The sky is falling

Everyone remembers Chicken Little's fatalistic admonitions that "The Sky is Falling, the sky is Falling." Sometimes I get the same feeling when I read the editorial page of this and other newspapers. Day after day, we read about how terrible things are and how it's getting worse. We read about the decline of morals and civility and the horrible things that man wreaks on his fellow man. We read about the decline of civilization and how taking prayer and the Ten Commandments out of our schools has probably contributed to that decline. We read about how these are the "end times" for the world and how we need to get right with God before it's too late. To a whole lot of people, the sky really does appear to be falling. The only problem is that I think it probably isn't.

I mentioned in my column last week how we go through pendulum swings in this country. We have since it was founded and we will continue to do so. We go from conservative to liberal and back again. We go from religious to secular and back again. All of us have the ability to "cherry pick" only the information that supports our particular point of view and conveniently overlook any information that doesn't. That's what cynics, and critics and pessimists often do. They tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. That reflects a personal mind set rather than an objective analys is of reality.

We're not going through anything in this country right now that we haven't been through before. In fact, there are all sorts of examples that would suggest that things are "better" now than they have been in some time. I placed parentheses around better because that depends on one's individual perspective as well. The following is what I mean by "better."

The crime rate in this country has consistently gone down over the last several years. A phenomenon that hasn't occurred since the FBI started keeping the Uniform Crime Report. Homicides, in particular, are down nationwide. The divorce rate has actually stabilized and has, in fact, decreased a little over the past few years. Racism and sexism and bigotry are at all time lows. We seem to get along better with our fellow man than ever before. Technology has made everyone's lives easier and often more pleasurable and rewarding. Our standard of living is higher than it has ever been. Per capita income is higher than it has ever been. The jobless rate remains low. Life satisfaction scales are higher than they've been in some time. A lot of people would say that life in America in the new millennium is pretty darn good.

Of course we still have outrages that boggles the mind. But we've always had outrages because of the fallible nature of the human condition.

Long before prayer and the Ten Commandments were taken out of the schools, we had outrages. Look back at the crime rates of forty or fifty years ago. They were much higher than they are today. Judges, for example, have always been targets for certain deranged people. When I was a Tulsa police officer, I once was assigned to a unit that literally lived in a judge's house for almost a month to protect him after someone had blown his car up with him in it.

Thankfully, he survived but without a couple of limbs he had before the explosion. During that same time period, I remember talking to a "hit man" I had assisted in arresting who talked about killing people for hire the way you and I talk about going to get an ice cream cone. He excused his behavior by saying it was only a job and if he didn't do it, someone else would. Some of you can remember back to the 3‚s, 40s, and 50s when the Mafia was in its heyday and hardly a month went by without some mob boss being "whacked" in a restaurant, or outside a restaurant, or walking down the street. And whenever that happened, mob "wars" broke out between competing sides and people were killed by the dozens.

Many of us remember when African-Americans were defined in some state constitutions as being "less than human" and were consequently treated like that. When women were considered to be the property of their husbands and their only jobs were to be "barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen." Anyone in the minority, whether it was race, gender, religion, ethnic, or sexual were seen and defined as inferior to those in the majority.

And who can forget the great depression where millions of people lost everything they had and thousands committed suicide because of it. Or the "dust bowl" years of the 30s when people lost their farms and their income and their way of life due to situations they had no control over.

Many people who use selective memory look back on their history as "the good old days" when, in fact, for many those days weren‚t so good at all.

People have been predicting Armageddon since shortly after Christ was crucified and have continued to do so ever since, although the Bible tells us that no man will know when that day will come. So, since no man will know, I think that these aren't the "end times." In fact, I think that things aren't too bad at all during this particular time in history. Things have been a lot worse in the past and will most likely be a lot worse in the future. The old pendulum swing, you know.

Maybe we just ought to try and enjoy life a little more. Maybe we ought to try seeing the glass as half full instead of half empty. Maybe we should try to look on the bright side instead of the dark side.

Since it's the only life we have.