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Athletics are socialized and commercialized to the point at which all fun and benefit to the individual evaporate. False standards of dress, manners, and cosmetics are taught especially in the larger cities. This crime many times can be traced back to the elders. What the schools leave undone in the way of intellectual and moral corruption, the home and dear old American prosperity finishes with a fine flourish of deviltry. Whether pampered at home by parents and nursed along with sugared lies about our country and its leaders or something other, young people never develop even the normal elemental interests and hungers, which we should expect in good animals.The wantlessness of our educated young people keeps many from even realizing what all they might become. That which they can have without money or success, which would likely prove a more permanent investment for them, they have not the slightest interest in: the acquired capacity to be both interested and interesting. Many may talk about their grades, athletics, and personalities but not even as much as read a newspaper. They usually never discuss the content of their studies... their families, teachers, and public opinion could do more with teaching them the possibilities of being educated and cultivated-- of being more interesting people. The time wasted is appalling! Many young people believe that as one grows older a uniform decline sets in, that by fifty or so only the shell of a man survives. Read the life of the brilliant clergyman and orator Phillips Brooks. He is cited here primarily to demonstrate the error in the common idea that life in older adults must be really dull, unprofitable, and full of grief. Though Mr. Brooks is not typical in every respect. Life is activity, and activity is a series of energy changes--- nothing more and nothing less. A man's energy is revealed in elemental form by the rate at which his body gives off heat; for heat means work done, be it in the brain or the stomach or a muscle. Physiologists measure this heat either by skin radiation or by the amount of oxygen taken from the air by the lungs. The energy transformed to keep the body running is called basal metabolism, while the excess used for special activities may be called marginal metabolism or free energy. The slower and smaller the basal metabolism, the less energy will be made over in a given time for special kinds of work or play. We burn up fastest during our childhood and adolescence years. <<Previous | 1 | 2
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