Questioning the Status Quo

Questioning the Status Quo

Why do we measure achievement in money?

Why do we allow ourselves to be held hostage by tradition?

Why is the food pyramid still taught in schools?

Why is birth control not encouraged along with aid to impoverished nations?

Why, after we won the right for a 40 hour working week, did we throw in the towel?

Why do older kids do better at school

and sport?

Why is there no consistency of care for our vulnerable youth?

Why do we have a four-term school year?

Why were women expected to stay at home,

expected to work,

and finally expected to do both?

Why does everybody shrug and say,

that's the way it is, because that's the way it's always been.,

Since when has that lie been an acceptable answer?

Many things have a long and revered history,

racism

slavery

cannibalism...

Fine, the history isn't revered, but at the time

Such behaviours were accepted as normal,

even respected, worshiped,

as the order of things.

The fight against the old evils isn't over,

while the fight against new evils has just begun.

But let us not start with,

"That is the way things have always been."

In the past they were worse.

Don't we have more hope than that for the future?

For the youth we farm out
to schools to welcome them in
and throw them away
four times a year,

How could we care so little? 

A..J. Ponder 

Sometimes it's not the perfect answer that is needed but the perfect question. Sometimes it seems to me that we do things simply because they seem the right thing to do, or we use emotion or tradition or simply what other people are doing to make our decisions rather than looking at all the information objectively. 

It seems wrong to allow ourselves to become so complacent, especially now when times are tough and making good decisions is more important than ever.  Because when there's no room to question the decisions we make, individually and as a society then there is no real freedom.