Yesterday morning I got the news that the 25 year old son of a good friend was kidnapped and the home of another friend was deliberately burnt to the ground by some young men living in her area. Once again I sunk into despair thinking of the negative way our society has changed, in such a relatively short time as well. Once again, like many others, I pondered the reason or reasons that we have come to this point of social decay. In the many discussions that I have had with various friends over the years on the problems with the mindset of our troubled youth, my reasoning on the powerful influence of the electronic media is always pushed to the back burner and poor parenting is presented as the prime suspect. This weekend’s events had me looking at the many angles of our sociocultural evolution and I think that those who point their fingers at the parents instead of the media are absolutely right and absolutely wrong.
Parenting involves the promoting and supporting of the physical, emotional, social and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. To think of this only as a biological responsibility is fallacious. Unless the child lives in a cave, we in the media exist with him/her on a daily basis. Our messages, ideologies, agendas or whatever, imbues. We help to shape their world view and also how they perceive themselves. Essentially, what I am getting at is that we also function as parents.
Whenever I talk about the inappropriate information that the media disseminate at times, the usual rebuttal is that the parent (biological that is) is the one to dictate what the child watches or listens to or to discuss troubling issues that they may be exposed to. This is all fair and good, once there is that physical, guiding parental presence. However, what about those instances where this is not so, where there is not that responsible adult to filter information? These are the ones left to absorb everything that comes their way. These are the ones that we should worry about. According to a psychologist I had a conversation with some time ago, when speaking to the masses, we must always think of the grunt.
I once read a quote “We are shaped by what we worship” and this is indeed where our society is today. We are focused on economic profit. Everything is about the dollar. Once we make money, to hell with mores. This is a definite recipe for social decay, whether the thinking is at the personal level, corporate or governmental. If in advertising we think “sex sells” without regard for the skewed presentation of sexuality which could in the long term contribute to relationship problems when our young mature, then we have failed as “parents”. If nightly the television stations show hours of gun play and glorified violence, thinking that this doesn’t have even the minutest effect on crime, we have failed as “parents”. If the radio stations that target the youth audience bombard their listeners with music that promotes hate, violence, recreational sex, illegal drugs, material thinking and the degrading of women are unconcerned with the affects that music has on the psyche of the human being, then we have failed as “parents”.
Looking back, I now realise that when I was a child (and I speak for myself, not others), “parents” were all around me. Other than the two biological ones at home, the teachers, the neighbours, the priest, the stranger, the market vendor, the shop owner, the media, almost everyone had in their own way a sense of duty to impart wisdom onto the young for the good of the society. This was a time when money and self were not the be all and end all. It was a time when we thought more about our “children” and by extension, the community.
