When the Keanu Reeves movie John Wick came out in 2014, it got a lot of comparisons to Keanu's most famous movie, The Matrix. Released 15 years prior. People online complained it was "nothing like The Matrix, Keanu Reeves isn't the same!" Honestly, they're right about Keanu. It is as though he had grown, matured, improved his acting craft. Yet the audience was showing a generational style of temporal dysplasia. They were stuck in the past, not wanting to grow up as well.
All in all, that tells me our standards have gone backwards. This year, I pray our standards start to improve then raise. In nearly a decade, I've noticed how we have gone downhill in our expectations for ourselves, viral challenges that are becoming more life-and-death extreme. People have shown aggressive ignorance about the way other people are (some have shown callous misunderstanding on using the term "retard" when I mention I'm autistic, for example). A lot of movies I've seen in the past few years that are award-winning or gain rave reviews are, really, quite boring (just watched one such rave-reviewed film last night, The Houses October Built 2. It had elements of real life thrown in the story yet it remained rather predictable and boring. Kept wanting to turn it off after 15 minutes in, it was a cure for my insomnia), overall, I haven't seen a big improvement in my home culture.
Quite frankly, we're less likely to be brought down by terrorism (which happens every 5-10 years) than by ignorance and irresponsibility (every minute). If anything, if we don't improve, we're just helping our enemies before the next attack.
I still pray, not just for national improvement, but for my own pride to get settled.
