We have known for over 30 years that tobacco caused cancer and yet adults are still smoking and chewing.
We hear there is a national epidemic of diabetes, and yet more and more adults are overweight.
Each day people head to the bars or the liquor stores or the pot shops or their local dealer to get what they use to try to escape their reality.
Each morning people report to work hung over and perform less than their best.
Every day there is another news item where some innocent person was shot accidentally by a gun going off unexpectedly or handled by a child.
Each night people turn on the television and then zone out, zombie like, listening to laugh tracks in mindless shows. Or talking heads who provide analysis over what someone in the public eye really meant when they said whatever.
Few people read more than headlines. Fewer people know the difference between a news article and an op-ed (opinion or editorial).
Few people meet with others to work on community efforts of any kind.
Few people meet with others who are not like them.
Few people strive for excellence and accept mediocrity. 
Few people understand the issues that are facing their own communities, let alone try to get a handle on the national situation or anything else going on in the world.
Few people are working to try to better the system.
People know who they hate but not why. Most of the time they are people who are different and unknown. Other are family members.
Few people set goals. Fewer know how to work towards them.
Some people have an image that the boogeyman is going to get them. He may be a zombie in the apocalypse in some scary alternative future. It might be the drug crazed homeboys from the bad side of the tracks. It might be the mother-in-law with her fruitcake. So they need a weapon and they are not afraid to use it. They will kill a person they say.
Few people know how to cook from scratch.
Few people know how to change a tire.
Few people know how to sew a seam or a button.
Few people know how to set a budget and live within it.
Few people would know what to do if the electricity failed for more than a day.
Few people would know how to survive if the store shelves were empty. If they could not gas up their car. If the cell phone network failed.
Many people complain about about how the kids today don’t know how to hold a job or be respectful and they refuse to admit they are parents with problem kids.
The list goes on……and on…..and on…..when will each adult stand up and assume responsibility?
goingplaceslivinglife 
November 5, 2015 at 8:42 am
Few of us are probably capable of living in a cave, hunting down our own food, and cooking it over an open fire because we have become accustomed to at least basic services like electricity, running water, natural gas, batteries, etc., but I am appalled at the state of “food consumption” – in all aspects – by so many folks. I still see a lot of people around me in the produce section of the grocery stores, but the statistics that are published about the amount of money (and calories!) that eating out so frequently requires make me gasp!
Yet things DO happen. My husband has Multiple Myeloma, which is a non-curable cancer of the blood and bone marrow, even though we have always eaten well. How did that happen? We don’t know, but he has long outlived his “expiration date”, and we credit a lot of that to the way we eat and live.
Virtual hugs,
Judie
November 5, 2015 at 12:54 pm
I’m sorry you and your husband are living with the stress of that illness. I lost a husband to brain cancer; I had been told 3-5 years and he lived 10 years. We made it the sweetest goodbye we could.
November 5, 2015 at 12:56 pm
We live every day to the fullest! ;->
November 4, 2015 at 5:14 pm
Pretty scary!
November 4, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Seems like many people don’t really think much of what is in front of them. It is scary.