There is nagging thirst for change among the young, for something new. It ranges from major issues like changing jobs or educational tracks, to minor matters like the shifts in hair styles or uses of jewelry. This thirst gradually assuages. When one is older he/she is more comfortable with things as they are. To avoid change is easier, and the person discovers that happiness, something so eagerly, even furiously, sought during youthful years, is found to be present in the familiar with memories related to repetitions of relationships. Walter Cronkite, 86 years of age in 2003 and nearly twenty years following the close of his eminent run as a television news anchor, was busy at a number of projects. In an interview he was asked if he was not too old to be writing a column. I hope not, he said. He admitted he had to be careful that any resistance to change, at his age, was not resistance simply because he had grown old. He felt there was current reporting of news that he would never have reported, so he had to ask of himself : . . . . if standards have dropped to that state, are attempts to hold on to the old standards just fuddy-duddyism? (US NEWS 6/16/03 P.4) (I am comforted – if Cronkite could make up words, like fuddy-duddyism, so may I.)
During recent years there have been numerous writers, including letters to editors from readers, deploring what they believe to be the slippery slide in public (or what are made to be public) morals. Various contrasts are proffered, as noted by the AARP magazine (6/2003) comparing two popular television programs in which Suzanne Pleshette was one of the stars. The programs, a generation apart in TV history, contrasted The Bob Newhart Show of nearly 30 years earlier to the then current Good Morning Miami. In the earlier show Pleshette was in her thirties, a third grade teacher, calm and clever, a loving wife, and foil for her psychologist husband, as well as surrogate mother to a collection of persons. She drew people together. A memorable line was related to her fear of flying: Okay, honey, I’ll see you on the . . . thing. She dare not, in fear of it, say, airplane. At this writing she is playing a woman in her sixties, something of a busybody, shameless and bawdy, something of a pest and gadabout who plays the ponies. One of her memorable lines relative to an affair: What can I say? His pants were half-down already. The current show is getting good ratings. This is the sort of thing that, taken with other factors, has led many in the nation, even in the world, to believe we have become crude, perhaps crass, perhaps less moral. There is a general feeling that we are on a slippery slope. General grossness has invaded the culture of refinement, thought quality, and human dignity/modesty. Graces are muted.
Are things improving or declining? There is no pat answer. Some features of our lives are better than ever. The best students are better than ever, as are the best musicians, the best machinery. The means for doing what we do are better than ever. But popular life culture appears in decline. It is driven by wandering vagabonds, not by creativity upwards. We ought to look for better things. As one analyst put it, we now give more time to gossip about celebrities. We have diluted the substantive dimensions in popular culture. It is always time for improved culture to emerge as better option. As Scripture attests, God is not really silent. God favors excellence, beauty, nurture, righteousness. He knows we need relief from the rigors of life, but that relief can also be nourishing to the mind and soul – and ought to be. When it is right it contributes to peace, health, rest and recovery. It relates to the demand for some variety in the thought and conduct of life. This is a challenge for value believers, to influence pop culture. It can be done. Young Christians ought to find it in their values and lead rather than merely follow. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020