Fixing America In 500 Words Or
Less
Chapter 39
ARE PEOPLE REALLY
SHEEP?
Most men may not complain when young women these days wear their pants lower than where their mother's pockets used
to be, but it can be somewhat nauseating to see older females trying to keep up with their daughter and even
granddaughter's peer group. It is reminiscent of the sixties, when in order to be cool, boys had to wear Levi's
brand jeans, even though JC Penny sold a perfectly functional pair for half the price.
A Bob Dylan song back then touched on this “Mr. Jones” mentality of modern society ¹ and, what with large gas-guzzling
SUV's being purchased by American middle-class “McMansion” families in the midst of Middle East wars, oil shortages and
looming planetary disaster, certainly nothing much has changed.
Liberal authors tend to blame corporate branding, but such a “keeping up with the Joneses” reality has existed
since ancient Babylon and, traces back into the mists of prehistoric time. Tribal cultures on a global basis
display culturally dictated rings, beads, feathers and other ornaments, paint faces and bodies in peer-pressure
proscribed ways and, mimic each other in dress, speech and custom.
Ancient warriors often trimmed beards and hair in certain proscribed fashion and displayed specific tattoos and other
body markings. Cultures throughout history display their own unique concepts of beauty, manliness and femininity,
often directly contradicting what other cultures dictate. ² Heterosexual men in many societies have worn
clothing that even the most overt homosexual male wouldn't wear in our own.
Today, tattoos and body piercings are all the modern rage and women deliberately reveal bra straps they worked
diligently to keep hidden not long ago. And, we are inundated with harmful food and “must have” gizmos and gadgets
that no one in their right mind would consider purchasing for logical survival or any other purpose.
Are designs carved on ancient pottery and inlaid jewels on swords functionally necessary at all? And, was
expensive architecture, art and sculpture purchased by kings and popes in the midst of massive poverty and famine
during the Middle Ages, any less moral than modern Wall Street paper-shufflers earning 10,000 and more times as
much as those who pick their fruit, cook their food, cut their lawns and pick up their garbage?
Does a wise society reward athletes with enormous sums to play games in the midst of rising poverty, homelessness
and human suffering? Do wise people stand in long lines to see the latest film or to meet celebrities who
really haven't accomplished much of anything at all? How many Americans blindly believe we represent the
greatest society in history, without even bothering to actually study much of human civilization, if any?
Culturally induced conformity might appear harmless, but it extends into endorsing the amassing of private
wealth and consequent enslavement of the masses, supporting wars in a guise of false 'patriotism' and,
endorsing racism and classicism in order to “belong”.
Is it really true that “all we like sheep have gone astray”? ³ You decide. 4-5
NOTES:
1. “Ballad of a Thin Man”; Highway 61 Revisited (1965).
2. According to historian Will Durant, upon sighting two male European missionaries and their wives, a tribe of
native Africans began rolling on the ground in laughter, hardly able to contain themselves. It seems that the
queen of their tribe weighed in excess of 500 pounds and was so obese that she required two attendants to be able to
stand up. Members of other tribes traveled for hundreds of miles just for a chance to gaze upon their queen
who, was thought in the general region to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The natives just couldn't
get over how poorly the European's God would treat them, to have given them in their view, such ugly and scrawny
wives; women who were most likely many pounds heavier than what is considered a desirable weight for beauty queens
in our own modern society. It would seem when it comes to what constitutes attractiveness among various
diverse historical cultures, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.
3. Isaiah 53:6, John Chapter 10.
4. Sheep are basically timid animals who tend to graze in flocks. All sheep have a tendency to congregate
close to other members of a flock. In displaying flocking, sheep have a strong lead-follow tendency, and
a leader often as not is simply the first sheep to move. - source Encyclopedia Britannica and
Wikipedia Sheep.
5. Some of the more obvious often absurd conformities found in modern society include ties and watches worn by
men, similar and often excessive makup worn by women and various rings, necklaces and other ornamental products
worn by both sexes. Children in rebellion of parental "uncoolness" typically develop their own conformity of dress,
appearance and speech. Often various peer groups dress, talk and act differently than other groups within the same
large society, but continue to be highly conformative within their own grouping; for example, such as how men working
in trucking, warehouse and construction-related environments tend to dress, talk and act, in comparison to men who work
in office and similar "white-collar" environments. It may be true that it is easier to prove summer will not soon
be followed by cooler weather and, that the sun will never again arise in the eastern sky, than to prove that Isaiah and
Jesus were wrong about people being like sheep who have gone astray. If we have not gone astray of what is morally
correct, then why is there so much war, other violence, hunger, poverty, mass pollution and other human oppression in the
modern global reality?
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