Me and Now - News With Views

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D

December 5, 2023

In the 1800s as people moved westward across the U.S., wherever a town was begun, people used to help each other. If a farmer broke his leg, others would get in his crops, do his laundry, etc. This attitude of helping your neighbor continued to be widely practiced through the 1950s. I remember my Aunt Eloise took food to a sick neighbor. But now, things have dramatically changed.

On July 6, I had horrific car crash when a small truck hit my car. There has been a lot of pain and suffering and medical expenses since then, with me going to a wound and pain clinic. As a single person, I often went to a cafeteria for lunch or dinner, with many people knowing me there and what happens to me. However, not one has called me and asked, “Can I help you?” In the past, it was customary for people to ask others if an injured or sick person needed help (e.g., transportation, food, etc.). Of the NewWithViews writers, only “Coach Dave” has helped me.

The new life philosophy is “Me and Now,” because that’s what’s important to most people today. A girl went through a stop sign in front of me because all that was important to her was what she wanted at the time. The 1950s were known as slow-paced President Eisenhower years. But by the 1960s, George Orwell’s prophecy of “a quickened life tempo” had begun. People began to say “I don’t even have time to think” as they rushed from here to there.

By the end of the 1960s, the hippies were on the scene with slogans like “Look for number 1,” “What’s in it for me,” “If it feels good, do it,” and “Free love.” It was the latest version of the Garden of Eden wherein Eve said, “Not God’s will, but Eve’s be done,” as she ate the forbidden fruit! None of this happened by accident. In the 1890s, Friedrich Engels (Marx’s co-author of the Communist Manifesto) had written a published essay calling for women to leave the home and go to work, thus leaving their children to the State to rear and educate. This was made official policy in Arthur Calhoun’s 1919 three-part book series on the American family which became a popular and widely used college textbook on social work. It referred to families as representing the age of savagery while the State represented the age of trained “experts” rearing children!

In 1918 a news story in the Knickerbocker Press quoted War Industries Board chairman Bernard Baruch as saying, “We now live under Socialism where a person’s life is in service to the State.” Women increasingly have put their children in day care, and when the children get older, they put their parents in nursing homes where many cry in their pain and loneliness because their children only really care themselves and now!

Some decades ago, the letters IBM represented “I’ve Been Moved.” Many companies followed IBM’s example, so employees developed no roots in the community. People did not watch out for each other’s children and they were clueless that if they lived in a neighborhood of 13 homes, one of those is owned by the Chinese, probably spies. They were also clueless to the fact that Power Elite member Klaus Schwab’s, mentored by the late Henry Kissinger, prediction that “by the year 2030, you will own nothing but be happy” is a signal that we will return to feudalism (see my July 24, 2006 NewsWithViews article “Our Feudal Future.”). For the hippies, women were just to be used for pleasure (sex) rather than be loved and cared for. The only thing that mattered was “Me and Now” gratifications. Abortions, divorce, and crime increased as a result, and real lasting love decreased.

Are you going to do something about this, or only be concerned about yourself and now? The Holy Bible in Matthew 16:24 says “deny yourself.”

E-Mail Dennis Cuddy: recordsrevealed@yahoo.com