Societal Decline

[Tanner]

Where the fuck has chivalry gone?

Hilarious quote.

[Kablizzy]

HIGH SCHOOL -- 1966 vs. 2008
Scenario 1:
Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack.
1966 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2009 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2:
Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school
1966 - Crowd gathers Mark wins.. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2009 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3:
Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.
1966 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2009 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt
1966 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.
2009 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1966 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.
2009 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6:
Pedro fails high school English
1966 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.
2009 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed
1966 - Ants die.
2009 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents, all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario 8:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1966 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2009 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison... Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

IT'S ALL OVER PEOPLE. HIT THE FUCKING DECK.

[SlappyMcGee]

All of those results depend on the size of tits involved.

[origami_alligator]

Ironically, all of your school examples are a direct cause of Zero Tolerance in schools. Society may not be in decline but the way in which society handles itself may be.

[T3chno]

All of those results depend on the size of tits involved.

I fail to see how Pedro's tit size connects with his inability to do well in English.

[blue_tetris]

Every time I see Flight's avatar, I get my hopes up that GamingWolf is back and wolfier than ever.

And I hurt a bit. It's a heart hurt.

[Atilla]

Do you honestly believe that most people would take Twilight over David Copperfield? And by most people, I don't just mean, most people under the age of twenty-five. I would think that since Dickens is held to be the greatest English writer since Shakespeare (opinion, yes, but I think a reasonable one), means that he is admired more than a brand-new pre-teen novel writer. Using the term "novel" loosely. I don't think any kind of survey is necessary.

Dickens altered the plot of his serials as he wrote them to suit the public's whim, and Shakespeare was derided as a populist upstart because he didn't have the university education of "real" poets. In their own time, both were popular writers whose works were enjoyed by the unwashed masses; they're not some kind of uber-artistic literati.

Also, I know quite a lot of people over 25 who read and enjoyed Twilight, so you might want to check your assumptions...

[a happy song]

Also, I know quite a lot of people over 25 who read and enjoyed Twilight, so you might want to check your assumptions...

Can't speak for the literature, but man, Twilight, what a movie! Glittery vampires are the best thing since Beckinsale in leather!

[jean-luc]

In the religion I was brought up in there is frequent discussion of this concept that the world is descending in to sin, becoming worse and worse. In the nonreligious crowds this same idea arises, but around the concept of 'value' or 'worth' rather than 'righteousness.'

I personally don't think that there's any decline or incline. I think that society today continues to do the same things it always has, just through different media. Many of the things people point to to indicate our decline are really just a transformation of items from the past. And, of course, there is the ever-present knowledge that in 100 years people will look back on our time as the good days, when society was sophisticated and intelligent.
I think we all have a tendency to look back on the past as being the good days. There are even known psychological phenomena that explain why we do this. We should avoid it, though; it's bad for us.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Hey, I got this novel little idea...
What if the world isn't all uniformly improving or declining, but individual parts of it are (or not)? And what if improvement or decline is also in some part subjective?
I'm tellin' ya, I'm a bloody genius.

[otters~1]

Hey, I got this novel little idea...
What if the world isn't all uniformly improving or declining, but individual parts of it are (or not)? And what if improvement or decline is also in some part subjective?
I'm tellin' ya, I'm a bloody genius.

Fine. As long as The New Yorker continues to be published, I will survive the odd Twilight phenomenon with, if not good grace, at least taciturn acceptance.

[bobaganuesh_2]

HIGH SCHOOL -- 1966 vs. 2008
Scenario 3:
Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.
1966 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2009 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

South Park ftw.

Society just functions differently than it used to. A society from 2000 years ago doesn't have the same ideology as the society of today, but both contain good and bad features. The problem with any society is that it strives to remove these bad features and improve upon the good ones (like Kablizzy's Scenario #3, Jeffrey's human rights are not abused in 2009 as compared to 1966; an improvement). But removing problems, or inventing solutions that are deemed better (in this case the 2009 solution protects Jeffrey from physical abuse from the Principal), new problems are created (in 2009 Jeffrey becomes messed up from the drug). I guess there is never any total good or bad in a society; as it progresses, it also degresses (is that the correct word?) creating new good features and bad features of the society.

Any society that beleives that it has accomplished ousting all of it's bad features, or thinks it is doing the right thing by trying to abolish the bad features (eg. Nazi Germany) will ultimately fail because it doesn't recognize the negative effects of it's 'positive' actions, and in the end the unrecognized pitfall of the society comes back to bite it in the butt.

I think that for any society to succeed, it must continue to try to improve itself, despite the paradox that it will somehow end up detrimenting itself as a consequence of improving itself. If a society realizes it's pitfalls, it will be more ready to improve upon it's defects instead of ignoring them and end up being destroyed them. This is more of a balanced system, I guess, where a society constantly tries to level itself out.

[scythe]

The only thing I can remember about this is that the millenium generation is the first generation experts are predicting will not live as long as their parents. That's some sort of decline, if you ask me. Also, I thought this old New Yorker piece on the relative height decline of Americans as compared to Europeans was interesting. Apparently the Netherlands is decidedly not in decline.