The general decline in standards today

[Flicka]

Edward, you need to clear your inbox.

Popular media eases the flow of information, and an eased flow of information is key to the breaking down of a society as it is flooded with a mass influx of new ideas.

So there can never be any good new ideas? Really? Is that right for any given point in history or is there a specific pinnacle of civilisation you could point out? Because otherwise, I'm going to have to assume that we had it best right before that first caveman tamed fire.

I think the problem isn't so much that people have new ideas, but that they insist on preferring the really idiotic ones to the good ones. Like Lizzie said at some point, we were heading in the right direction once but we've managed to make some idiotic choices in the past 50 years. Along, admittedly, with some good ones, but still.

Interesting article in the New Yorker about why American kids are so spoiled.

"With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world. It’s not just that they’ve been given unprecedented amounts of stuff—clothes, toys, cameras, skis, computers, televisions, cell phones, PlayStations, iPods. (The market for Burberry Baby and other forms of kiddie “couture” has reportedly been growing by ten per cent a year.) They’ve also been granted unprecedented authority. “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval,” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn’t working out so well: according to one poll, commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled."

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

To be honest, I don't think the Dauphins had it nearly as good as today's children... They were kept on a pretty short leash, actually.

 

[Edward]

Popular media eases the flow of information, and an eased flow of information is key to the breaking down of a society as it is flooded with a mass influx of new ideas. Social coherence and cohesion is dependent in no small part on this not happening.

We have the media we deserve.... I lean to the view that a society that can be undermined by something as ephemeral as The Sun or Fox News deserves to be.

We still do have slavery (we just farm it out to SE Asia),

There is certainly some dreadful exploitation still goes on in the cause of capitalism, yes. I certainly wasn't imply we have nowhere left to go or nothing left to improve. However, we no longer have a massive commercial industry in which human beings are bought and sold as chattels. It still goes on, most ofte in the fringes of the sex industry, but undeniably there has been progress made in that no longer can people openly buy and sell a human life openly and explicitly without fear of the law coming down on them. Progress.

the absolutist monarchies were replaced by multinationals deemed "too big to fail",

We still have a long way to go before we reach a Utopia, nobody said otherwise. This strikes me as a non sequitur, however. True, both are a limiting factor upon democratic accountability, but one arises from a state which has altogether too much power to arbitrarily control the citizenry, the other from situations where the state has historically exercised little or no control over certain industries. The current financial chaos would have been much less had governments of all stripes exercised much greater control over the banking industry long ago.

and most of us see the sun as moving ("sunrise", "sunset") rather than the earth and it makes not a smidgeon of difference.

I'd be wasting my time here.... If you don't see any import in scientific advancement, you don't. [huh]

As for trepanning, we replaced it with a generation on Ritalin and Prozac....all the while losing the good things as baby left the building along with the bathwater.

Without Prozac, I would be dead. There certainly are issues still with over-prescription in mental health - more so in some parts of the world than others, and especially where cost is the prime driver, symptoms being easier to deal with than addressing underlying causes through therapy. Never underestimate the import of such drugs used properly, however. There are a hell of a lot of us for whom they have alleviated a lot of suffering.

The pendulum is a nonsense created by consumerism for those with disposable income and a jaded soul that demands entertainment, and fools will continue to throw their money at whichever fad-of-the-moment they lap up.

No. It is a simple matter of historical fact that things swing one way and then another. Consumerism may exacerbate and exploit this process, but it certainly didn't invent it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the problem isn't so much that people have new ideas, but that they insist on preferring the really idiotic ones to the good ones. Like Lizzie said at some point, we were heading in the right direction once but we've managed to make some idiotic choices in the past 50 years. Along, admittedly, with some good ones, but still.

I think Western civilization reached the mountaintop in 1945, and looked down into the promised land. But like Moses and like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was never destined to actually live in that land. The very generation that climbed that mountain sold itself out for an imitation promised land made up of a tract house in Levittown and a new Mercury every year. Not every individual member of that generation sold out -- many of the same people who fought and shed their blood for the rights of labor in 1936 and 1937 did the same thing on behalf of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s -- but as the years went on there were fewer and fewer who held to the values of their youth. Whatever progress we've achieved since then has been in spite of the general trend of things, not because of it.

 

[1961MJS]

Good quote. Sometimes I get close to despair at the way that parents have become the subordinate and children the superior in families.

Hi

Part of this is the school systems. When we lived in ALABAMA, where they're VERY CONSERVATIVE, our son (second grader then) was taught that we couldn't spank him or punish him for being bad anymore. He got in trouble and said that if we punished him, we'd go to jail. He got his punishment, and his Mom handed him the phone.

Later

 

[AmateisGal]

To be honest, I don't think the Dauphins had it nearly as good as today's children... They were kept on a pretty short leash, actually.

I think she meant this tongue-in-cheek.

 

[Angus Forbes]

I think Western civilization reached the mountaintop in 1945, and looked down into the promised land. But like Moses and like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was never destined to actually live in that land. The very generation that climbed that mountain sold itself out for an imitation promised land made up of a tract house in Levittown and a new Mercury every year.

There's certainly a lot of truth to this. Another way to look at the same situation, however, is to understand that many of our more thoughtful leaders of the time were terrified that the Great Depression would return following the end of WWII, and believed that the only way out of this was to stimulate production and consumption as much as possible. I am not saying that they were right (or that they were wrong), but I think that it's helpful to try to understand their point of view. Personally, I am rather more displeased with the course of events from about 1964 to the present than from 1945-1964.

Disclaimer -- I must confess that I love Mercurys (R.I.P.)

 

[William Stratford]

So there can never be any good new ideas? Really?

Did I say that? no.

Is that right for any given point in history or is there a specific pinnacle of civilisation you could point out?

Did I say that as well? No.

It isnt about "best", its about:
* who we are
* not having a flood of information that creates a chaos of ideas that works as acid on societies
Best is the realm of the idealogues, selling their vision of how we should remake the world.

We have the media we deserve.... I lean to the view that a society that can be undermined by something as ephemeral as The Sun or Fox News deserves to be.

Regardless of the form of media we have, a flood of information and ideas creates only chaos and confusion.

There is certainly some dreadful exploitation still goes on in the cause of capitalism, yes. I certainly wasn't imply we have nowhere left to go or nothing left to improve. However, we no longer have a massive commercial industry in which human beings are bought and sold as chattels. It still goes on, most ofte in the fringes of the sex industry, but undeniably there has been progress made in that no longer can people openly buy and sell a human life openly and explicitly without fear of the law coming down on them. Progress.

We have an economy based upon such exploitation; both in the proverbial sweatshops of SE asia and in the way that people today are kept as entertained producer/consumers. We dont put people in chains anymore, but that does not mean we are not a manipulated society where many people live hand to mouth. Progress?

We still have a long way to go before we reach a Utopia, nobody said otherwise. This strikes me as a non sequitur, however. True, both are a limiting factor upon democratic accountability, but one arises from a state which has altogether too much power to arbitrarily control the citizenry, the other from situations where the state has historically exercised little or no control over certain industries. The current financial chaos would have been much less had governments of all stripes exercised much greater control over the banking industry long ago.

Ever noticed how Utopians always seem to be monsters hiding behind angel masks? The French and Russian revolutions, in the name of Brotherhood and Equality, proceeded to slaughter millions in that cause. God save us from Utopians!

No. It is a simple matter of historical fact that things swing one way and then another. Consumerism may exacerbate and exploit this process, but it certainly didn't invent it.

The swing of fashions is a consumerist practice. *shrug* And this, to my understanding, is the key to (in the words of the thread title) the general decline in standards today. We gave up passing on in favour of getting new.

 

[sheeplady]

Ever noticed how Utopians always seem to be monsters hiding behind angel masks? The French and Russian revolutions, in the name of Brotherhood and Equality, proceeded to slaughter millions in that cause. God save us from Utopians!

Well, very few (if any) dictators tend to be good leaders. The whole thing about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

 

[John in Covina]

Well, very few (if any) dictators tend to be good leaders. The whole thing about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Still people often regret we can't have kings in the US as long as they are benificient.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Still people often regret we can't have kings in the US as long as they are benificient.

"What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent King, who has some knowledge of theology and geometry, and to cultivate a rich inner life."

-- Ignatius J. Reilly

 

[William Stratford]

Well, very few (if any) dictators tend to be good leaders. The whole thing about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Whilst that is undeniably true, there is also a great danger inherent in utopians who typically look back at the vast epochs of human history, declare it inferior (or typically monstrous) and the come forward with their Ideology for Human Flourishing whereby they sweep aside much of what went before in the bizarre implied assertion that our forebears were fools or monsters....which leaves contemporay society as a generation of spoiled brats looking at the culture bequeathed to us as if we had just been offered a turd. I believe in tweaking, changing society very gradually, through the generations, rather than wholesale change within a generation...and thus I recognise the danger of the flood of information we have today, which like a tidal wave uproots and washes away much that is in its path as we get caught up in the rapid consumption of "the new".

 

[MikeBravo]

I think Western civilization reached the mountaintop in 1945, and looked down into the promised land. But like Moses and like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was never destined to actually live in that land. The very generation that climbed that mountain sold itself out for an imitation promised land made up of a tract house in Levittown and a new Mercury every year.

Many people did expect to look down into the Promised Land, after much blood, toil, tears and sweat during the war and the Depression that preceded it. The promise was that once the struggle was over one didn't need to go hungry any more and could build a future for themselves and their families.

Sadly, with the development of the atom bomb many people felt they were looking into the abyss. Especially once Russia had the wherewithal to make them too. The threat of sudden death and destruction tends to focus people on the now, rather than the future.

 

[Edward]

My, this has become tedious. I'm reminded of something a wise man once said:

"The optimist believes we live in the best possible world. The pessimist fears this to be true."

Still people often regret we can't have kings in the US as long as they are benificient.

It is impossible to desire monarchy without having contempt for democracy.

 

[sheeplady]

Still people often regret we can't have kings in the US as long as they are benificient.

I'd argue that a king (or queen or any kind of royalty) could never be beneficent so long as they use resources collected from their citizens to live, while the citizens have no veto power over their rulings or actions through an election. While we support our leaders financially, we also have the right to remove those leaders from power. A monarch gets to drain resources forever without being held accountable for any of their actions in the court of elections. But I'm also coming from this from a totally U.S. perspective and I'll freely admit I don't "get" having royalty.

I think we're getting pretty close to having semi-royalty with political families where generation upon generation is elected and it is happening more and more frequently since the 60s and later. And the fact that their families are treated like celebrities even after leaving office. I'm also really irritated by the fact that people in the media insist on addressing former presidents by "President So-and-So." Being president is not a royal title that follows you through life, it's a temporary position that you took serving the country, where you went from being a private citizen to being the representative of the country. When you finish your term(s) you go back to being a private citizen. You should be addressed as Mr., Ms., or Mrs. as a private citizen.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think we're skipping right past the whole idea of constitutional monarchy and instead supporting an entire network of feudal lords.

 

[William Stratford]

I'm also coming from this from a totally U.S. perspective and I'll freely admit I don't "get" having royalty.

Speaking as an Englishman, the concept of an hereditary aristocracy/monarchy is not something that I have a problem with. In fact, I find it preferable to either plutocracy (which is not the same thing) and indeed democracy (considering the popularity of Murdoch press amongst the people responsible for electing a new govt :eeek. I would much rather a country be run by people who acquire position by inheritance than by an ambition to gain power but this is a fact seldom understood in an age of enshrined individualism, of power as reward rather than responsibility and of an abundant hatred of anything old and substantial.

I'm also really irritated by the fact that people in the media insist on addressing former presidents by "President So-and-So." Being president is not a royal title that follows you through life, it's a temporary position that you took serving the country, where you went from being a private citizen to being the representative of the country. When you finish your term(s) you go back to being a private citizen. You should be addressed as Mr., Ms., or Mrs. as a private citizen.

I have to say, speaking now as an outsider to America, I find that a really quite bizarre phenomenon in a country where President is an office held rather than an honour bestowed. From here it looks as though you have a really really limited form of "life peerage" granted solely to all former presidents. Does this come from early presidents being so respected that the honourific remained for them after they left office (I'm thinking here of Washington et al) or is it a new phenomenon?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's a postwar phenomenon, at least so far as the former President receiving a lifetime of privileges is concerned. When Harry Truman -- our last lower-middle-class president -- left office in 1953, he had to pay his own train fare back to Missouri, and ran into some severe financial problems stemming from debts that had pre-dated his presidency. The embarrasment of all this resulted in the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which authorized a lifetime pension to former presidents, along with a federal stipend to cover the cost of office staff, subsidized health insurance, and Secret Service protection. This was a great idea for somebody like Truman, who was just an ordinary Midwestern yokel who stumbled into the presidency and never had much money, but it's a bit ridiculous when you consider the financial status of the more recent crop of ex-presidents.

 

[William Stratford]

It's a postwar phenomenon, at least so far as the former President receiving a lifetime of privileges is concerned. When Harry Truman -- our last lower-middle-class president -- left office in 1953, he had to pay his own train fare back to Missouri, and ran into some severe financial problems stemming from debts that had pre-dated his presidency. The embarrasment of all this resulted in the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which authorized a lifetime pension to former presidents, along with a federal stipend to cover the cost of office staff, subsidized health insurance, and Secret Service protection. This was a great idea for somebody like Truman, who was just an ordinary Midwestern yokel who stumbled into the presidency and never had much money, but it's a bit ridiculous when you consider the financial status of the more recent crop of ex-presidents.

Aha, now I see. Ironic then, that the only one that needed it was the one it was created for....although I suspect it helps with the Yacht club fees for the rest.

 

[Feraud]

Go figure..government handout to those who need it least..

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only thing that justifies that law, to me, is that HST got to benefit from it.

Harry and Bess taking in a ball game in Kansas City, with nary a Secret Service man in sight. Note that the ex-First Couple is sitting in the cheap upper deck seats, as Harry gabs it up with some random guy in the next row. "They gotta pull Portacarreo -- he's hangin' the curve ball."