Social Commentary

“From the day we were born, we were all meant for this moment. Today, we will put an American on the moon” – Gene Kranz speaking of July 20, 1969, as seen on Moon Landing: The Day We Put a Man on the Moon, Discovery Channel – March 1, 2010 @ 9pm.

A guy I have come to admire is Gene Kranz, who was the NASA flight director on several Apollo missions, including Apollo 11 (moon landing) and Apollo 13. I’ve been watching him on the History and Discovery Channels giving his accounts of the historic events he had a part in at NASA. Kranz is the epitome of the can-do attitude that allowed the United States to reach the moon first. (I’m not going to argue with anybody about whether or not we actually made it to the moon. I think we did. If you believe otherwise, complain somewhere else.)

Kranz was a fighter pilot during the Korean War prior to joining NASA as Flight Director.  As such, he understood risks. He knew that every mission, even down to the training exercises, could result in the flight crew dying. Kranz wasn’t alone in this knowledge: All the astronauts and everyone at Mission Control knew they had a sizable chance of not making it home…

In spite of this, 400,00 people (the estimated number of people involved in the Apollo missions) pushed forward day-in and day-out to make sure an American set foot on the moon first. It was a matter of pride. The United States, in all its turmoil of the 1960s, came together to rejoice as Neil Armstrong delivered his famous line, “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

In addition to thanking the brave souls that braved the dangers and made it happen, I would like to thank the USSR for being the beautiful communist bastards that they were. They were truly an excellent common enemy. The USSR was cunning, had some of the smartest scientists in the world, and wanted to get to the moon as bad as we did. A scientific and engineering exercise was elevated to a contest of philosophies: capitalism vs. communism. Sure some people died, but the overall goal was to prove superiority. (No. I’m not saying the USSR was a good thing. But if you want to have a common enemy, here’s the one you would want.)

Today, America has one of the stupidest common enemies you could ask for: fundamentalist terrorists. It’s impossible for me to describe how much I despise these people without getting too profane, so allow me to articulate my disgust as tactfully as I can. These ignorant knuckle draggers blow stuff up, trying to kill as many people as possible in the process. This is so unimpressive. Humans have been killing one another for as long as there have been humans. You can literally beat somebody to death with a rock. So, these terrorists utilize modern weapons they aren’t even smart enough to invent to reek havoc. (I’m not going to debate that creating weapons is good or bad for anybody to do. Again, take it somewhere else.) Let me be very, very clear: I HATE fundamentalist terrorists SO MUCH!

With a common enemy like that, it’s no wonder this country can’t (or doesn’t want to) do something awesome. I think there are plenty of brilliant young engineers in this country, but what’s missing is the masses cheering them on from behind. How much pride can we get from killing more terrorists. Creating a weapon that kills more terrorists is so uninspiring. The terrorists don’t even care if they die as long as they can take out a bunch of us. The sense of competition is missing. Whether or not we like to admit it, humans crank out better stuff when there’s a competitive edge to whatever we are tying to do.

This is very much a rant against uninspired terrorism, but my point is that we do need an imaginative enemy to defeat. Either that, or a frontal lobotomy. I can’t decide which.

There are two reasons people do anything:

1. They want to to it
2. They are afraid not to do it

The thing that’s wrong with America is that nobody wants to do anything, and nobody is afraid of anything because consequences have been removed.

In education, the kids don’t want to learn and they have nothing to fear if they don’t. In society at large, nobody wants to work, and nobody is afraid of starving to death because of all the social programs we have. So, these two, simple little rules have managed to bring one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known to its knees.

The foundation that once made this country great is eroding…

I saw on the History Channel the other day that immediately following World War II, the United States was producing 80% of the goods in the world. At that time, our population was motivated, hard-working, and just downright productive. When our veterans returned home, they either got a job or took advantage of the GI Bill to further their knowledge.  During the 50s, 60s, and 70s, technology flourished as seemingly every able-bodied man, woman, and child focused on beating our Red enemies in the east in the Space Race. There were social upheavals, but in the midst of all that, Americans were industrious and patriotic.

The legacy of the Baby Boomers and their heightened productivity is gone. The youth today, for whom I have the responsibility of educating, have no dreams and no vision: They see only what they can easily attain today. Even if they do consider greatness, they do not consider the dedication it takes to achieve lofty goals. They don’t even realize what awesome things their grandparents (or at least their grandparents’ generation) achieved. The spirit of my personal heroes of technology, the kind of people who worked in dimly lit rooms at BB&N or Xerox PARC, is gone. The Greatest Generation embraced the tedium and hard work required to do something great, while the youth today hump up and quit if they aren’t greeted with instant satisfaction. NASA put men on the moon with slide rules, but the average student that walks through my classroom can’t even subtract two 4-digit numbers confidently without a calculator. What’s worse, when I try to teach them how, they say, “This is too hard” or “You are so mean!” So, their ineptitude, according to them, is my fault.

God forbid that today’s youth get a taste of defeat. Competition, complete with legitimate reward and failure, has been abolished in the name of self-esteem.  Now, every kid that plays gets a trophy. Why? Because we don’t want them to feel bad about themselves. Most elementary schools I know of don’t cut anybody from sports teams. Instead, they create multiple teams if there are enough kids that want to play a certain sport. Kids today have no concept of training hard and trying to make the team next year. It seems like every parent tries to convince their kid that they are worthy for sports or advanced placement, when in reality, majority of them are average (roughly 69%, if you assume that talent is normally distributed). Instead of assuring their kids that they are good at something, the youth today have been convinced their entire lives that they are good at everything! Self-esteem is great, but only if it is deserved. An overly-confident fool can wreck anything!

No Child Left Behind actually measures part of a high school’s success by graduation rates. On the surface, this seems good. In reality, though, it’s only serving to dilute an already watered down curriculum. There are only two ways to increase graduation rates: a) convince students they must work hard and do as the teachers ask them to, regardless of how difficult the task may seem or b) lower the bar so more students can jump over it. Educational administrators are choosing the latter because it’s impossible to achieve the former until parents and students are forced to accept the consequences of mediocrity. That’s hard to do when one of the consequence of failure to graduate has been removed from the equation.

I’m not saying that there aren’t brilliant young people today that are striving to do something great, however, the number of people who are pushing the envelope to make America the leader again is horribly on the decline.  There is no sense of duty. The rally call today is “Give it to me easy or don’t bother.”

And so, with no vision, no tolerance for tedium, no competition, and no consequences, the foundation of greatness has turned to mush. Most of the youth today reap the rewards of an entire generation’s hard work and contribute nothing.