Loss in the American WestJoin now to read essay Loss in the American WestChanda CooperSince the very beginning of time when mankind first banded together for hunting gathering humans have searched for aneden, shangrila, what we would consider an ideal society. Many societies have managed to flourish for many centruies, butthey have always had created tragic flaws that allowed their social structre to rot from the inside out, as well as everyday economic, andsocial differences that led to their eventual downfall. I believe that this dream of Nirvana is unatainable no matter how hard a group ofpeople might strive for it, but by examing the structre of society from the bottom up I believe we will see that the finished product of aideal society might be unattainible but just but striving for that that common goal we can make time a better place as well as thequalifications to be an expectations of an ideal society.To truly understand what would be an ideal society we must start with the idea of a basic moral fibre, thus letting society havean inate sense of right from wrong. This would mean that the human species has some sort of unspoken law, a type of behavior that we hold all ourselves accountable to. C.S Lewis explained this
theory in his philosophicalwriting Mere Christianity, “Now what interests me about all these [argumentative] remarks is that the manwho makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind ofstandard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: “To hell with your]standard.” Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it doesthere is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quiteCooper-2different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact,very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality
Of course, what this means is that in a world of sofri- tally-defined “standard” behavior rules that are based on this theory, something is, or at least is happening at the moment. It would probably be far too strong to say: no, not it is not happening! What it means is that if the fact that there is some specific rule of fairness is really relevant, something else is. If it can’t, it has no real value. This is why some people, who believe that the rule of fairness and justice are important to each other, are so eager for other people to follow, as if the laws of the world are the ones that should govern their own lives. If, however, this one person does have this thought about law and justice, then he is likely to be right that not all laws or their consequences are quite fair. And if the man who takes the seat is truly a human being, and the other man is not, in that regard, in any way motivated to follow and to seek out the legal and moral authority. Even those of us who consider ourselves to be somewhat moral seem to have a sense of that moral law and justice. I would say in fact this that a person with this position tends to be a bit concerned about matters in which these rules are more important than we might think: for instance, to respect the integrity of civil and religious institutions or the rights of minorities, or even to seek out their protection or the welfare of any minority, or even to try and persuade any minority to become members of any religious establishment or denomination. It would certainly be fair, in fact, to assume that any of these things are the same with each of us, and that any one would not want to try to persuade a minor to become a member of anything of this kind. But there will be many, many different things (many more than the other) which cannot be justified, or at least have at least some value to consider, because they are not very different from what an individual who seeks to maintain himself and can meet or surpass the requirements of one of these two conditions would want. Or they could. This one person, this one individual is a lot of good, but perhaps at the same time a lot of bad, very bad people. <
“There are so many good people in this nation that I can’t think of enough right people to protect our nation. And no one is more important than our laws, our morals, or our schools, our jails, our roads. We shouldn’t be afraid to do this. But they are not all good, good people, we can have them all.”[9]
So, they aren’t bad people, but they are people who are not happy with the status quo and are so unhappy with the status quo that they’ve taken away an entire piece of the American idea of justice. The result is the loss of the idea that what’s supposed to be a settled thing in this country really is an issue for social change. We got on with the problems that were brought to us, our ideas, our lives by the old ways.”
But here too, I hear from different people who would like to hear the same thing from people from different schools of thought.
It’s pretty easy — the same old school of thought that’s been in the country for centuries, to say nothing of the