Together not Apart

There was one central theme that attached each story to each other. The idea that we are not together really struck me. As Cornell West stated, “we are all in the same boat, in the same turbulent sea, the boat has a huge leak in it and in the end we go up and down with it, together.” His statement here relates to the idea of our society being split and how our care for each other is waning. In America today, we are becoming a two-person society. There is the rich and there is the poor. The middle class is slowly declining, which is not okay. We cannot have a society where the middle working class cannot support them and begin to fall below the poverty line. In our so-called “Democracy”, we see government officials rewarding the rich with more tax cuts, while the poor receive nothing. How can we believe that this will help our society? You cannot run a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer Cornell West believes that we people need to start speaking out, even if it means no one will listen. It is the fact that we are still trying to fight for a true democracy and believe in our moral stance.

Hope. That is what this country still needs to believe in. We need to believe that there is hope for society to wake up one day and realize the unethical actions they are preforming on humans. When this happens and we see the destruction we have caused and the harm we have done, “we will start to endure and find ways to lessen the complications and gain skills”. (Jane Goodall) This represents the humanistic ethics that we can start understanding. We can realize what is “good for humans” and what is “bad for humans”, but the only way to start is by loving. Like how God always says to love thy neighbor, we need to love each other rather than only our self. Love can be turned into anything and it does not help when society pushes people away because of their “mushy emotions and syrupy stuff”(Cornell West). Children and education can play a huge part in this love idea. Children need to be molded by the ones who love and raise them. They need the proper guidance and right mindset to go out and do extraordinary acts. The education allows them to shape their mind and without the proper tools they can become empty. Empty from lack of support, lack of care, lack of guidance, or lack of belief. As our society reaches 323 million people, we need to “focus on the nonmarket values” rather than materialistic values.