Americans, Oblivious to Their Surroundings

Americans, oblivious to their surroundings

Technology has increased greatly in the United States over the past century. Just think about it; computers, televisions, trains, cars, planes, boats, microwaves, skyscrapers, and the list could go on forever. Along with the increase in technology, comes the increase of expectations. For example, education, I know for a fact that my next-door neighbor got into the University of Washington in the 1970’s with only a 1.7 accumulative grade point average. Now, the average GPA to get into UW is around a 3.7. The expectations, of the youth these days, are getting far too outrageous. America, today, has become one of the richest countries over the entire world, but living in one of the richest countries has its downfalls.

I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and hop in the shower everyday before I have to go to school. As I was taking a shower one day, I tired to think about all the things that have happened in my life. The whole time that I was tiring to think of all the happenings that had occurred throughout my life, there was one thing that always kept going through my head. That one thing that kept going in and out of my head was -how fortunate I am and how Americans take many items for granted while other countries struggle to keep their heads above water. I try to imagine how my life would be if I had grown up in Iraq or somewhere like Vietnam where there is a lot of hunger and struggling families. What if I didn’t have food to eat when I was hungry or have a warm bed to sleep in every night or not have a car for transportation? Many Americans take these simple, everyday items, and abuse them not knowing.

“Air travel is a unique experience in modern life, the sociologist Mark Gottdiener recently wrote, “because, deep down inside us, it is a ‘near death’ experience”(Goodheart 296). Every time I ride a plane, I wonder to myself, what if the plane crashes? Some metal only protects me and I am 32,000 feet in the air. I can’t believe that people, including myself, actually trust that someone put the plane together correctly and that no problems will occur with it throughout its lifetime. It seems to me that Americans, nowadays, take flying a lot less serious then they should. Lets take 9/11 for example. It felt like nobody expected such an event to occur, that someone could fly an object made by man, into a beautiful masterpiece, also made by man. “Skyscraper and airplane: fragile containers for even-more-fragile flesh and blood”(Goodheart 293). Why does it have to take a tragic event to catch people’s attention? “And both [skyscraper and airplane] threatened us with such destruction, not just on the machine-bright morning in September, but long before”(Goodheart 293). That incident could have happened at anytime, it may have been preventable if our president wasn’t a dumb ass, but that’s a whole different topic. What makes me stressed out a lot of the time is watching people, everyday, abusing their resources that they have (airplanes), because a large majority of the population would do anything to have some of the resources that I have. Air travel is not the only transportation that Americans take for granted. There is a transportation device that has four wheels and the power to destroy the earth.

What is one thing that almost every family in America owns? An automobile. But what happens when something goes wrong with your car? You have to make time out of your busy schedule to take the car into the shop to get it fixed. “His car needs mechanics, and mechanics grow more expensive and less efficient”(Burgess 287). But having problems with your car is only the beginning; it’s what comes out of the car that is destroying our world. “Citizens of Los Angeles are horrified by that daily pall of golden smog, but they don’t noticeably clamor for a decrease in the number of owner-vehicles”(Burgess 288). What stresses me out about the American society today, is that people just don’t understand what they’re actually doing to the earth, that eventually, their own waste that they created, will ultimately destroy the world for the generations to come. Automobiles are only one of the many problems that Americans pay far too less attention to then they should. The sad