Scott Swanson
Class of 2023 graduates, you face many new challenges.
You’re moving into an adult world that’s becoming increasingly topsy-turvy, thanks to a lot of things – COVID hangovers, social media weirdness, new rules (or lack thereof) for social and political discourse, changing values, ongoing and new threats, etc. etc.
We’re surrounded by conflict, controversy, criticism, rancor, dogmatic snideness, a lack of respect for other views (notice, we didn’t say “agreement,” we said “lack of respect).” Rank intolerance. These days, for too many people, it’s “my way or the highway.” We’re excessively self-focused.
These are the results as our nation and our society, driven by secularization and individualism, of subjectivism and homogenization, seems to be throwing off traditional values and general beliefs that used to be appreciated.
Frankly, in the space available here, it’s almost impossible to adequately even scratch the surface of all that, but there’s a lot of overlap with some of these issues.
Few of us would likely argue that the COVID pandemic, for instance, did not foment a rising level of stress for not just young people, but for just about everyone.
As we, collectively, fixated on whatever it was that we found to occupy our attention during that year and a half, some bad habits may have developed.
We say “developed” because these things didn’t necessarily start during COVID. The seeds have always been there, but like that carnivorous plant in “Little Shop of Horrors,” they were fed by confusion, fear, loneliness, stress, social isolation, disappointment, etc., etc.
What’s a young person supposed to do with all this? Ignore it? Engage it all? Pick the spots in which you feel most comfortable and hunker down there? Assert yourself?
We suggest that an increasing focus on ourselves, away from the values that helped establish our nation – acknowledgement of God (a higher authority than ourselves) and attention to principles espoused in the best-selling book of all time (the Bible) – is contributing to the confusion and the aforementioned problems we face as a society.
One of the curses of our age is the rise of relativism, of which you may have already received a dose. That’s the notion that truth is what we make it since there is no real universal truth.
Which is false.
When you look around you, you see a natural world that operates in an orderly fashion, on principles that are not negotiable. For instance, if you hold a brick over your foot and let go, what’s going to happen? There is truth.
In the same way, there are moral standards, which used to be acknowledged as “natural law,” that apply to us, which are not simply “cultural imperialism” we hear about so much in today’s world. They include such things as respect for life, the value of reproduction, of education, of worshipping or seeking God, the value of social life, of avoiding offense, and shunning ignorance.
When societies reject any of these, bad things happen.
If you go on to college, you’ll be inundated with principles of human wisdom that don’t necessarily include the above.
Fact is, even though we hold miniature computers in our hands and drive cars that talk to us, we’re no smarter than our forebears, who lived in different times and saw things differently.
Life has always been difficult because we are not God, even though we (or at least our leaders) would like to be.
Seek real truth, real wisdom, whether you become a blue collar worker or a brain surgeon.
That’s our advice.