The Loss of Thoughts

(Photo from Felipe, at Flickr)

It is a wide spread and wider spreading problem in our world today. People don't want to think. No one wants to apply themselves to anything to achieve something more than they already "have". Starting with the teenagers I see around me at school and ending with every last person here on earth. This is not some sort of government conspiracy that only applies to one select group of people and is being used to scare the world, no, this is a tragedy that I see, me, just a regular teenager. The young people I see around me, are the people who will soon be going out into the world and contributing what they have "achieved" to society. Whether it be nothing, which will cause them to only take up resources, space, and time, or whether it be great things that will bring change to the world. These people, our FUTURE, are sitting on their lazy butts, relying on the technology they have their eyes glued to twenty six hours of the day to get them through life. At this rate the IPhones and Roombas might as well take control of the country. I have encountered so many people who are not unable to think, but just refuse to.

We have actually come to that; thinking is too hard and takes too much of our energy. I find this to be devastatingly tragic incident. How will the world function if we can't even find enough courage, if you will let me put it that way, to analyze what will come out of our mouths before it does? If we can't answer a question on our homework that isn't directly given to us in the reading? If we can't analyze a situation and figure out the better thing to do? If we sit back and wait for someone else to do the work for us because we haven't the time, strength, energy, or whatever else excuse we can fabricate? What will happen when everyone ends up waiting for someone else to do something? The world will be filled with quite a bit of waiting, I'll tell you that.

 

My English teacher was telling us how she had substituted for another class which only had to copy down the definition of a word in the time span if ten minutes, and which could not do it, or should I say would not do it. This shows the sad reality of today's world. 

First of all, teachers and many authoritative figures have lost hope in the fact that the younger generation is even remotely able to think. Students, in turn, have lost the conviction that they can. Either that or they think that they are too "cool" to copy down a definition, or that texting their BFF all last night was much more important than studying for that math final. Young people have lost not only their ability to think, but also the ability to actually care about it being a problem.

"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy- indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction” -William Osler 

Not the most dangerous I would say, but a mighty one.

"Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care."-Jimmy Buffett

But that is not even the scariest part. Sure it's bad that people are not contributing to the community, but it will all burn in the end anyways. God made us in His likeness, meaning that we have a mind and we can think. Proverbs 1:7 states that fools despise wisdom. And Proverbs 3:13 says "How blessed is the man who finds wisdom." God says, God says, that we are fools when we act in this apathetic and unwise way.

My history teacher, everyday, shows us that thinking is a very crucial skill to have. That if you can't think, you will be cheated, and worst of all you will be a hindrance to everyone around you. You will slow others down, and you will get nowhere yourself. You will not bring any glory to God. We waste our time, but is it really our time? I'll answer that: NO! How dare we sit around apathetically stealing God's time, His glory, His resources? How dare we?

The comforts of our time make a large contribution to this problem. But comforts and technologies are not to blame, despite popular choice of action. It's just a piece of matter, you cannot blame it for ruining the mind. What you can blame, although, is the mind that has been sucked into their comforts, that doesn't care about anything but pleasing itself and being as comfortable as possible. We have become so lazy. Lazy to the point where we are incapable of using our brain!