Fitting In
My curious reader, it’s been a week since we last spoke, but it feels like so much longer to me. The new semester of school has rolled in, and the work has intensified with the new classes I have been placed in: AP American History has given more new projects, and science has forced me to pay for a specific brand of graphing paper (it looks just like most other kinds, only branded with the school’s name). I suspect the pace will quicken as time passes and I am able to adjust to everything, but we’ll see.
If you, curious reader, took note of the entry I wrote last week, “Advice on Teenagers“, it was probably because it sounded as if I was motivated by personal experience to write it. It was, in part, just what I observe on a daily basis: terribly impolite people who make fun of others, do drugs, sometimes with the explicit intent of hurting others. What went wrong? Why do I come across so many who want to improve society but only seem to hurt it?
I know, my curious reader, that there are many social programs out there that really do help people out of personal problems, and I wholeheartedly thank them for their efforts, but what good is a society that is competitive nearly to the point of ruthlessness?
Just as I typed that sentence, the word “peer pressure” drifted through my brain. I learned it first from D.A.R.E., an anti-drug program for young children. Peer pressure:
Peer pressure is a term describing the pressure exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change their attitude, behavior and/or morals, to conform to, for example, the group’s actions, fashion sense, taste in music and television, or outlook on life. #
And then it occurs to me: so many of the people whose character I dislike are making the jokes, doing drugs, to fit in. So many of the comments at the expense of others that I overhear seem to be almost an attempt to get attention, a desire for laughs from others. Don’t we often, after all, laugh at the plight of individuals, be it on TV or real life? Even if we don’t mean it?
It really is a shame, because it seems like so much of what I’ve written lately is almost pessimistic of others. Honestly, my curious reader, I believe in the good of humankind, it is just their bad deeds that makes me concerned for them. But society can make a comeback in that respect–I can feel it.
My curious reader, I expect you are probably getting tired of the fact I am still on this subject. I promise you, next Friday, I will write on a technology-related subject. Maybe the Macbook Air? Time will tell.
Leave a Reply