A Higher Ideal

I couldn't stand by and let noone say anything. Something must be said and I will say it. I hope everyone else will say something as well. Also, please check my other post below this (it's new too!)

A Higher Ideal
Materialism; it’s a growing in our Modern America, and it has spread throughout Europe and is becoming a big thing in growing China. People are extremely concerned with getting the best stuff and having a lot of it. If you can’t make enough money to buy a $200,000 home, a boat, 3 fancy sports cars, a trailer, 2 jetskis, and a pool in your backyard, you are a failure in this material world. In other words, enough is never enough, and everyone fails. It is a growing problem and the attitude that enough is not enough is a growing trend among young adults and adolescents. People are no longer judged on their character, their beliefs, or their deeds, but rather on their cars, their hairstyle, their clothes, and their good looks. "Poor" people everywhere are giving everything for their children, but it will not be enough. Our world thinks that it is only important what those people have, because it’s their fault if they don’t have enough; they haven’t worked hard enough.
This is simply not the case; the world is capable of better. We must hold ourselves to a higher ideal. It simply does not matter if you have a great big house; no one will remember you for your house. It simply does not matter if you are so good looking; no one will remember if you looked like a god or like a garbage can. It simply does not matter if you have the best looking mustang on the lot; no one will remember and no one cares if you have a better car than them. There is so much more to life than this materialism, and that is something America along with almost all of the rest of the world has forgotten.
Material things do not last forever, and you certainly cannot take them with you when you die. The only thing that will be ageless is a sound reputation, good character, and heroic deeds. No one is saying you have to save a country from a terrorist attack to be remembered forever, but you can simply be remembered for a year because you smiled at someone when they thought they had lost everything.
Materialism has conquered politics and the media more rampantly than anything else. People are beginning to look at money and enterprise as good reasons to elect public officials. It doesn’t matter that they will screw the education system and jack your taxes up. We can not have our public figures be people merely of wealth and “political shrewdness.” We must demand a higher ideal. It must not be good enough for us to have merely rich men as our leaders. We must demand that they be respectable, honest, and that they have the integrity and strength to stand up against the corruption that faces our country. If we do not demand a higher ideal, we will settle for less than enough, enough will not be enough. We will fail in our most valiant efforts to be a leading country. Our country will slip into poverty and ruin as many others have who neglected to elect leaders of character and integrity.
In the media, it is no longer good enough to get a good looking, yet normal woman to play movie characters anymore. If she isn’t a size zero, have the most luscious lips ever, and have sleek and shiny hair, she is worth nothing. The world is destroying the self-worth of millions of girls by making women on screen look beyond possible. These young girls think that they can never be beautiful enough. Even if they think they are though, they see such celebrities doing truly destructive things such as drinking, smoking, and having sex left and right. We must demand a higher ideal. If an actress is late to work because of drugs or smoking, she should be let go immediately. We can not afford to send the message to the women of tomorrow that it is okay to smoke and drink without taking responsibility. The media seems to be glorifying these actions of extreme irresponsibility when they should be ignoring these shameful acts. The media should be beyond ashamed of all the irresponsible examples it has running around in its confines. We must demand a higher ideal. We must tell the media what we want by what we watch. We can not waste our precious time on earth watching trashy court TV, and soap operas that make us feel ugly and useless. The people who make these shows do not care about your feelings; they only care about making money. Likewise advertising has hit an all-time low. You can barely watch the TV without seeing something that makes you sick inside or make you want to sue the advertising company for terrible writing. Did they just fire everyone who was good at marketing or something? The writing is either terrible, the content disrespectful or shameful, or both. Advertising no longer makes me want to buy anything; it makes me want to run away to the mountains and live there for the rest of my life. We must demand a higher ideal in the media and advertising. Why should we have to sit through an uncomfortable Genital Herpes commercial, when we don’t even have genital herpes because we were smart enough not to sleep around? Let those people talk to their doctors, but please don’t make me suffer for their decisions. Medical treatment commercials while wonderful for those who need them, waste the time of those of us who do not. Beer commercials are much the same. These commercials, while fun to watch, can in actuality lead me to my death. It’s not hard to pull away from such trash when I think; if I believed them I drink and make impaired decisions. Obviously, the people who write these commercials don’t drink, or they would never write such witty things. So if I respect their commercials I won’t drink; if I don’t respect their commercials I won’t drink. So what in the world are all these people drinking for? I will tell you. They don’t hold the world to a higher ideal.
If you’re worried about hurting the world’s feelings, then know this: You will never make everyone happy, in fact you probably won’t even please half, no matter what you do. Thus, the only solution is to stop worrying about it. We must hold the world and especially those who influence what we view and how we live to a higher ideal. It is not good enough to say, I will let others take care of it. As Mother Teresa once said, “I can not do what you can do, and you can not do what I can do, but together we can do something beautiful before God…” It doesn’t matter whether you believe in God, or whether you don’t. We can not stand for this time-wasting, and quality empty ideal of the current world. We must hold the world to a higher ideal, or certainly we will never experience what golden days we might have.