Back in high school when I took Driver’s Education, we sat through many boring hours of classroom instruction before being allowed to do what we really wanted to do, which was get behind the wheel. One snippet of advice stuck. Our instructor told us that you can be ‘dead right’ but it is better to be ‘alive wrong.’ His point was that we needed to be alert and defensive drivers. Yes, a green light meant that we could legally go, but if someone at the intersection looked like they might run the red light, we would be wise to waive our rights.
Well, you can be ‘politically correct dead right’ and automatic lock-step with the latest trend or you can be ‘alive wrong.’ Quite frankly, trends are evolving so quickly that it is a full-time job to differentiate between satire and reality.
There are upsides to these cascading trends. For example, if we accept the nonsense that is being taught in formerly serious universities and agree that gender is a now meaningless term, we can finally silence the shrill cries for the United States to have a female president. If there is no rigid, biological classification of female, then there can be no definitive first woman president. Millions of gender obsessed citizens formerly classified-as-women can actually vote on more important criteria than genitalia.
Yet, that positive spin hardly makes up for the confusing and convoluted ideas being promoted today, whether they involve social, economic, moral, political or religious concepts. It is both reassuring and troubling to realize that similar mayhem has appeared before. The human race has muddled through times of upheaval over and over, involving grievous suffering for individuals, but eventually carrying on.
After the horrific events of 9/11, the New York Times, day after day, ran short biographies of each of the people killed in the World Trade Center attack. Almost sixteen years later, I took another look at those writings and, amidst the tragedy of lives cut short by evil, one thing stands out. Relationships. With extremely rare exceptions, the bios feature the person’s spouse, children or siblings speaking of rather ordinary sounding individuals who were far from ordinary to the people they loved. The bios sound quaintly old-fashioned as committed love, marriage, family and responsibility appear and reappear as themes.
Those themes are given lip service but not truly valued by today’s fashionable society, forcing anyone who does value them to deliberately and unceasingly fight the prevailing milieu. We can be ‘dead right’ and run our lives according to fleeting ideas that will be treated like phrenology (the study of bumps on one’s head) and alchemy (the ability to turn base metals into gold) years from now or we can aim for being ‘alive wrong’, by accepting responsibility for analyzing, dissecting and evaluating the underlying truth or falseness of the ideas bombarding us.
Dear Susan,
I really appreciate your comments and observations as well as those of your subscribers. Your comment about ordinary people being important to someone really got to me. Most people would call my wife an ordinary house wife – but – I really don’t know what I would have done without her for the past 50 years. To me and our children she really is a hero.
That is exactly the feeling I got reading these obituaries. Whether someone was a new immigrant working as a janitor at the World Trade Centers or a high paid executive, in the end what mattered is the people he or she loved and by whom they were loved.
Thanks so much, Susan, for being the lighthouse in the fog, as usual. Our society gives the appearance of being messed up on every conceivable front, so at times it is hard to know in which direction to look to even find an uplifted viewpoint. Someone–possibly Dale Carnegie–once observed that in beginning a cross-country train trip, the engineer does not expect to see every signal green, just the one at the next point to be passed through. “Alive wrong”, at least we can continue our efforts.
That’s a nice Dale Carnegie statement, Deb. Thank you.
“For example, if we accept the nonsense that is being taught in formerly serious universities and agree that gender is a now meaningless term, we can finally silence the shrill cries for the United States to have a female president.”
Apparently, consistency is not one of the foundations of the modern left. I’m guessing they would disagree with you about a female president.
The same inconsistency occurs all the time, for example with the adulation of Islam vs. how women are treated in Islamic culture. (I had never heard of what you mentioned in your last sentence. This led me to delete it as I didn’t want to publish an accusation I know nothing about.)
Great as usual! To the followers of the One World order or any other Utopia, my answer to them it is always the same_If we all follow the ten Commandments, religious and non religious alike, this world would be a different world. What do I say, follow five of them and it would come a big change.
That God continues to blessing you.
One of the things we explain in our CD on the Ten Commandments is why it doesn’t work to try and follow only the five that seem rational to us – but your point is still well made.
I struggle with this on a personal level. A family member has declared themselves transgender and thrown quite the horseshoe into the family dynamics. In the meantime, I wish I could at least offer assistance with effects like depression and isolation but I am the last one to turn to- because I am ‘hateful’ and ‘Christian bigot’. I hope and pray that healing comes eventually- through God.
Lora, issues like these make for very difficult family interactions. It is very important to be able to stick with principles rather than losing our principles when the battle hits home. But as you know, the idea that we are full of hatred is a favorite canard of the Left. Dismissing someone’s choices or lifestyle doesn’t mean hating them.
I know a couple of people, one who is not yet 18, who have declared that they do not feel that they are their biological gender so they are medically and surgically changing it. I have read that a large percentage of people are not cured of this gender dysphoria by drastically altering their bodies and some eventually, although scarred and mutilated, return to their former gender. Unfortunately anyone who would try to talk them into finding a way to be happy with their biological gender, would be considered a bigot or at least an ignoramus so we must tell the naked emperor that his clothes are stunning. At the same time, we apparently harm these people by not finding ways to include them as the gender that they want to be and we don’t want to be unkind. And as far as relationships, these people are quite emotionally complicated and I don’t know what type of long term relationships they manage to sustain. They often blame the attitudes of society for their depression and lack of inclusion. I can’t blame or judge these people for being confused or even genuinely unable to live as they were made to live but they have to allow society time to adjust as well. And I would also say that if we were blessed with the ability to appreciate the way we were made by our Creator, that is another thing to be grateful for.
Leah, the only area I disagree with you is that I don’t think society should adjust to the idea that large numbers of people were born into the wrong gender. I think we are creating terrible problems by teaching people that gender is fluid.
And I have read that the LGBTQ-SQRZ crowd constitute but a fraction of 1% of the US population. In fact, Rush L. states unequivocally that the LGBTQ fraction largely outnumbers the KKK (et al.) white supremacists. And the Progressives argue as if the LBGTQ fraction amounts to ~30% and the KKK to ~25%. All in the drive to convince all of us that we are either victims or oppressors! Sorry, I am neither a victim nor an oppressor! I have three generations of ancestors named after presidents and no surprise: I support our current President.
Wise words, Ms. Susan! The underlying objective of the false teachings is sinister indeed: the false teachers seek to undermine the pillars of society, engaging the forces of programmed anarchy in their cause. They would shake the pillars of God himself, to facilitate the launch of their new Socialist Utopian Paradise, such as we have seen before in many other lands in other times, and wearing many false cloaks. In these false Utopias, belying their solemn sacred cow of ‘equality,’ the Party members always wind up more equal than the rest. And when the Socialist Utopia built on quicksand goes mysteriously sour, there is a mad search for the guilty, venomous punishment of the innocent, and God is banished as an artifact of bigotry and superstition. Yet our Scriptures teach, I believe St. Paul in Gal. 6.7, who warned us that “God is not mocked.” God will protect us, I hope. Otherwise, conservatives who value the original teachings based on solid rock will soon be ‘dead right.’
Great article as always Susan. Allisa
Thanks, Allisa.
Thank you for this post!! You continue to post relatable ideas in a way that I can teach my children!
If we don’t fill our children’s heads and hearts with the truth, others will fill them with wrong thinking, Diane.
Thanks, Susan, for your wisdom. The word of God is really the only reliable source of wisdom; God knows how we ought to build the foundations of our lives. I understand the priorities of my life to be God, family, country, then business. Nothing I’ve learned has shaken that priority system.
The biggest struggle I have is how to reject discouragement and cynicism in light of the bombardment of lies and misinformation that surround us. I’m seeking a new career and the narrative is I’m too old to do anything but become a ward of the state (I’m 57). “Give up.” “Give in.” “You’re useless.” “Your knowledge is old.” “Your experience doesn’t matter.”
Lies, all lies aimed directly at the heart. And God tells us “Above all things guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.”
So thank you again for your musings, they are good for my heart, and God says that’s a good thing. 🙂
I can’t wait to see what career path you choose to take, Kathy!