It’s amazing to me the depths to which society has sunk in recent decades. Discourse, humanity, civility, respect … all societal traits that are withering and dying, victims of the elimination of a common social morality. So many are committed to the idea that each person is a moral island. Such thinking dissolves the bonds of a society. Without a common social morality, we’re all just drifting alone, instinctively clinging to any whose moral values mirror our own, transforming society into warring tribes.

It seems when I was a child I might see a relationship end, perhaps with some hard feelings but people would remain civil toward one another. Now everything seems to mandatorily become a melodramatic production and bitter feud. And now not just in divorce at the end of a marriage, but at the end of dating relationships as well. Children have studied the bitter divorces of adults and replicated them in their own relationships.

Too few remember that the human being possesses three areas of health in need of constant maintenance, sustenance and care: physical health, mental health, and spiritual health. If one suffers, it drags the other two down with it. This used to be common knowledge taught in health classes. Now children are instead taught how to procreate without consequence.

The human race needs and desires a return to civil society. And the only way this will ever happen is if individuals become more mindful of their health and sustain all three areas. Rebuild.

Mark Elfering

Hermiston