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- Image, Shutterstock. Helen's Place LLCThe self-betterment skills that Benjamin worked on throughout his life, stand in stark contrast to the millions of people who would cause harm and destroy America including themselves.
Helen’s Place LLC
It’s a fundamental American value that every person is equal and has the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” This is why saving American culture starts the moment a person develops appreciation for the things they are doing and the people they are doing them with. Awareness is the key.
At the root of this is the belief that humans are unique and have a purpose on this earth if only they can find it.
American consciousness in this pursuit – as individuals, families and society – swirls around the cognitive science elements with communications primarily through the English language elements.
Here’s how it looks graphically. The Educational model is what Helen’s Place LLC calls, “Elacogn” for English Language Arts and Cognitive Science.
This model was inspired by Jean Piaget, one of the fathers of the Cognitive Science field, and Benjamin Franklin, who believed in self-betterment, beginning as a young man throughout his life:
American Education Mistake
The mistake that occurred in American Education as it evolved over the last 250 years, is that it become obsessed with “teaching to the test,” as a set of required skills, instead of cognitive development around critical thinking skills needed to flourish in American culture like discernment, good moral character, and intrinsic motivation.
As a result, some people have a hard time coping with what happens to them in life, while others take something terrible that happens to them – like losing a leg in a car crash – and go on to overcome the injury to live a full life?
Life doesn’t always turn out well for people, but this is largely because of the way they see it.
In fact, one unconstructive thought or belief and they could be in the ditch for a day or a lifetime.
To develop awareness and constructive analysis skills, all Americans could create a personal encyclopedia in their life, beginning in early education, to document their evolution so that they realize the outcome of their story has a lot to do with the way they think about the meaning of events and experiences putting together the pieces in a meaningful way.
There is a constant churn of advice for how turn off and take out the trash in our brains. If we choose beauty, kindness and tasteful things that’s a good thing. However, it’s better to live an authentic life – warts and all. We can still learn to treat people with respect no matter what our mental state is.
The Family
Most parents want children to develop to be the best people they can be and do better than they did in life.
When things go wrong, they want to see better days ahead for their children and themselves.
Some help their children develop higher level thinking skills like the value of celebrating all of the mother’s and father’s, instead of only their own or none at all; love v. hate, generosity v. selfishness etc. are values they hope to impart.
.The best advice they can give their children is to embrace the idea that life doesn’t have to be random but a series of choices. How many times have we heard the cliché that “when life hands you lemons make lemonade.”
American Society
Unfortunately, it’s not true that people in society improve over time, and learn the lessons that will enrich their lives. Sometimes culture move the opposite way from positivity and people and society decline. Sometimes the decline is so severe that dictators take power and empires implode.
Did this already happen to the U.S? Perhaps yes in pockets of society – but it hasn’t happened to the majority yet. This means that most Americans don’t want an ugly, gaudy, ballroom on the White House building any more than they want to see a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
They still have some pride, dignity and taste.
But our country is also full of self-absorbed people that don’t seek connection with others, except a chosen few. The triviality and out of touch quality that the Trump administration exemplifies is the crystal football paperweight that Rubio gave Pope Leo at the Vatican, while the Pope gave him a pen out of olive tree wood for world peace.
We are seeing the worst of American culture playing out where it’s every man for himself or herself in a dog-eat-dog world. Caring about other people is somehow “woke” in a derogative sense.
The Future Vision
It’s not enough to just vote Trump and MAGA out of office; Americans need to rally around the ideas of Pope Leo for solid moral principles like freedom and justice for all.
However, recently Reverend Barber told Steve Schmidt in a podcast that his biggest fear is that Americans won’t have a plan for what they want to change when the Democrats get back in power. Hence, another backlash could put us back in Maga-land again where we are today.
Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen, and Americans start paying attention to their state of consciousness. In the end, “people and culture are changed not from what they turn from, but what they turn to.”
