Someone said, "You accept the society in which you were born." In other words, we fail to recognize our own cultural norms because they are so…normal even if they're wrong and we accept them without thought. Does a fish realize that it's always been in water until it flops ashore?
For example, decades ago, people used to smoke cigarettes everywhere, even lighting up in hospitals. You didn't think about it; it was normal. When you watched a game show on TV, the host would be smoking (if the sponsor of the program was Camels or Winston). A thank-you gift for being a contestant on a program like "I've Got A Secret" was a carton of the sponsor's cigarettes.
In commercials on TV or ads on the back cover of a magazine, a man dressed in a white lab coat, a "doctor," would tell us that his favorite brand was Winston which he said, "Winston astes good like a cigarette should." It was a catchy jingle, one not to be forgotten.
Athletes got into the trend; an ad picturing Mickey Mantle, cigarette in hand, with the words, "So many of the Yanks smoke Camels, I decided to try them. I smoked Camels a while and I knew--Camels are for me! They're mild and swell tasting." We gave it no thought.
Movies advertised in the newspaper didn't give the starting times for the feature; you might arrive in the middle or near the end. Nobody thought about; it just was.
Decades ago, parents gave us boys B-B guns and turned us loose with no supervision to go out and kill as many birds as we could for no other reason than the thrill of the kill. To kill a robin redbreast was a special achievement, one worthy of praise. Nobody thought anything about it.
Fast forward to our day and the statement still holds, "You accept the society in which you were born." We watch a movie or TV drama in which a kidnappers take a child and hold him for ransom. The frantic parents call the police, the FBI gets involved, they set up a wire tap on the home phone.
There's one thing the parents don't ever do in the movie: pray. It's the norm for a movie of that type. We think nothing about it.
Here's another interesting one: there's only one "religion" our culture can criticize and mock it and its Book. Christianity and the Bible. Celebrities winning an Oscar include in their acceptance speech words that mock and blaspheme Christianity. In movies, a preacher is either a fanatical nut, a hypocrite or a devious villain.
But does the public notice the celebrities don't mock Islam, an Imam, or the Koran. In fact, the celebrities, the academics, and the elites offer nary a jest nor a criticism of that religion. It's all so normal, no one notices the glaring omission. So, the younger generation born into such a society accept it. That's it, over and out.
Therefore, those recently born in our society accept all of this--no praying by frantic parents, no criticism of Islam because . . . there is no "because." Without thinking about it or wondering about it, or asking, "Why," to them, it just "is."
We are in such a society. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind.
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