The civil rights movement and letting go of the past.

I wrote this after reading Mr. Filco's commentary on letting go of the past in the Williamsburg Gazette. Septemeber 2022. 

"Why Isn't Everyone Enlightened?

 

I had been thinking about Joesph Filco's commentary on letting the past go. If all it took was "following your bliss," why wouldn't everyone be as enlightened as Mr. Filco? It seems that the pathway to get there is barred by the necessity of a passage through hell, which is something few people want to go through. I think about Mr. Filco's perceived course through the suffering of the early 1960s and how that shaped his thought process. We all believe the world needs more good, and yet I think evil is necessary. Without evil, the human has no baggage to pull in his life's cart. Humans are, by nature, oxen in a sense. When the weight is lifted, the oxen become fat and lazy, and envy becomes our only baggage, the worst of all sins. I think that is what has happened to our society, where hard work is no longer revered; envy takes its place. Could it be that government intervention in the 1960s movement destroyed a part of our society? 

My main goal as a parent of two children was to let them fail. Let the children find out what a good work ethic looks like. Yet, when the child got close to the edge of a bad decision, I offered a hand to pull them back. The most difficult decision I had to make was when to hold out my hand. Did the civil rights movement go too far in protecting a society of people who rightfully deserved equal opportunities and deserved to fail when poor decisions were put into action? Was the helping hand held out too many times? Indeed we have all witnessed the helicopter parents of today's children and wonder aloud how that child will ever become an adult without evil, the opportunity to fail and learn from it. Have free government subsidies, women with children married to the government, destroyed the family structure where no father can hold out his hand? Are we ready to look back and admit things did not go as planned, and will we ever be able to pull our hand back in the interest of failure?