A Quote by Henry Giroux
All that young people are promised today are the rewards of a shallow materialism and a degree that is defined primarily as a job credential, one that ironically does not even live up to its own claims of guaranteeing either decent employment or a better way of life.
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But the blessing Christ promised, the blessing of great reward, is a reward of grace. The blessing is promised even though it is not earned. Augustine said it this way: Our rewards in heaven are a result of God's crowning His own gifts.
With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
I believe that a lot of people in our society today, people who have been hurt and even people who haven't been hurt, get their worth and value from what they do, what they look like, what they own, what kind of job they have, what kind of house they live in, how much money they have, what social circles they're in, what level of education they have, especially even how other people respond to them. They feel better about themselves if everybody is giving a smiling nod to the way they look and all their choices.
And look, we have young people in this country who are thirty years old living with their parents. We have young people in this country who don't have jobs, who graduate from college and are fed the lie of meritocracy. "You get a degree, you get a job." That's not happening. We have young people who have become the Zero Generation: zero hope, zero employment, zero possibilities. Do we really believe that this young generation is going to stand by and not take note of an economic system that - however it calls itself - has completely betrayed them?
Every time another tribe becomes extinct and their language dies, another way of life and another way of understanding the world disappears forever. Even if it has been painstakingly studied and recorded, a language without a people to speak - it means little. A language can only live if its people live, and if today's uncontacted tribes are to have a future, we must respect their right to choose their own way of life.
I would always advise young people to follow their star - not my star. They have to live their own life. If they decide they want to go into the investment business, do it, but make it a better business than it is today.
All of us have to do a better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by the words other people use against them.
From my old neighborhood, I learned nothing was guaranteed, not even life itself. You better get it today, because tomorrow is not promised.
Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.
Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.
We tend to think that employment is employment, and we don't ask the question: is this rewarding employment? Research establishes pretty clearly that typical notions of happiness - that more is better - really don't correspond to the way people think and feel.
I would like people to remember that I kept the peace when I was president and I worked for peace, that I espoused human rights in its broadest definition, not only freedom of speech but freedom of assembly, freedom of worship and trial by jury but also the right of people for people to have a decent home to live, food to eat, employment, healthcare, self respect, dignity. So I think the broad gamut of human rights, peace and freedom. I would like to be remembered for those things to the degree that I deserve it and I still have a long way to go.
By remaining exactly the same today as you were yesterday, you are guaranteeing that tomorrow will be no better than today.
If I'm a young mom or young dad, I can find a great source of strength. God has promised that He will help me to be the mom or dad that He wants me to be. He has promised to be with me every step of the way. He has promised that He will never leave me or forsake me. These are wonderful promises that I can learn to trust and build a life on.
I think that one of the greatest challenges we have today is around education. One of the things that is dividing us more and more is whether you have good prospects or you don't. Do you live a neighborhood where the schools are good? If you don't, your kids may not read until the time they're in third grade. Do you at least have access to a community college that will give you job training skills so that if you don't go for four years you will at least come out with a decent job and a decent wage. Too many people don't have that opportunity.
Every successful organization has to make the transition from a world defined primarily by repetition to one primarily defined by change. This is the biggest transformation in the structure of how humans work together since the Agricultural Revolution.
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