Where have all the flowers gone?

 "Training yourself to live in the present - without regretting the past or fearing the future - is a recipe for a happy life."

JIM LOCKWOOD HUIE

A number of years ago, a friend and colleague and I were having a conversation. It was around the time when reality shows were exploding onto the scene. In case after case, these shows promoted the worst behavior imaginable. And people were eating this stuff up.

It was like a new form of crack. Viewers couldn't get enough of ill mannered boorish behavior.

I remember commenting that I believed there would be a push back.

As a society, we couldn't possibly continue to support such offensive trash and eventually there was sure to be a righting of the ship.

We were bound to get back on course.

Boy was I wrong.

Chivalry and all other forms of sensibility are in fact dead.

Today we celebrate all of the wrong things and we do it with gusto,

splashing it out over any medium that will carry it.

TV, Social media, film, and in our educational systems.

Words like respect and humility have no meaning any more.

Dress codes?

Unheard of.

Proper etiquette?

There is none.

Common decency ?

Gone.

All have been replaced by self indulgent bad behavior.

There is no such thing as rude anymore. It's common place.

Back in the day, Rudy Giuliani instituted what became know as the Broken Windows campaign in NYC.

Start by cleaning up the small stuff, like broken windows and work your way up the ladder until eventually we can tackle the bigger problems.

Today, all of the windows are broken!

Trash lines our streets. Not only literally, but figuratively.

I fear that I was wrong when I predicted that there would be a course correction, that common decency would eventually win out.

It's a damn shame.

Truly a damn shame.

Shabbat Shalom!