WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1999

Have we lost our way?

As the century closes with some of the most gruesome and horrendous acts of outrage imaginable, we scurry for the solutions to societal woes. As real as our fear of becoming a numbed society is the next day with all of its immediate demands.

In a meeting this week, President Clinton urged the entertainment industry, including violent moviemakers, music producers and video game gurus to essentially wake up and begin monitoring and weighing the worth of their product.

This type of formal discourse was desperately needed to get the ball rolling. Now is the time to ask if a movie or video game fuel the flames of a susceptible society already coarsened from heavy doses of violence against one another.

If we have children, plan on making them a priority. If we cannot do this, we should not have them. The list of things we expect from life continues to grow, while we ignore what we can actually handle.

Most people cannot juggle an increasingly long work week, marriage or a relationship and children. But still, we aspire to fit this mold, have children, pass them from babysitter to babysitter, come home exhausted only to do it all over the next day.

Pointing a finger provides short-term relief but in the end proves to be divisive and without resolution. We are not aware of any one solution nor do we think society is destined to extinction.

However, we do feel some headway can be made by acknowledging what part we play individually and what each of us can do, however little or big, to increase social consciousness.