Our Quick Change Society

Incredible changes have taken place in the past hundred years. We are experiencing more change than ever in history. The rate of change is so great that we barely catch our breath before another blast of change slams into us. Everything we’re familiar with is changing, right before our eyes.

We are forever on the move - doing things, eating things, working writing, marrying, divorcing, shopping - you name it – we humans are doing it! The pace is somewhere between maddening and insane. People are coming and going twenty-four hours every day.

When I was a kid, we would go on vacation and we would leave home very early in the morning. I can remember driving at that early hour down the interstate highway, and you would just see the occasional car. There was no traffic. But today, it does not matter what road you drive on or what hour you drive on them, all you see is cars, cars, and more cars. It just never stops.

If you look at the people you see in the supermarket or in the cars next to you, they never seem to be smiling anymore. Their faces reflect the tension.

The air is polluted. The earth shakes. Yale and 71st Avenue is so crowded, people actually try to drive further just to avoid the congestion. Nerves are shot. And as if that were not enough, the streets are getting more dangerous with all these sniper shootings on the Broken Arrow Expressway.

I read the following paragraph the other day. It was obviously written by a rare individual who is not in a hurry. Maybe he just had way too much time on his hands. It reads:

"This is the age of the half-read page; the quick hash; and the mad dash; the bright night with the nerves tight; the plane hop and the brief stop.

It is the age of the lamp tan in a short span; the big shot in a good spot; and the brain strain and the heart pain; no time to rest, just catch a catnaps till your spring snaps - and then, well, then all the fun we’ve been having is over and done."

Unfortunately, we live in a quick-change society.

In this part of the homeland, the very center of America, we have been able to keep some semblance of normalcy, but in most parts of the country, chaos reigns. We seem to be on the fast pace to an ugly place.

Let me give you a few statistics to show what is happening in America.

Every day:

· 108,000 of us move to a different home.

· 18,000 move to another state.

Every day:

· 167 businesses go bankrupt.

· 689 new ones start up

· 100 Americans become millionaires.

· Millions more go hungry

On the good side:

· We eat 75 acres of pizza every day.

· We eat 53 million hot dogs.

· We eat 3 million gallons of ice cream

· We eat 3,000 tons of candy.

More information has been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand years. More than one-half the scientists who have ever lived are alive today.

Ninety per cent of all the items in the supermarket today did not exist just ten years ago. It is estimated that 73% of college graduates are going into jobs, which did not exist when they were born – 22 short years ago.

George Washington traveled from Virginia to Washington D.C. by horseback. It could take him ten days traveling at a speed of twenty-five miles per day.

The astronauts that just came back to earth last week traveled at over 25,000 miles per hour. At that speed you could fly from New York to San Francisco in just a couple of minutes.

One man put it this way:

"My great-grandfather rode a horse, but was afraid of the train. My grandfather rode on a train, but was afraid of a car. My father rode in a car, but was afraid of an airplane. I ride in an airplane, but I’m afraid of a horse."

· movies have gone from silent to unspeakable.

· we used to have 3 networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS;

· we now have 750 channels – showing the same program!

· and by the time we do find the program we want – it’s over!

Many of these changes have turned our world into a war game. Whereas war used to be held on a war front in some other country, we now find inner city wars between gangs in our own cities.

Political corruption abounds.

In the fifties the major discipline problems in our public schools were cigarette smoking, skipping class, running in the halls.

Today - the major problems are deadly weapons, drugs, and alcohol.