Ten Days Until Christmas -- What are you going to give?

If thou wilt do good, yea, and hold out faithful to the end, thou shalt be saved in the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God; for there is no gift greater than the gift of salvation. Doctrine and Covenants 6:13

Eleven Days until Christmas -- What are you going to give?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Twelve Days Until Christmas -- What are you going to give?

It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35)

The Collapse of Civilization

Quoting Ezra Taft Benson,

At least twenty great civilizations have disappeared. The pattern is shockingly similar. All, before their collapse, showed a decline in spiritual values, in moral stamina, and in the freedom and responsibility of their citizens. They showed such symptoms as excessive taxation, bloated bureaucracy, government paternalism, and generally a rather elaborate set of supports, controls, and regulations, affecting prices, wages, production, and consumption.

No where in our society is the paternalism and bloated bureaucracy more evident than in our school systems. In our local schools, strapped for cash with a declining enrollment, rather than cut administrative functions, the school board is trying to close two schools. Instead of congratulating the school board on their attempts to balance the budget and the attendance, the protests from the parents and students verge on violence. I can sum up the situation with one work, entitlement. We live in an entitlement society.

Almost everyone from children through to their parents and their parents in turn have an over-riding sense that the government owes them everything and that they own nothing. When faced with foreclosure the entitlement generation look to the government for a bailout. This works all the way up the line, instead of failing because of an inability to compete big businesses continue to pay their officers huge salaries and then look to the government for a bailout.

Even on a personal level, instead of paying off debt, families buy yet another large screen TV and a home theater system and then feel misused when they lose their home to foreclosure. In one recent news article, it was claimed that young smartphone users would rather give up their sense of smell rather than give up texting.

So what is the solution? Look into your own heart and mind. Do you feel that the world owes you a living or anything else? Let me put it short and sweet, the world owes you nothing. As it says in Genesis 3:19, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." That doesn't sound like entitlement to me. Looking back at Ezra Taft Benson's quote, it is partially the decline in the responsibility of the citizens that contributed to the collapse of their civilizations and it is entitlement, or lack of personal responsibility that will contribute to our downfall also.

When you go to school do you get an education?

People used to say that they were "going to school to get an education." I fear that what you get today when you go through elementary and high school is the ability to take a multiple choice test but somewhere the education part of the process got lost. I can't claim to have made a formal study of the subject, but it seems to me that more and more young people have lost some of the basics of education. They know how to read, but can't think. They can type on a computer and play games, but they cannot write. Their knowledge of history is abysmal. They learn all about being a conservationist and not polluting but can't explain even the simplest geographical principles.

According to the National Assessment Governing Board, 12th grade student performance declined from 1994 to 2010. Only about 1/3 of the 8th grade students could answer the following question correctly:

Do you know eighth-grade geography?

Which of the following is an accurate statement about the American Southwest?

1. Alternating areas of dense shrubbery and sand dunes often make travel difficult.
2. Arid conditions make access to water an important public issue.
3. Generally fair weather means that most people rely on solar energy in their homes and businesses.
4. Easy access to Mexico has led to a strong manufacturing sector.

Interestingly, apparently even those students living in the Southwest did no better than the national average.

So what does it mean to be educated? The ideal of uniform testing has spread to an unusually high degree across our land, but as the report in the National Report Card from the National Assessment Governing Board shows, the implementation of uniform or standardized testing has had little or no effect in the overall learning of our high school graduates. Does it mean you are "educated" if you can pass the Ames test? Doesn't standardized testing just test standardized information? Didn't the whole school system just get dumbed down because teachers have no time left to teach?

As I said, my observations are just that, observations, but I haven't met too many teenagers who could carry on a coherent conversation about any subject other than TV or computer games and in some cases sporting events. It amazes me also, that their parents, who are losing their jobs have still not gotten the message that education is the key. Very, very few of the people I know who are struggling economically see a connection between their lack of education and their ability to get work in an ever increasingly technical world. It is generally a given today that a student graduating with an average high school education is unemployable except in the most basic of minimum wage jobs.

I have to be careful not to base my opinions on those few students I know who are way above average. But after teaching college for five years, I hadn't seen more than a small handful of such students.

But do you have to rely on the schools to get an education? Fortunately no. One of the advantages of the technological age is the availability of education to anyone willing to spend the time to learn. Two of the most successful computer professionals I know personally, never got degrees in computer science. It is true that a school experience, a highly focused and technical school, rather than a public high school, is still necessary. It is still necessary to go to medical school to become a doctor, but many employment opportunities rely more on what you know rather than where you learned it.

Access to the Internet and other Electronics as a Social Force

A true classless society has likely never existed. However, historically, social divisions have been based on external accumulations of wealth. In the past there has been another division, often overlooked or linked with wealth, that is the availability of education as a social divider. I believe that the social divisions of the near term will still be based, superficially, on wealth but that the real social divisions will start to evolve along the lines of electronic usage.

When people lived in small socially closed groups, isolated by the time it took to travel to the next town, almost all social contacts were obviously concentrated in the immediate family and neighbors. There has been a lot of analysis of the impact transportation had and continues to have on the nuclear family, but now the Internet has become a predominate force in establishing societal relationships.

This is a recognizable trend going back to before the Internet became as prevalent as it is today. Here are some of the books and articles about the subject.

• Loader, Brian. Cyberspace Divide Equality, Agency, and Policy in the Information Society. London: Routledge, 1998. 
• Wyatt, Sally. Technology and in/Equality Questioning the Information Society. New York: Routledge, 2000. 
• Wresch, William. Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996. 
• Bargh, John A. and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, The Internet and Social Life, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 55: 573-590 (Volume publication date February 2004) 

You might notice that most of these articles are now outdated. The issue of the impact of technology in the form of electronic communication has become so complicated that there are not so many universal assessments. 

Many people either ignore the Internet or use it only for very limited purposes. But the real use of the Internet is to acquire and use information. In a social context, the Internet (and by extension, all use of electronic communications) has become the dominant force in creating social division. Associations are no longer limited either by physical distance or even time.

A significant segment of our society has become addicted to online activities such as real-time online gaming, gambling, pornography, and alter-egos such as Second Life. Any one of these has ability to create a dysfunctional or marginalized member of our society as completely as drugs or alcohol did in the past. They also have the potential of creating a subgroups of violent secret societies that are undermining the fabric of our entire society.

What is apparent is that society in general will no longer be structured along any kind of traditional lines but along lines described in hyperspace, a true network society. The real losers in the future will not be those who do not have access to technology but those who don't choose to participate. Skills such as keyboarding will be come more and more important. Even a professional who lacks adequate computer skills will eventually lose all ability to function.

Education, in the traditional sense, is losing out to online activities. I can learn more about any subject online than I would ever have the time or resources to acquire through traditional, attend the classroom, education.

Current economic losses have been concentrated in the non-information areas of our society. For example, during the present economic downturn real estate values have collapsed while at the same time technology has continued to evolve at an every increasing rate. New types of electronic devices such as smartphones and tablet computers have sold millions upon millions of units while the rest of the economies have languished.

I will continue to explore the impact technology has on individuals and families in the near future.

Should you pay your debt or invest for retirement?

The answer to this question in today's market is extremely simple, pay your debt. No matter what the current rate of interest you are paying on your debt, it would be extraordinary if you were getting even a small percentage of that rate on any of your investments. There are always those who will try to lure you into further debt by promising high rates of return in a market where banks are paying, at most, 1% or so in interest, if that. Here is a quote from the BYU's Human Resource Services that is very sound advice:

People often ask the question, "Should I pay off all of my debt before I start saving for retirement?" At first glance, this may seem like a very difficult question. However, by considering a few simple concepts, you can make the right decision for your situation.
As a general rule, whether debt is a mortgage, car loan, student loan, credit card or medical bills, all debt should be retired as soon as possible! The feeling of living debt free for life is certainly worth the sacrifice required to reach that goal. Everyone should be debt free before retirement. However, the question remains, should a person commit all available funds towards paying off debt at the expense of saving for retirement? Understanding the two types of debt will make your decision easier.

On one end of the debt spectrum is high-interest, nonproductive debt such as credit card debt that originates from credit cards and department store charge accounts.

Nonproductive debt is financially destructive and should be avoided. If this type of debt is necessary for short periods of time, the debt should be paid off as quickly as possible. The other type of debt is productive debt such as a mortgage and reasonable debt for education, transportation or the cost of doing business. Productive debt is an investment and the interest paid is often tax-deductible. Productive debt can be paid off over time as long as the interest rate is reasonable and the debt is paid off before retirement. (emphasis in the original)

The only thing I would change in the above is that paying of your mortgage should be a priority from the day you purchase a house. In today's falling real estate market, moving is not usually a good option, whether you have a mortgage or not. In an unstable economy, if you own your home without a mortgage you will at least have a place to live. 

As Brigham Young said, “Pay your debts, … do not run into debt any more. … Be prompt in everything, and especially to pay your debts.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, comp. John A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1954, p. 303.)