Social Pressure

Look up. Look around. Do we pause to understand what external dynamics influence our personal opinions, biases and behaviors? Do we control how we socially interact with others within the framework of our own self-culture? Is our self-culture moral and ethical; do we operate in the world with integrity?

We are each distracted and pressured by social dynamics, conditioned and influenced into behavior patterns we may not be aware of. Unwise use of social media and wasteful screentime have dummied down American society; split us up and degraded our relational integrity. News media is motivated to shock and alarm us, to keep us mindlessly clicking on the hateful bait. Amazon has us hooked in, the blue trucks are rolling; it's Christmas every day. Wall Street drives the over comparative, overcompetitive rhythm of extreme materialism into the waiting population of "give us more." Political activism is extreme, causal to horrific violence, anti-social behavior and increased threats of physical harm to public officials.

Religious differences, racism, immigration hate, and global conflicts persistently divide Americans; the intelligent advancements of man have not improved the ignorance of our intolerance. US politicians are socially immature, unable to work professionally as one Congress to create, pass and foster policy that helps and unifies the people they supposedly serve. Congress is a clash of egos under the thumb of one massive ego; these people are not helpful to the common American; we are fragmented by our broken democracy.

So, what gives? We, the everyday people of America do the work. We take it upon ourselves, in our homes, in our schools, in our gyms and where we worship. We get to it; we instill moral self-cultures into our youth, create or modify our own self-cultures, and collectively make the United States of America a nation of wisdom, not one of narcissism. We institutionalize social integrity; we push it upstream, where it's needed most.