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So few words, so much truth.
I grew up on the arts as a Bachelor of Music and a songwriter. I noticed, when I finally ventured out into the world and away from academia, that some (jazz, etc) artists spent their whole lives practicing and honing their art to make that small amount of music in some small club somewhere in obscurity. Others, (hiphop) approached their “art” with absolutely NO preparation, or practise, nothing brought to the table to earn that right, but simply stepped up to a microphone somewhere and emoted their feelings into the ethos, with expectations that fame would follow soon after.
Whereas the traditional musician brought years of talent and hard work and schooling to his craft, the hip hopper brought canned beats and elementary school poetry and both were taken equally by a culture that didn’t see the difference.
I suppose it’s nothing but the 47% writ large into every corner of our culture.
Kudos.......outstanding ans so correct in so many ways.......but one.
There’s no turning this around. Once a culture loses its values, there’s no going back.
Definitely interesting. However, I have a problem with his use of “we” and “us.” Like all choices, cultural choices or “values investments” (good term) are made by individuals. The nation’s culture (like the nation’s birthrate) is the sum of uncountable individual decisions to prioritize one thing over another.
I believe that if change is to occur, one of the necessary factors will be that more people recognize that they are making free choices, every minute of the day, and that they are responsible for evaluating the outcomes and making additional choices based on results.
Every decision that we make, and every action that we take, has a cost associated with it. In the business world, this is described as “Opportunity Costs”. For example, if a business spends $100,000 on advertising, that means that $100,000 wasn’t available for say employee training. It is useful in making the management of a business look at the Return On Investment (ROI) it is receiving on the decisions and actions they make. This concept is also useful in our everyday lives. Are we making the best use of our time, energy, talents and other resources?
srbfl