Dan Harris, who is a reporter for ABC News, reported recently this summer that new research is showing that young Americans are less likely to attend church than their parents or grandparents. The one thing about God fearing people is that many of them learn what is right to do and what is not right to do as they age. Robert Putnam, who is a Harvard University professor, is proclaiming now that not long ago about 5-10% of Americans did not attend church and said they were of no religious affiliation in the country. Unfortunately in the article I read now that number might have jumped to an astounding 30-40% number. This is astounding to someone like my self because I attended a catholic school and church and I have never known any different. Once again I am not a perfect person but I do not what is right and what is wrong and have always given to others.
I am not in anyway putting anyone down for their religious beliefs, but it would be so weird to think that I was not answering to a higher person. I think if I felt I did not have to God knows the bad things I might have done in my life. I would think that for many sleeping with another person while married or stealing might if you do not believe in God would be an easy thing to do. The fear of the after life and not wanting to go anywhere but heaven when I do live this earth someday is a very powerful thing to religious people.
Putnam mentions in this article that over the last twenty years many younger adults have viewed church quit differently. Many view church as a source of intolerance and rigidity and full of doctrinaire political views. I know being catholic many people of catholic faith have become frustrated with the news of some past priests having some affairs with young boys and it has hurt their faith. Many have felt, how can they trust a man of God if they have done what they have done. What many must realize though is that the media is powerful and they have taken a select few and made a huge story out of it. There are so many priests and reverends out there and so many great men and women that are great loving people and changing the lives of many people. To let a few bad stories change to many peoples views on the good things that a church does is a sin in itself.
The future of America socially and religiously will be impacted so much by whether many youths practice good faith and respect some forms of religion in my opinion. When you hear these numbers of how many people are not going to church and learning the bible and the ways that the world has been for a long time is kind of scary. Now there are many religious people who are not always great people and many people who do not go to church that are good people and I know that. Being stereotypical is not the right way to look at this either. What we need to focus on is people becoming better people and learning to love thy neighbor a lot more in our country and the world.
Putnam whole-heartedly believes that with a lack of religious understanding and a following by good people, there will be a decline in civic and community engagements more in the future. This would be quit sad because close relationships and a true love of ones community has what has made America so great. My grandmother is 92 years old and her and I had a discussion about this very subject. I found it important to garner a picture of what the 1930’s and 40’s were like when she was growing up. She said communities in Chicago where she was from was so much fun. Guys would take girls on dates and they would go to community parks and listen to bands and go to drive-in movies and to malt shops. She said they would go golfing if they were athletic or the boys would play sandlot ballgames or play in the parks and life was just good. Life did not have to be all about getting drunk a lot and dancing to all the hours of the morning.
It is a known fact that people who go more to church or are more a part of their community, give more of them selves,vote more, and volunteer more and give to charity than those that do not. This country will not prosper if a lot of this would go away by the youths of today. They are going to be our future of this country. I know as my kids age I want them to listen more to music and read more and love sports and enjoy life. I will not want them to be raised to think that life so just be one big party all the time. It is this author’sbelief and it is just my opinion but children need to get back more to learning the bible and learning to respect and learn more from adults and just learn to carry more about people in general.
A new Gallup Poll a few years ago said the following and shows how the plight of religion attendance is shrinking in this country. Several thousand people were questioned on their current stance with religion and 55% of the people surveyed thought that religion was important. While 26% said it was somewhat important. Another 16% said that religion was not important to them in their lives at all and the 10 commandments meant nothing to them. This is starting to show a trend that religion might be fading in this country and I think it will hurt our country in the future.
There are some many great people in this country so I do not want it to come across that we live in such an evil country. That is not my intention because there are a ton of people that would take their shirt of the back for others. There are also so many people that when Hurricane Andrew crushed South Florida they came in droves and helped people they did not know. I am an optimist at heart and trust me that I want to see the goodness in people but there are entirely to many people though that need to become better people and we all see this. The problem though with these people in America I think is that religion or a stable upbringing is not a big priority in enough families.
I think with a little guidance for many of our churches we can see more people have more respect and love for one another. There then could be more love to spread across this nation and people would love to trust one another more. Also there are still many racial barriers that we have to overcome. There are to many people that either hate white people or Hispanics and or Colored People. You would hope that we would have learned over the years that this hatred has never gotten us anywhere. In time with more love many could develop a trust favor in man where they did not always have to believe the wool was being pulled over their eyes. Many more people in this country and even the world need to adhere to a higher moral and ethical code of conduct and that can start today. To many people seem to live almost among their own kind of gated area instead of trying to live amongst a gate community of people.
Over time we have learned you will never be a happy person if you only look after your own personal gain because people will not want to associate with people of that nature. Also to many people in our society today look at money as being the God of their world instead of the real God they should be looking up to. That is why many people continue to rob stores and shoplift daily and murder people, and a lot of time it is for money and what that can bring them. Money should never ever be valued over someone’s life.
The other vital thing that is killing the very makeup of this magnificent nation is the breakup of the family unit. There is a saying that “the family that eats together sticks together.” Marriage in this country is taking so very lightly and it is not treasured like it used to be. Think of so many of our grandparents that were married 50 and 60 years and there are a lot of them. With that there was stability in the family and kids knew they would come home to a father and a mother. Today if your spouse does not look good or is not as attractive as before, many just think I will trade that spouse in for someone else. That is particularly selfish when kids are involved because they will lose out more than anything. I came from a broken family myself when my parents divorced when I was five years old and I lost a lot. I had thank God two parents that have always loved me but it still brought a lot of hardship in my upbringing at times.
This week I saw that there was the 15th Anniversary of a special group called the National Fatherhood Initiative and it was founded in 1994 by a man locally here in near Lancaster, PA. The man is Don Eberly and he was a man that served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and under George W. Bush. This group has programs in prisions, in the military, in the YMCA’s and in churches. I love its message because it promotes men taking on the job of fatherhood with more importance than anything in their lives.
It promotes that without fathers in many families to be disciplinarians for children and an adult to look up families will lose out. This group released a national survey which examined the views of many mothers on fatherhood. Among the findings 93% of these women said there is a father absence crisis in the United States. That may be true or not because there are many great Dads out there but the fact is there are too many fathers not living with families and it is really hurting the United States. This is a great group and I love their message and that they are getting their message out there national to help make a change.
Touching again on the importance of family values and cohesiveness there was a recent study done in the United Sates that proves strong families and marriage is declining in our county. 40% of first time marriages end in divorce now. Kind of sad that 4 out of every ten wedding ceremonies we go to will end in a crushed heart by both spouses. In 1970 there were 4.3 million divorces and today in 2009 there are as many as 20 million. That is a huge jump over the last forty years and explains why we might have more unstable populace. The actual married population has dropped from 72% to 60% today and lets face it we are losing out because of this. That is a lot of children probably living with a single parent more of the time these days and it really does hurt children.
The United Sates I might as is not the worse in the way of divorce world wide though. Other countries are not faring any better than the United States. The divorce rate in Russia is 65%, Sweden 64%, US 49%, Germany 41% and Finland is 56% and finally France is at 43%. So no we are not the worst but for the sake of this book we have to be concerned with our countries status. The message here is that with a lot of these divided families in the United States and abroad it appears that we are heading to being a more lonely and unstable society than ever before. More people have to really start thinking of why they were married in the first place and do all they can to hold it together for the sake of others.
Look at all the affairs going on in this country. Just when you think there is that special couple out there someone is found out a lot of the time having an affair with someone else. This has to change in that the vows of marriage need to be more revered like they once were. People an not feel they can just jump out of a marriage because a more attractive person crosses their path. We are all human and the attractiveness of people can do funny things to our mind but we really need to change that. We must become a great deal more ethical and let our morals and thoughts lead us to better ways. If little one by one people make a change on how they handle their marriages what a great world we can all live in.
Another Gallup News Service poll recently shed some light on a new finding and this will not be a shock to a lot of people. The survey stated that American’s perception about our moral values in the United States as negative at a terrible 77% about the nation’s moral climate. So we all know this but how many people are making a valiant effort to change this. This up from 70%, from last year when people were polled. In 2002, it was sitting at 65% so it is safe to say that we are going in the wrong direction. When 7 out 10 people believe in their minds that we live predominately in an immoral world and country, how can we become great again. We have so many blessing in this country and so many great opportunities but no enough people are doing the right things and we all see this.
We can become great again when one by one each person wakes up tomorrow morning and evaluates only themselves to make even that little change. When Gallup News service questioned people if morality would be getting better in their opinion 81% said they thought it would get worst. What a pickle we have gotten ourselves into. It is probably because we have seen a lot of corruption in our government by some in by some of our company leaders themselves and it seems not to give us a lot of hope.
In conclusion, morally and ethically I wish I could report that we were doing great. I must reiterate that there are a tremendous amount of great people that are caring and spiritual people in this great country. I have been so blessed to know so many of them in my forty years of life. But unfortunately as the years have progressed with less going to church like more did fifty years ago, we may have lost touch with many of the good morals out there. Crime and violence and adultery and fraud by many seem to be more prevalent in our lives than ever. We must change our ways because for us, that believe in an after life, we will all be judged someday by someone a lot great than ourselves. For those that are not spiritual by their own choice, it will be so important that you remain as good people. Whether spiritual or not, we all have to reflect on our own lives and change those bad habits that are killing this country, for the betterment of us all for the sake of this great country.
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Action Steps for All Americans
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Chapter 14
America’s Workforce and Overall Happiness
“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing-Theodore Roosevelt
A recent article came out by Jeannine Aersa of the Associated Press for Economics. The article was about a Conference Board research group that did a study about the last 20-25 years with workers and their happiness at the workplace. It is completely back up something I have seen for many years in our country. The article brought out how only 45% of Americans are currently satisfied with the jobs they do day in and day out in this in this country. That is staggering because I have always believed and others have that “if your job is awful a lot of your life with follow suit.”
Many people spend 10-12 hours a day getting to work and working and later getting back home to the comforts of their homes. If it takes everything you have to muster the desire to work at your job and you are miserable at your job, life can become a true nightmare and quit depressing. Stress and depression ranks in the top three things that employee assistant professional see employees (EAP) for companies. 43.7 billion dollars in absenteeism from work is lost by companies in the US every year and a lot of that for stress and depression. If you are a person who works 40-50 hours a week doing something you loathe, it will become impossible to see many of the positives of life or feel excited about future.
Over the past two years in this country, we have seen one of the most difficult economic times of many of our lives. Unfortunately we live in an “employers market” where companies can offer lower salaries or no salary at all like I have seen with some companies in my own insurance industry. Many people have felt in this employer’s market, that companies freely micromanage them and cut their benefits and increase their hours and flatly are not concerned about their overall happiness. This has led many employees to become less able to travel as much or enjoy vacations with family members or do things they could in the past. That is a blue print for many employees to become more stressed and less happy in their lives.
If I myself have to hear from one more person at work, that they have to be on some form of antidepressant because of the stresses of work I might get ill myself. The fact is that workers in the past 30 years do not like many of their jobs and it is showing in our productivity as a nation. Many of our own parents and grandparents looked at work as tough when they were growing up and it raised their families but they felt some satisfaction in what they did. In the world we live in today that has really changed and this chapter will explain why.
The 45% job satisfaction rate was the lowest level recorded by the Conference Board in 22 years that they did the survey according to Aversa. A lot of the dissatisfaction as of recent can be attributed to the weakened dollar and the overall economy more likely. With the weak dollar overseas we are not producing as much in this country and with the low demand many are losing jobs they have had for a long time or hours are being cut. But in reality we are truly in an employer market, as mentioned before, and that kind of market can be horrible to the employees of companies.
In many instances in an emerging employers market sales jobs and other jobs become more prized because there is such a demand for the jobs. The employers then have the upper hand and can treat employees any way they feel and cut wages and other things. After all if you do not want that job any person and I mean any person, is replaceable in such a market. Also employee’s benefits with their insurance can be lowered by employers as a part of their employment because the satisfaction of employees are not always a priority to companies. This is just the hard cold facts of a sliding economy.
I have a friend named David and just the other night he stopped by the house and this exact subject came up in our conversation. We were talking about the overall economy and how he so much disliked the current job he because he used to own his own business. Now unfortunately he was working for someone else in the health care industry and so much liked owning his own operation. He commented, “that when the very though of waking up to go to a job you hate is some extremely difficult lately.” We agreed that when you spend so many hours working a job you despise pretty much your life becomes somewhat negative.
He talked about it being so hard to enjoy family and some of his friendships and hobbies when you are so miserable during the week. He said that he so much could not wait for when he would be happy again and like his job again. He was feeling very tired and grumpy because of it. I think there is way to much of this happening to people in the US and this leads to horrible moral amongst our companies and it enables countries like China, Japan, Korea, and Germany to out produce us and it was not that way for a long time. We are going to be working so many days of our life and if we want to live productive and happy lives this has to change very quickly.
Linda Barrington, who is Managing Director of Human Capital at the board that helped in the writing this report said, “that many workers find their jobs not interesting and that many are frustrated because salaries have not kept up with inflation over the years. What that spells is peoples disposable incomes are shrinking and their money is not going very far. People’s incomes these days are going towards mortgages, gassing their vehicles, electric bills, rises in groceries and food and medical insurance premiums. When that happens then vacations have to be compromised and some of the material things you want to by get put on hold. That is just not something that many Americans have done for many years and has led to many of their unhappy feelings.
Many people have been seeing this come upon us for the last several decades. Now it is happening every week with our middle class and many Americans have become disenchanted with their financial futures. It is so hard to enjoy your daily life when the pressures of financial stability and outcomes loom over people’s heads. As I mentioned earlier in the book, people are anxiously awaiting for what Healthcare Reforms might be voted in to help cut their cost on their employee benefits premiums. Over the last several decades, as incomes have not grown to help the middle class of our country the moral of this country has been crushed. When moral is down people’s excitement for life and work production is harmed and other countries like China and other Asian countries are out producing the United States. You can see that in the electronic products and the cars and durable goods and computers they are putting out. In China, their economy is growing at a 10% mark while our unemployment in the US continues to grow to almost 10%.
Many American workers are very reliable and hard working people but remain frustrated because for many years they have seen salaries remain stagnant and their benefits at work cut. When that happens more money has to come out of the employees pockets and this is happening more and more in this country every week. If we continue to see decades pass with American trends of dissatisfaction with their jobs, the board feels innovation will be stifled and quality productivity will be lost. If that occurs we will not remain the world’s leader financially but it will be someone else. We will do the buying and other countries will be the ones producing and making all the capital and living the high life. These waves of dissatisfaction have been rising for many years and now like a tsunami it is over towering over this great country.
The Conference board that completed this survey said that 5,000 homes were contacted in 1987 and that statistics showed approximately 61% then were satisfied with the jobs they had. Oh how much that has changed decades later with only 51% being satisfied with the job they wake up to everyday. When only one of every two people, feel
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