Transcript
Ignorance as a Social Progress Downfall By Christopher Balmer "'The law must be stable, yet it cannot stand still.' The words are those of Roscoe Pound. They refer to the two ideals that must be harmonized and reconciled: stability and change. Stability requires a continuity with the past, and is necessary to permit members of a society to conduct their daily affairs with a reasonable degree of certainty as to the legal consequences of their acts. Change implies a variation or alteration of that which is fixed and stable. Without change, however, there can be no progress." The above paragraph was taken from a document written by the Honorable Edward D. Re, Chief Judge United States Customs Court. The above advocates the need for stability within our country utilized by assuring that the laws of this land are stable. Society today is far from stable, in my opinion, due to the vast amounts of individuals who live in our society allowing ignorance to overwhelm them in their lives. Anybody who possesses common sense which there are a lot of those people out there that have not allowed ignorance to take them over, can recognize that there are not enough individuals out there that understand how America operates. Members of society need to be educated in regards to their natural rights that which they have as human beings. Without the knowledge obtained, social progression will never materialize nor will there be stability or change. Instead the system will continue to crumble until there is no way of restoration. The ways individuals nowadays are raised cultivates ignorance within their hearts. American schools refuse even to educate children about the true history of this country. Schools don't even have the respect for our own children. It was always explained to me that reading books would one day provide me with the answers to my questions that have never been answered. Today that saying from a staff member who was employed at the South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit for boys in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, has always stood true. Schools taught me that the founder of this country was Christopher Columbus who sailed the ocean blue. Which, if true, would be the beginning of the development of our country called the United States of America. In truth, Christopher Columbus never touched American soil. The land so-called discovered by this European was 160 miles away from America. Our country didn't formulate in peace. The Europeans developed this country by murdering those who were already inhabitants of this country in order to take over the land that they allegedly discovered. Europeans murdered, stole and raped until they stripped those inhabitants already here of all that they had until there was no choice for them but to give it up. Then those settlers claimed America. Without knowing how this country was truly developed, everybody will never know how evil of a country we live in. Our own fellow Americans have even kept their own kind in the dark, afraid that if knowledge is obtained, there would be no stability or control of the people living here. Ignorance has definitely hindered social progress. As long as ignorance overpowers wisdom, unity of the people can never take place in order to ignite the promotion of a very special document signed into the American government: the Declaration of Independence. Signed into congress on July 4, 1776, this document had more power than expected. Here is a part that I agree with 100% and wish people would utilize: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." How many normal Americans without an education in American history would know that our own declaration gives us the right and duty to overthrow the same government first developed. I cannot expect my fellow people to know something like this when they have been forced in the dark for so many years. All I can do as a fellow American citizen is in all ways possible educate those around me in order for them to grasp the knowledge necessary that is needed to understand the convoluted issues most prominent in our lives without recognition of the clearly difficult issues storming into our lives each day we stay in a realm of ignorance: the same ignorance that keeps us from progressing as Americans. Without progression, we all stay stagnated, making life difficult for all of us. "Humanity by nature is gifted to think freely but in order that this free thought should lead him to the goal of liberty and independence, his way of thinking must be shaped by the process of education." Emperor Haile Selassie I, 1946. (c)\0xFE0FOctober 27, 2012 by Christopher Balmer
