Simply Millennial

I’ve had many parents tell me over the years that one of the heaviest burdens they have in parenting their children is the need to protect them from sadness and pain. They want to prolong the feeling of despair or anguish. While this is understandable, it’s pretty much a waste of energy, no?

We all recognize that the characteristic separating us as humans from the rest of the world’s organisms is our awareness of emotion and memory. And I’m sure this is why the older we get, and the more knowledge we obtain, the more cynical we tend to become. Staying optimistic becomes harder and eventually most people give in to one of the scariest concepts I’ve come to know – inevitability.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Most people in our country, however, make the wrong choice in trying to take away their cynicism.

Have you ever met those types of people who are incredibly optimistic? The ones that make you feel kinda’ ill? In my personal experiences, most of these individuals are religious fundamentalists–mostly Western religious fundamentalists. Okay, I’ll say it -mostly they are Christians. Whenever I present a personal dilemma to these individuals, they usually respond by stating that my real problem is the lack of Christ in my heart. “If only you became a Christian Lynette, then you would be happier…”

Excuse me, but I beg to differ.

If stereotypes exist because of truth, then Catholics are alcoholics, Southern Baptists are racists, and Evangelicals are closeted pill poppers. And let’s not forget the child molesting preachers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any of these scenarios create anything close to optimism or happiness.

So really, what I think makes these individuals seem so happy isn’t really the acceptance of the Messiah into their hearts, but rather the choice to stop the flow of knowledge from entering into their brains. Basically, they believe that what they don’t know won’t hurt them. And if they do realize a truth that makes them uncomfortable, they just change it to make them feel better about the whole thing, i.e. The New Testament. The last thing they want to feel is cynicism, and they’ll prefer fantasy if it means avoiding it.

I am a strong proponent for imagination and creativity. But when it comes at a disadvantage to the betterment of the world, I firmly believe reality should prevail instead.

The correlation between knowledge and cynicism brings to mind the stark difference I see between faith and hope. People constantly use these two words incorrectly. Faith is the belief or devotion to somebody or something without logical proof. Hope, however, is to have a wish that something will happen or be true, especially something that seems possible or likely. I think our country, and our world, would be better off if we acted on hope, not faith.

With only 14% of the American population not identifying themselves as a member of any religion (Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2004-2005. U.S. Census Bureau), it’s no wonder our country is in total disarray.  Without knowledge, we don’t understand the consequences of our actions. Namely I’m speaking about the total disregard of scientific fact in our society with regard to the environment, healthcare and even sociology.

The faithful are the real elite snobs in our society, replete with all their judgment and hypocrisy and total disrespect for the true nature of how the universe works. We cannot fight pain and suffering, or believe that we can remove it completely from our lives. (Especially if it means believing in a fictitious story.) Without it, we would not understand happiness. The whole universe runs on the principle of balance and contrasting ideas. Fighting this simple flow of energy causes nothing but unnecessary grief.

Having broken all of this down, I have come to the conclusion that knowledge does not have to lead to cynicism. Knowledge troubles us only if we do nothing with it. Resisting knowledge and not seeking it creates much more cynicism because, well, it’s just not natural. Soon enough “la-la land” becomes polluted with reality, and faith is destroyed anyway. Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut out the faith part and go straight for hard facts?