get a sense of reality.