Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?

[AuntShecky]

{Italicized lines edited 3/20/11. Another instance to show why we should never trust our own memory!}

There is an entry in Oxford's Familiar Quotations in in which some German baron supposedly intoned: "Whenever anyone mentions 'culture,' I immediately reach for my revolver."

Cf. My reply #25 --It was a line of dialogue in the first scene of a play by Hanns Johst.

It's quite true that criticism of a culture, especially one's own, can lead to all manner of antagonism, if not overt violence. Even the middle class, resting comfortably in its inherent complacency, will bristle at the slightest disparaging remark about its precious lawn ornaments.

Yet even to a die-hard Bohemian such as yours fooly (one whose fervor as an individualist anarchist would flourish if she could get out of the house once in a while) there has been a discernible shift in the Zeitgeist. Please read this
very short article (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/03/07/2011-03-07_when_vulgarity_replaces_culture.html) to see what I mean.

Aside from the unfortunate incident concerning the gifted actress at the Oscar ceremony which by now is, alas, "old news," tell me what you think of Stanley Crouch's article specifically and more importantly, if you think we are entering an Age of Vulgarity. On the other hand, maybe you think yours fooly is a watered-down, latter-day crank like Cicero. O tempora! O mores!

In any event, let's hear your thoughts!

[SleepyWitch]

Don't have time to read that article at the moment. But I'm wondering weather our culture is stagnating these days. In fashion, music etc. there seems to be more recycling than there used to be in previous decades, with various retrostyles coexisting. Nothing much new seems to be created these days.

[Emil Miller]

Some 19th century German baron --whose name escapes me has, as far as I know, one solitary claim to fame and that is an entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in which he supposedly intoned: "Whenever anyone mentions 'culture,' I immediately reach for my revolver."

It's quite true that criticism of a culture, especially one's own, can lead to all manner of antagonism, if not overt violence. Even the middle class, resting comfortably in its inherent complacency, will bristle at the slightest disparaging remark about its precious lawn ornaments.

Yet even to a die-hard Bohemian such as yours fooly (one whose fervor as an individualist anarchist would flourish if she could get out of the house once in a while) there has been a discernible shift in the Zeitgeist. Please read this
very short article (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/03/07/2011-03-07_when_vulgarity_replaces_culture.html) to see what I mean.

Aside from the unfortunate incident concerning the gifted actress at the Oscar ceremony which by now is, alas, "old news," tell me what you think of Stanley Crouch's article specifically and more importantly, if you think we are entering an Age of Vulgarity. On the other hand, maybe you think yours fooly is a watered-down, latter-day crank like Cicero. O tempora! O mores!

In any event, let's hear your thoughts!

I could have written it myself but not on the evidence of some actress showing off, because we are not entering an Age of Vulgarity, we've, been there for at least 40 years. And before anyone starts quoting bawdy passages from Shakespeare, Boccaccio or Chaucer etc. etc. etc., from my own experience I can say that there are things being done today that would not only have been frowned upon but would not have been allowed in my lifetime. I have posted some things on this forum that I would not have posted years ago, so there's one small indication of a shift in the Zeitgeist.

The following extract from Stanley Crouch's article is all that needs to be said, the text from Corinthians being particularly pertinent, but there's too much money to be made out of keeping people childish so I doubt that it will change.

What the Middle East and China presently have going for them is a respect for wisdom and high regard for it any time that accumulated power reveals its depth. As for ourselves, we can renew the living culture of our democracy if we remember 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

I was talking to a Chinese friend of mine recently about the decline of the West. She has been a frequent visitor to the USA in a business capacity and her verdict was that there are a lot of clever people in the USA but they are noticeably short on wisdom. And just to show that a lack of manners isn't purely an American trait, another Chinese who lives in London told me she couldn't understand why many English people are so small-minded and coarse.

So in answer to your question: Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?
The answer is no....it's already there.

[Paulclem]

I'm always upbeat about people, because think, whether someone is classy or coarse- they always have the capacity to change. The most vulgar 20 year old could well become the most cultured 40 year old. We forget that we are talking about ever evolving things.

The other thing about culture is that many many more people can take part in, and contribute to it than ever before. In Brian's 40 years it has gone from a protectorate of the upper classes to something we can all add to. I like this, though I have to also accept that you get lots of vulgarity and coarseness along with it.

With the actress in the article - we have talent and an ill advised speech. Come next year, if her good performances continue, the talent will be remembered, but not the speech. Trash is uninteresting in the end, and most people do realise this over time.

[deryk]

The last time I took my parents out to dinner, they yelled at me for listening to music composed in the classical period. I'm not sure how broad this demographic is, but from personal experience, I would be more apt to argue that western humans are on their way out as a species that is cognizant of themselves.

[sixsmith]

Mr Crouch is probably correct when he claims that the 'masses always preferred the loud and the obvious to the subtle and the intricate.' Today we have more masses, and, in part due to democratic capitalism, more of the loud and obvious. There is, however, no shortage of subtle and intricate works of art, just as there is no shortage of subtle and intricate people. One simply has to know where to look. It only speaks to Mr Crouch’s naivety that he expected to find either at the Academy Awards. Indeed, one could suggest that this puritanical puff piece is in fact the greater indictment of modern culture.

More generally, I take issue with the idea, implicit in the article, that there is a bright line dividing culture and vulgarity. It seems to me that the serious mind cannot accept the notion that a lack of decorum and/or taste (in the sense in which it appears to be being used here) diminishes or precludes aesthetic merit. One wonders whether Mr Crouch regards DH Lawrence and Philip Roth with the same disapproval as he does Ms Leo.

[Lokasenna]

I'm certainly minded to think that Western culture is in decline, though it is problematic.

First off, how do we define 'culture'? That of the high, artistic sort - Shakespeare, Bach and so forth - or in an anthropological sense to denote the prevailing trends of modern, populist living?

In the thread on snobbishness, I made a point of saying that that which is popular is not necessarily (indeed, not usually) good. Vulgarity and obscenity pander to the lowest form of idiocy, but are thus most widely accessible - there is no effort involved in the consumption. For every evening I, or someone like me, passes curled upon the sofa with a volume of poetry and a CD of Beethoven piano sonatas, hundreds of others gyrate in noisy, cramped, foul-smelling sty-like nightclubs, where the imbibation of alcohol is the sole goal of recreation, and the exposure of breats or buttocks the highest form of entertainment.

I don't want to get into specifics, and thus potentially risk the wrath of Serious Cat by getting into contemporary politics, but I honestly believe that the rise of junk culture is the result of profoundly wrong attempts at social engineering. Social mobility has ground to a halt because, these days, we place no value judgement on a cultural hierarchy. It doesn't matter if a child in a deprived area can read, because he has other, equally valid, methods of expression. It doesn't matter if he isn't exposed to, say, Beethoven's 9th symphony, because it has the same validity as the rap music (with its frequent messages of physical and sexual obscenity) that his local area produces.

For the last few decades, the intellectual movement among the intelligensia has been to promote a wholesale message of nonjudgementalism. An unfortunate side-effect of this has been to render the making of any judgement a negative act. So if, as happened recently, I voice the opinion (dare I say the word 'fact'?) that Shubert was a better song-writer than John Lennon, I am immediately branded an elitist and a snob. The debate that entailed was not based around evidence as to who was the better song-writer (a debate I would have enjoyed), but whether it was legitimate for me to make a value judgement on artistic quality.

My parents, both in their sixties now, came from very poor, working class backgrounds. Neither was particularly well educated, but in their youth they each formed a passion for a distinctly non-working class pursuit: my mother developed a life-long enjoyment of opera and classical music, and my father developed a passion for reading high-brow literature. Back then, these actions were encouraged to the best of their families' abilities. Nowadays, such a passion is demonstrably taken as tantamount to class betrayal - if all culture is of equal value, then why are you pursuing a different cultural meme? You become the soically alien within your own community.

So, I will continue to be an 'elitist' and a 'snob' if I have to. I reserve the right, as a free-thinking and reasonably intelligent human being, to make a judgement on what is culturally acceptable. I am proud to do so, and I only wish that more people would do the same.

[YesNo]

For the last few decades, the intellectual movement among the intelligensia has been to promote a wholesale message of nonjudgementalism. An unfortunate side-effect of this has been to render the making of any judgement a negative act. So if, as happened recently, I voice the opinion (dare I say the word 'fact'?) that Shubert was a better song-writer than John Lennon, I am immediately branded an elitist and a snob. The debate that entailed was not based around evidence as to who was the better song-writer (a debate I would have enjoyed), but whether it was legitimate for me to make a value judgement on artistic quality.

I think what the "intelligentsia" are saying is that you are welcome to make whatever artistic value judgments you like. There is no way to avoid making these judgments, and you can argue that you like Schubert better than Lennon. However, like in physics, there is no artistic value frame of reference that is privileged. What you state is not absolute truth that others are required to synchronize their lives to.

When you hear people calling you a "snob", they are basically trying to tell you something like the following: "Fine. You like Schubert. I like Lennon. We don't agree. So what? Don't belittle me. Don't turn me into your student. I am my own person. I will follow my own path. You wouldn't want to be my student, would you? So don't try to make me yours."

It is basic self-defense.

Regarding the original question, I didn't like Stanley Crouch's article about Melissa Leo. My value judgment.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I want to ask what has society become when we have the need for notices such as this?


Please do not verbally or physically abuse our staff. Our staff are here to help you and have the right to work without fear of assault.

Jesus. What sort of society needs notices like that? One that I don't want to be a part of if I had any choice.

The other day I overheard a teaching assisstant discussing a target for a student involving the same thing - a "target" to try not to verbally abuse teachers. The whole thing is sick.

Last Wednesday I covered a Y9 class. I handed out about 7 pens of my own (because most students can't be bothered to bring their own equipment) and within 5 minutes they were all smashed up. One lad had stuck his in the ceiling, I didn't get a pen back. A typical thing.

So yes, I agree with Brian, we are already well and truly here.

[MarkBastable]

It's not even logically supportable that culture is becoming more vulgar. If what American journalists refer to so coyly as 'the f-bomb' is now more broadly acceptable, it's because it's accepted at all sorts of levels, not just the lowest. That doesn't mean the top levels are heading downwards - it means the word is heading up.

The word f*** - which, rather irritatingly, I can't even type here - is heard after the watershed on the BBC practically every night. If an institution as venerable, influential and intrinsically conservative as the BBC no longer thinks it's a big deal, then we probably have to accept that it's...er.. not a big deal. It's no longer a taboo.

But of course it has been replaced by other taboos. The language of sex might be a normal part of grown-up language now, but the language of, for instance, racism, isn't. This just reflects a shift in our preoccupations - it doesn't tell us anything at all about a general demise of western culture.

I think that those who wail that the world is going to the dogs actually mean that the world doesn't act in the way they were told as children that it should. That's just a function of growing old, and everyone encounters it. If the world really were getting measurably worse every twenty years, as each generation since Socrates has insisted, then by now we would be so deep in the mire that we wouldn't even be able to recognise Ancient Greece as a civilisation in any terms we understand.

But obviously we can. The very fact that art transcends the centuries shows that everything stays much the same. Let's calm down, get over it and focus our angst on something that really might bring our civilisation to its knees - like, I dunno, the inevitable extinction of the possessive apostrophe.

[Lokasenna]

I think what the "intelligentsia" are saying is that you are welcome to make whatever artistic value judgments you like. There is no way to avoid making these judgments, and you can argue that you like Schubert better than Lennon. However, like in physics, there is no artistic value frame of reference that is privileged. What you state is not absolute truth that others are required to synchronize their lives to.

When you hear people calling you a "snob", they are basically trying to tell you something like the following: "Fine. You like Schubert. I like Lennon. We don't agree. So what? Don't belittle me. Don't turn me into your student. I am my own person. I will follow my own path. You wouldn't want to be my student, would you? So don't try to make me yours."

It is basic self-defense.

Regarding the original question, I didn't like Stanley Crouch's article about Melissa Leo. My value judgment.

I'm not in any sense trying to convert people to my way of thinking. If somebody, using the same argument, wants to assert that Lennon is better than Schubert, then that is their opinion and they are entitled to say it. However, following on from the assertion of two opposing statements, there should be the opportunity for a constructive debate (even if it ultimately leads to an agreement to disagree). In this case, the argument doesn't take the form of offering evidence or thoughts for which man is the better artist, but rather a condemnation (as a 'snob') for daring to make a value-judgment. It is not a debate, but rather the limitation of debate.

You say that everybody is entitled to their own artistic opinions - I agree entirely! The point is that, at the moment, as far as I can see, it is taboo to suggest that there is any sense of cultural hierarchy (musical sophistication notwithstanding), or to deviate from the 'party-line' of your background. Whether these are true or not is a moot point - the important thing is that we should be allowed to question them!

The labels of being 'elitist' and a 'snob' are to some extent time sensitive - I dare say that, in future decades, to admit to liking Lennon will probably provoke a similar response (assuming the current trend of non-judgmentalism continues).

All I'm demanding is the right to make a value-judgment. But, it is no surprise to me that, in an age when all artistic expression is taken as equal, the art that floats to the top is most salacious, most populist, and, often as a result, most horrible.

[MarkBastable]

Lok's right, you know. It's not snobbish to say this thing is better than that thing. It's not even snobbish to say that this thing is better than that thing as judged against some objective criteria about which we might want to have a whole other argument.

What's snobbish is to think that anyone with a different opinion is too dumb or ill-educated or out-of-touch to understand that you're right.

Lok hasn't done that.

[Taliesin]

The quote Aunt mentioned doesn't come from a German baron but from a play by Hann Johst, a Nazi playwright in the year 1933 (though often misattributed to Göring) and the exact phrasing is "Wenn ich Kultur höre ...entsichere ich meinen Browning!" - "When I hear the word "culture", I release the safety catch of my Browning"


I'm with MarkBastable in this. If our culture (btw, this question assumes that all the forumites share the same culture- I wouldn't be so certain) has gone to the trashcan, then it has probably been there all the time. The continous wailing about the decline of culture looks a bit like the countless end-of-the-world-prophecies - well, it didn't happen the last three hundred times, but this time it will! At some point you just become skeptical.

Just for provocation, I'll claim the exact opposite: I claim that the Western culture is rising because due to economical and demographical reasons there are now more people than ever who are talented, intelligent, can afford a good education and are less stifled by economical hardships and therefore can produce and enjoy more great cultural works.

Also, (obligatory) xkcd reference. (http://xkcd.com/603/)


More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did.

[OrphanPip]

I was just at the opera yesterday, packed house full of people from all different walks of life. If you think cultural venues were like that 100 years ago you're delusional.

All we got here is beginning with an unverifiable premise, that being the vaguely defined decline of Western culture, and then throwing all your individual biases at it in an attempt to explain the decline. If you're lucky something may stick.

Edit: Also, that article is nonsense, Leo let slip the word accidentally; this guy is making it out to be a master marketing campaign. Ridiculous, because no one in this thread would care or even distinctly remember the incident if the article wasn't posted, because the use of **** is so God damn mundane these days.

[Emil Miller]

Just for provocation, I'll claim the exact opposite: I claim that the Western culture is rising because due to economical and demographical reasons there are now more people than ever who are talented, intelligent, can afford a good education and are less stifled by economical hardships and therefore can produce and enjoy more great cultural works.

Also, (obligatory) xkcd reference. (http://xkcd.com/603/)

That might be true according to your perception but it doesn't stack up against my experience or what Neely and Lokasenna have posted.
In the UK people are finding it increasingly difficult to finance a good education because they are stifled by economic hardship. As for producing more great cultural works, I don't see any in the trash culture which Lokasenna accurately describes and which I am in total agreement with. As he has pointed out, for every one person who does enjoy culture in the artistic sense of the word, there are hundreds who don't; many of whom are intellectually incapable of doing so. Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

[Scoggy]

So in answer to your question: Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?
The answer is no....it's already there.

I couldn't agree more. :iagree:

Culture (in the States at least) has become a tragic toilet of quick sarcasm and unchecked vulgarity that is not only immature but destructive.

I can't get on any online gaming venue without being subjected to "your mom" cracks or just blatant profanity and other sexual onomatopoeia as a substitute for anything that could be productive or beneficial. I understand that this may not be everyone's experience, and that it is just one area of analysis, but it has become so prominent an issue on the internet that I believe it to be a valid example.

One of my sociology professors told us the other day that "beer and video games" is often a title now imposed upon the stage of life of American males age 22 up to 30. What ever happed to carpe diem? I never imagined sitting at home playing Halo and binge drinking to be "the prime of life."

I believe that the only way to start a change is to have such an influence on the generations to come as to encourage a more valuable way of culture--a more valuable way of life.

[stlukesguild]

Aunt Shecky... unfortunately the line you cited was made by Hanns Johst, the Nazi poet laureate and often repeated by Hermann Goering.:nonod:

Seriously, the notion that we are in the state of cultural decline has been around from time immemorial. I remember a quote in one of John Barth's essays in which a writer bemoaned the fact that he was born too late. Everything of merit had already been achieved, he declared, and the present is but one long slow decline into T.S. Elit's "whimper". The writer? An Egyptian predating Homer.:p

One thing that one might do to remember is that the finest art... that which has survived the ages... is not representational of the time in which the artist lived. Fine art, poetry, literature, "serious music" has always been limited to but a small audience. Seriously, today Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Michelangelo, Rubens, Brunelleschi etc... have a far larger audience of admirers than they ever enjoyed during their lifetime. This would suggest that culture is not fully in decline.

I will agree with the notion that there are periods of great vitality and innovation in the arts (and in each individual art form) and there are periods that are not so productive. The Renaissance, and Modernism (from 1870-1939) are surely among the greatest periods of innovation in history. The Rococo was rather weak comparatively in the art of painting... but there were brilliant exceptions. On the other hand, the same period can lay claim to the late works of J.S. Bach and Handel as well as Haydn and Mozart as well as writers such as Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Goethe and the birth of the English novel not to forget Kant. Are we living in a period of ascendancy of decline? Is this easy to tell? We may be seeing an economic/political shift... but this does not immediately equate to an artistic decline. The art of Rome in decline or "decadence" is often far more interesting than of Rome at the peak of the Republic:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5252/5543927574_9783253167_b.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5139/5543348749_72838601b1_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5300/5543348871_1ea9081f58_b.jpg

The same is surely true of the fin de siecle in Vienna. The years 1880-WWII represent the decline of Vienna as a world power: the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The period is commonly referred to as the period of the Viennese "decadence"... but what a "decadence" it was:

Gustav Klimt:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5543927834_9ebce230dc_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5059/5543349569_5de3e71500_b.jpg

the Vienna Opera:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/5543349719_82ce7c3de0_b.jpg

the architecture of Otto Wagner:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5543928114_530bc0d0c6.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5051/5543928156_b94132410f_z.jpg

the design of the Viennese Secession:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5294/5543349937_548e81ea98.jpg

Adolf Loos, the "father" of Modernist architecture:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5543963398_26cd2ea72d_b.jpg

Egon Schiele... one of the precursors to German Expressionism:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5172/5543928464_67c454ddd8_b.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5060/5543350303_2357055ab2_b.jpg

to say nothing of the poet, Georg Trakl, the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the "father" of psychology, Sigmund Freud, and such composers as Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Erich Korngold, Alexander Zemlinsky, as well as the founders of Modern classical music: Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg.

Some "decadence" indeed!

Last Wednesday I covered a Y9 class. I handed out about 7 pens of my own (because most students can't be bothered to bring their own equipment) and within 5 minutes they were all smashed up. One lad had stuck his in the ceiling, I didn't get a pen back. A typical thing.

So yes, I agree with Brian, we are already well and truly here.

Neely... I understand you thoughts considering the context. I live with such daily myself. But do you imagine that had the Elizabethan English thought to have placed all the children of the peasants in public schools... and taken away any power of behavioral enforcement (fear of those in charge) that the situation would have been any different? I think we have a lot of illusions of what life was like in the past based upon art... which never bothered itself with the realities of life for the masses. Highway robbery, rape, murder, etc... were surely far more prevalent in past generations. Our notion of decline is based upon the fact that the news reported upon by our immediate predecessors... our father's and grandfather's generation... was sanitized to hide the ugliness. As a kid I watched reruns of Leave it to Beaver and the Little Rascals which never once let on that in America there were such things going on as lynchings and institutionalized racism, McCarthyism and police enforced attacks and killings of those involved in attempts at organized labor, internments of Japanese-Americans, out-of-wedlock pregnancies involving sister going to live with Aunt Sophie in Iowa for a few months, etc...

I was just at the opera yesterday, packed house full of people from all different walks of life. If you think cultural venues were like that 100 years ago you're delusional.

Exactly! I share my art studio with one Chinese guy, a Korean, and older Jewish artist. Not so long ago we had two other members: one black artist and an older woman. The group of us often eat out together in the local Chinese/Thai/Palestinian restaurants, and attend art exhibitions and even concerts together. The idea that we should not attend or like the symphony or opera (or blues or jazz) or think of becoming artists because we are of the wrong race, religion, or social class never even enters our thoughts. How true would this have been only a generation ago?

Culture (in the States at least) has become a tragic toilet of quick sarcasm and unchecked vulgarity that is not only immature but destructive.

What do you imagine the popular culture of masses during the Renaissance was like? Do you have the illusion that they were all reading Boccaccio and Dante, listening to Gesualdo, Johannes Ockeghem, and Monteverdi, looking at Michelangelo and Jan van Eyck and attending plays by Machiavelli?

As for vulgarity? How do we measure that? There are any number of examples of vulgarities... sexual and scatological... to be found in various Greek and Roman writers, in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Swift. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester is known for his nearly pornographic poems, while the great German poet/composer/troubadour, Oswald von Wolkenstein, is notorious for his erotic songs, especially Ain Graserin, in which he sings of how the light striking the public hair of a young bathing maiden inspires him to seduce her there on the spot.

I have little doubt that humanity is just as noble and spiritual and high-minded... and just as vulgar, crude, and low-minded as it ever was.

[Emil Miller]

I couldn't agree more. :iagree:

Culture (in the States at least) has become a tragic toilet of quick sarcasm and unchecked vulgarity that is not only immature but destructive.

I believe that the only way to start a change is to have such an influence on the generations to come as to encourage a more valuable way of culture--a more valuable way of life.

It is not only in the States but in western society in general. The immaturity is referred to in the link's quote from Corinthians and the destructiveness is evidenced by the nihilism that infests what used to be called artistic endeavour but since the end of WW11 has become so, with a few exceptions, in name only. I have written some books, in one of which a character says: "They have ushered in the age of the common man and in consequence everything has become commonplace."
In order to have an influence on future generations, as you have suggested, you will have to get past the people who sell and propagate the trash that has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

Or to quote another book: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

[YesNo]

All I'm demanding is the right to make a value-judgment. But, it is no surprise to me that, in an age when all artistic expression is taken as equal, the art that floats to the top is most salacious, most populist, and, often as a result, most horrible.
Who's stopping you from making a value judgment?

[deryk]

Who was it that said the United States skipped ahead straight to decadence without bothering to stop at any other points of cultural evolution?

[Patrick_Bateman]

Who was it that said the United States skipped ahead straight to decadence without bothering to stop at any other points of cultural evolution?

That'll be Oscar Wilde's marvellous line "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between"

or something similar

[MarkBastable]

...the destructiveness is evidenced by the nihilism that infests what used to be called artistic endeavour but since the end of WW11 has become so, with a few exceptions, in name only. I have written some books...


....I had a question at this point. But - no matter - carry on,,,

[Patrick_Bateman]

I think this demise of culture is a fallacy. Never before has there been the diversity of audiences at ballets, operas and symphonies. I attended 3 ballets in February - albeit in Bristol - and there was even a man in tracksuit bottoms (that's sweat pants to you Americans.) Now that's progress for culture ;)

But seriously I agree with much of what StLukes said.

[The Atheist]

I want to ask what has society become when we have the need for notices such as this?

I agree, and am appalled at notices in public hospitals advising that no weapons are allowed inside and that, as a result, there is a security door and guard to check.

Is that a sign of declining culture, or just larger population thence more scumbags? I tend to think the latter, but I also don't think it has a bearing on cultural decline.


The other day I overheard a teaching assisstant discussing a target for a student involving the same thing - a "target" to try not to verbally abuse teachers. The whole thing is sick.

Not all that new, either. I recall with some shame how my classmates and I drove a teacher to attempt suicide in the early 1970s by continually taunting him.

Now, regarding the F word:


Edit: Also, that article is nonsense, Leo let slip the word accidentally; this guy is making it out to be a master marketing campaign. Ridiculous, because no one in this thread would care or even distinctly remember the incident if the article wasn't posted, because the use of **** is so God damn mundane these days.

Correct. Not to mention, profanity has drifted in and out of favour since language was first started.

__________________________



I think this demise of culture is a fallacy....

But seriously I agree with much of what StLukes said.

Bingo! And it makes nice change that I agree with St Lukes!


Seriously, the notion that we are in the state of cultural decline has been around from time immemorial.

:)

[AuntShecky]

Here's the citation for the quotation, actually in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p.283, #8: "Whenever I hear the word 'culture' . . .I release the safety-catch on my pistol." Schlageter (1934) I.i. (1934)
"often attributed Goering"


I could have written it myself but not on the evidence of some actress showing off, because we are not entering an Age of Vulgarity, we've, been there for at least 40 years. The following extract from Stanley Crouch's article is all that needs to be said, the text from Corinthians being particularly pertinent, but there's too much money to be made out of keeping people childish so I doubt that it will change.


So in answer to your question: Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?
The answer is no....it's already there.

Toynbee author of a 12-volume book of history, would agree with you, as well as James Burnham, author of
The Suicide of the West.




In the thread on snobbishness, I made a point of saying that that which is popular is not necessarily (indeed, not usually) good. Vulgarity and obscenity pander to the lowest form of idiocy, but are thus most widely accessible - there is no effort involved in the consumption.

I don't want to get into specifics, and thus potentially risk the wrath of Serious Cat by getting into contemporary politics, but I honestly believe that the rise of junk culture is the result of profoundly wrong attempts at social engineering. Social mobility has ground to a halt because, these days, we place no value judgement on a cultural hierarchy. It doesn't matter if a child in a deprived area can read, because he has other, equally valid, methods of expression. It doesn't matter if he isn't exposed to, say, Beethoven's 9th symphony, because it has the same validity as the rap music (with its frequent messages of physical and sexual obscenity) that his local area produces.

For the last few decades, the intellectual movement among the intelligensia has been to promote a wholesale message of nonjudgementalism.

I agree with much of what you say, except rather than a product of a thoroughly ineffective, namby-pamby, non-vigorous school system.



.

Regarding the original question, I didn't like Stanley Crouch's article about Melissa Leo. My value judgment.


Despite the headline, Stanley Crouch's article was not totally about Melissa Leo, but her faux pas at the Oscars ceremony is a system of something larger that is affecting our culture as a whole. Crouch just used the incident as an example. I just spent many days defending a LitNet post because my fellow LitNutters took issue with my choice of examples, but just the same, I agree with Crouch's assessment of our junk culture.

[The Atheist]

Thinking back to teachers made me recall another thought from school - this one in the late 1960s, when one of my teachers said that we were living in the end of days then. She believed permissiveness of the age signalled that western culture was in the same decline as Rome's and it would be all over soon.

I didn't have the heart to tell her about lead plumbing and our culture, such as it is, still seems to be hanging in there.

One further thought: it actually pleases me that culture itself has expanded to embrace many indigenous cultural icons and styles. Maori culture in NZ was limited to very small access up until the 1980s, while it is now the predominant artistic culture we have.

[OrphanPip]

Despite the headline, Stanley Crouch's article was not totally about Melissa Leo, but her faux pas at the Oscars ceremony is a system of something larger that is affecting our culture as a whole. Crouch just used the incident as an example. I just spent many days defending a LitNet post because my fellow LitNutters took issue with my choice of examples, but just the same, I agree with Crouch's assessment of our junk culture.

It may be my biases coming from a scientific background, but I have this sense that if one's example does not demonstrate the point you are trying to make than it is likely you are drawing false conclusions about what you are trying to demonstrate. If a specific example can not even adequately represent what you think is happening, then why should a reader trust you about your generalized observations.

Edit: That being a general "you" not directed at your person, Aunty.

[Cunninglinguist]

What Voltaire had to say (http://www.online-literature.com/voltaire/philosophical-dictionary/3/).

Stlukes makes some very good points. History forgets the mundane, which is why past cultures usually look better.

Someone mentioned Bach - I think it's important to note that the church he composed for was at least a bit offended by his preferred flamboyant style on the organ. In some way, his music did not meet their standards. Now he's at the pinnacle of high-brow society.

[billl]

In this thread, there seems to be a sort of range of issues congealing around Crouch's article, and the general idea of a vulgarization of culture. Crouch is, in other instances, quite critical of vulgarity in art. But he doesn't address the issue here. A reader of his essays would know that he would join this particular attack with his attacks on the art itself, in the grand scheme of things, of course, but this article is about replacing an aristocracy with a democratic system in which people value "popularity" (among "the masses" or something like that) over "quality". He sees Leo taking the low road, in order to get attention. Me, I'm going to use some more bold text.

Here are some separate discussions that might go on, regarding vulgarity and culture:

1. Vulgarity in works of art reduces the quality of the art. Vulgarity in works of art results in inferior or decadent culture. Well, Crouch praises the actor for her amazing talent, and he would presumably also like the movie somewhat--despite the probable carpet-f-bombing that took place in it. (I haven't seen the movie, this might be an incorrect assumption, I admit.) I do know that Crouch does happen to be a critic of vulgarity in art, but my impression is that he's opposed to the cheap use of it for shock value, and that sort of thing, without (apparently) regarding it as automatically unsuitable or inartistic in all instances.

2. Vulgarity in private life leads to deterioration of art in a culture. Well, there's no form of art that Crouch loves more than Jazz, and the list of persistently vulgar (in their private lives) greats of Jazz includes a number of his favorite musicians. Louis Armstrong used vulgar language, and his genius happened quite a ways back.

3. Vulgarity in public situations is bad for "culture" (think: "society"). Some people don't want to hear vulgarity (or see it) when they are going about their daily business. Not everyone happens to be comfortable with it. I'm guessing Crouch is somewhat interested in making this sort of case--even though his example involves an actor at a rather ritzy public occasion being shown on television. It's hard to be sure about the possible ups and downs of this sort of thing throughout history, throughout all times and places, etc.--but I'll bet a lot of people have witnessed a "coarsening" of the public spaces in their lifetimes. It's about being polite or considerate, as far as I'm concerned, more than some sort of threat to culture--especially if we're talking about cultural institutions and art. Anyhow, St. Luke's has made some good points about this one.

4. The calculated use of vulgarity to get attention/popularity is cheaply stealing from the graceful and sophisticated participants in the public sphere--or at the very least, doing self-harm. Well, with this one, I'm basically trying to provide what I thought was the essence of Crouch's article. I think he makes a good point--it doesn't impress me at all that someone would use the f-bomb in order to cause a stir, or showboat with everyone watching. It clearly wasn't accidental--and she looked really stupid. And her stupidity probably does, to some degree, bring the Academy Awards down a little. But I'm disposed to dislike the show in the first place. Who cares about Awards shows, especially considering what the "Academy" is?

To me, it isn't a big piece of evidence for some cultural condition. It seems more like an actor wanted to show her "real" self, and communicate to her peers and viewers her real, human amazement at her success, to express her pride and surprise, etc. And--like longtime members of the acting profession sometimes do when speaking as themselves--she did it in an inauthentic and calculated manner. Crouch is right, I think. She wanted to bring power to her expression by the cheap deployment of vulgarity.

But, as to the first two avenues of discussion I tried to point to above (and a lot of others, I guess), I don't see how they connect in any decisive way with Crouch's article or the Melissa Leo incident. The myriad manifestations and effects/non-effects of vulgarity in our culture as a whole aren't at all reducible to the point he made in the article.

[Emil Miller]

Toynbee author of a 12-volume book of history, would agree with you, as well as James Burnham, author of
The Suicide of the West.

Thank you for the information, I don't generally read books that confirm what my experience has taught me but I am something of a history buff and will seek Burnham's book out. I have Googled Burnham and note that he moved from the wishful thinking of the left to the realism of the right. There's nothing like personal experience in making an accurate assessment of anything. I'm not making comparisons, of course, but I have also travelled the hell bound road of good intentions and have long ago learned the lesson.

[metal134]

There have been great points on two seperate views here; the notion that western culture is in decline and that it is on the rise. In some ways it is in decline, for the reasons stated, and in some ways it is on the rise, again, for reasons stated. But here's another way tolook at it: it doesn't matter. Maybe things like this are true:

Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

But it doesn't matter becuase if you like Opera, it is still there for you to enjoy. Maybe the majority of novels on he NY Times bestseller list are mediocre pulp. But it doesn't matter because their are still great authors out there that stack up to the greats for you to enjoy. I do happen to think that many of the TV shows and movies, etc. are trash, but I don't watch them, so they don't affect my life. The point of my whole argument is that it only matters how you culture YOURSELF. Because whether your interests are high brow, low brow or a crazy combination of the two, you will be able to satisfy those interests. So maybe Western civilization is decline. So what? My life will be exactly the same whether it does or doesn't.

[stlukesguild]

As he has pointed out, for every one person who does enjoy culture in the artistic sense of the word, there are hundreds who don't; many of whom are intellectually incapable of doing so. Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

Brian... when was it ever different? Shakespeare had to compete with bear-baiting... the Elizabethan version of the WWF or Monster Truck Shows. The majority of the population was never reading the finest literature, attending the opera and ballet, patronizing the leading painters and sculptors of the day. What has changed is that the source of money has shifted from the few to the many. There is far more money involved in populist films, books, and other art forms than in what we might call "serious art" and thus there is much more publicity for such art than there ever was in the past. Today's pop star would have been but part of a local vaudeville act or an amateur musician singing filthy ditties in the local pub or county fairs not too long ago. Even so... for the vast majority of the population it was musicians such as these and not Mozart and Beethoven that accounted for their experience with music/culture.

[JCamilo]

Apparently, the guy who took care of pigs in Rome, read and enjoyed Virgil. That is not why they had funny killing people and annimals. They are high cultured individuals.

[stlukesguild]

And one can only imagine the heights of artistic and cultural splendors that the Barbarian tribes... on the ascendancy... were privy to.:p

[Jozanny]

No slight intended to Aunt, but I don't understand in what sense this debate is worth having. I am the grand daughter of a Roman shoe maker, and an invalid. Am I literate? Goes without saying. Cultured? Cosmopolitan? No. I am a provincial American in a provincial founding city who wants to reverse my grandfather and return to Rome so I can die in peace. I rarely enjoy opera, and don't want to debate that, but like the musical, I have no ear for it. What I know about art is your standard art history 101.

In the 19th century, I would have died in birth, and even many decades ahead of that, but here I am, a pretty smart crippled peasant with a university education. Is violence a problem in that system, as Neely mentions? Certainly, but everything is pretty much available to anyone, even the poor. Poverty makes aesthetic acquisition difficult, but not impossible. We live in a mass media global age.

I am never going to be cosmopolitan, and that's just fine. I've done a great deal already.

[Emil Miller]

As he has pointed out, for every one person who does enjoy culture in the artistic sense of the word, there are hundreds who don't; many of whom are intellectually incapable of doing so. Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

Brian... when was it ever different? Shakespeare had to compete with bear-baiting... the Elizabethan version of the WWF or Monster Truck Shows. The majority of the population was never reading the finest literature, attending the opera and ballet, patronizing the leading painters and sculptors of the day. What has changed is that the source of money has shifted from the few to the many. There is far more money involved in populist films, books, and other art forms than in what we might call "serious art" and thus there is much more publicity for such art than there ever was in the past. Today's pop star would have been but part of a local vaudeville act or an amateur musician singing filthy ditties in the local pub or county fairs not too long ago. Even so... for the vast majority of the population it was musicians such as these and not Mozart and Beethoven that accounted for their experience with music/culture.

In the days to which you refer, manure had to spread on the land by hand, it was know in England as muck spreading. With modern technology it can be spread much wider and thicker in a much shorter time. Moreover, I don't buy into the theory that the sins of the fathers will automatically be visited onto the sons; what happened in former times has little or no relevance within the context of today where a paradigm shift in technology is fundamentally altering people's attitudes in ways that have heretofore been impossible.
But I always return to my own experience when discussing this subject and I can categorically state that when I was at school none of the things mentioned as being today's norm would have happened. And that people generally were more considerate in their dealings with each other. Now if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody esle who may be interested, that you are wrong.

[JCamilo]

Really?
I mean, today in american the use of certain words is not allowed because people are more considered to certain people feelings reggarding their skin.
Also, you lovely americans had such "understanding" of your latin-american friends. Pancho and Sancho.
Your grandmother or grandgrandmother voted? Apparently people are so considerated about them...
You can even be a commie now.

Today, It is norm to have public places prepared for people who have some physical problem, apparently it was not a norm a few decades ago.

It is very funny to argue that the sins of our parents wont make me blind and at sametime argue "in the past..."

[MarkBastable]

The problem with supporting an argument by citing one's personal experience is that the someone else will submit an opposing argument supported by their personal experience, which pretty much exposes both arguments for what they are - to wit, anecdotal and subjective, and therefore unconvincing in the broader context.

And the problem with quoting someone dead who agrees with you is that you're merely recruiting another subjective opinion, and the guy who disagrees with you will just cite a dead person who agrees with him.

So you need some kind of objective and measurable support for an argument on either side of the debate. It was all different when I was a kid will not really move the discussion along - if, indeed, the idea is to move the discussion along, rather than simply to state one's own belief and then say that anyone who disagrees is wrong.

[Emil Miller]

1. I am not an American and I refer to my experience of the UK. We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.


2. The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.

Quote: "In any event, let's hear your thoughts!"

[MarkBastable]

We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.

Having grown up in South London in the Seventies, I can tell you that we had all that. I can even tell you in which schools we had it, if you like. To quote an earlier contributor to this thread, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.


The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.



If that were entirely the case, none of us would have posted more than once. And yet, we have - in answer to subsequent posts. Which, I think, under most definitions, qualifies as a discussion.

[Patrick_Bateman]

The use of the F word at an award ceremony when emotions and adrenaline are sky high is not what I would call evidence of damaged and decaying culture.
Even though the article expounds upon issues other than Melissa Leo's slip it still seems that what is forgotten is art and culture evolves (not always for the better as the Dark Ages coming from the decline of the Roman Empire gives example to.)
Even the Renaissance was not perpetuated until the the end of time. Art and thinking evolved and things moved on. Culture fluctuates and maybe we are beginning a decent into a new dark age or maybe it's just a mini Rococo type dip.

[JCamilo]

1. I am not an American and I refer to my experience of the UK. We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.

Potato, Potato. LSD is used for 60 years. Unless your generation is the war-generation then you had problem with drugs. Thomas De Quincey opium diary is from XIX century. England had problem with druggs for more than a century and in fact, thank god, they cann't not use drugs to make wars like they did with China. Seems like an improvement.
Children didnt took knives at school? Where have you heard so? Maybe because childrens in school is something quite recent. But considering the punk generation among teenagers came in 70's, I really doubt this. Or Maybe Vicious and Rotten didnt count because they didn't went to school.

And who said anything about what I prefer? In fact, I am not too eager to join this canibalistic apokalipse. I have survived quite fine a handful before, so I can tell you: the end of the world is a bore.


2. The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.

Quote: "In any event, let's hear your thoughts!"

You replied to Stlukes. I replied to you. There is no such rule as not discussing or just stating opinion.

[Jozanny]

I think the school violence Neely mentions is sociological in nature more than cultural, though it should be noted that *ghetto chic* is now part of that dynamic. Declinists have been worried about the health of the Western Hemisphere since Time Magazine published a wry and poignant piece, in the 70's, on going out for ice cream while the world was going to hell due to communist regimes.

Time Inc had not the slightest idea at the time that the Internet would begin to erode the distinct style of its voice.

[Emil Miller]

Potato, Potato. LSD is used for 60 years. Unless your generation is the war-generation then you had problem with drugs. Thomas De Quincey opium diary is from XIX century. England had problem with druggs for more than a century and in fact, thank god, they cann't not use drugs to make wars like they did with China. Seems like an improvement.
Children didnt took knives at school? Where have you heard so? Maybe because childrens in school is something quite recent. But considering the punk generation among teenagers came in 70's, I really doubt this. Or Maybe Vicious and Rotten didnt count because they didn't went to school.

And who said anything about what I prefer? In fact, I am not too eager to join this canibalistic apokalipse. I have survived quite fine a handful before, so I can tell you: the end of the world is a bore.



You replied to Stlukes. I replied to you. There is no such rule as not discussing or just stating opinion.

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say but I reiterate: I do not remember any children taking knives to the school I went to and neither do I recall hearing of any other school having that problem. As for drugs in the UK, where they were a problem was when laudanum was prescribed by doctors who were at first unaware of its addictive properties, but my reading of the period doesn't show that it was as great as that of today when drugs are supposed to be illegal. The only point of agreement I do find in what you say is Britain's use of opium against the Chinese which was obviously wrong.
General education in England began in 1870 with the Education Act, which established non-denominational schools throughout the country, so your belief that it is "something quite recent" is a matter of opinion.
The rest of your post is meaningless to me except that the subject of this thread is not the end of the world but that of western culture.

[JCamilo]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say but I reiterate: I do not remember any children taking knives to the school I went to and neither do I recall hearing of any other school having that problem.

Annoucement: you are not the world.
Repeat: You are not the world.
Once more: Yo are not the world (and before you say that it is not about the world, but england, you are not england either).



As for drugs in the UK, where they were a problem was when laudanum was prescribed by doctors who were at first unaware of its addictive properties, but my reading of the period doesn't show that it was as great as that of today when drugs are supposed to be illegal. The only point of agreement I do find in what you say is Britain's use of opium against the Chinese which was obviously wrong.

The only reason is that at that mediocre time, use of several drugs was fine. Poeple like Quincey could destroy their intellect (his use of opium was not exactly legal) and nobody would think anything about it. In our world, higher developed, we can treat people from it, not just alchool. We are much superior: we can see the problem.

Must I point that in the 80's junkies were not accepted in society at all, just like Homossexuals, to the point AIDS was a gay plague. Only when it started to kill people who had higher moral superiority (probally people who still behaved like those people in early XX century, when society was not close to an end) they had to understand that the disease was killing people, not those who they considered "Out of society, statistics, etc"

Thank God, we do not have anymore those days, we are less sensible and when we seem those guys dying in slums, we do not jump over it happily to ignore them problem, right?



General education in England began in 1870 with the Education Act, which established non-denominational schools throughout the country, so your belief that it is "something quite recent" is a matter of opinion.

So, 140 years and it was able to include all society at once. Nice. I love those modern stories. Maybe the guys with knives were not there yet when you studied. Was it in 1920?

You know, it is so much easier to leave kids and knifes out of school.



The rest of your post is meaningless to me except that the subject of this thread is not the end of the world but that of western culture.

The point is that your limited experience is not a pattern of western society. Kids had fights in school. Drugs are a western problem for long, even cocaine, lsd, heroine - hello, hippie movement was in the 60's. (I will not even mention alcohol). Punk was in 1970. That is 40 years ago. If you did not saw it is because you are not looking with the eyes wide open.

The decline if western society is happening for so long that earth became flat.

[Emil Miller]

This thread is about the decline of western culture of which the pop singers, weapons and drugs that you mention are the result but not the cause; which is rooted in the 19th century but came to fruition in the 20th with the shift in the balance of power from Europe to the USA following WW1. Like many people, you attach too much importance to the aforementioned results, which are the most obvious sings of the decline, because a spurious glamour has been attached to them by certain sections of the media. Being a naughty boy is so much more exciting than being otherwise. However, setting aside such considerations, I doubt that my "limited experience" is any more limited than your own in respect of the original post.

[JCamilo]

My experience is not relevant: I am not using them to justify my conclusions. I never saw someone with a knife in a class (I have), but it is not an envidence to me that all Western civilization is in decline. When I talk about drugs, I talk about Hippies (Which I am not, I wast even born in the 60's) or Punks (I was born, but milk is white, but I do not sniff It) which I never meat. You cann't deny them and they deny your claims only this generation has problems with drugs or bullying or watever.

I also do not claim out of nowhere our sensibility towards others has decreased. It is easily to show that certain classes once excluded, are now considered in every aspect of society. If anything, Political correctness is excessive, not in decline. When I pointed it I did not talked how I threated gays, I remembered how western society did.

As for pop idols, they are no different from Coleridge saying that novels would kill literature, as anyone could write them and read them. Literature didnt die.

Weapons? If anything, we never had a society with so much control of weapon possession. If anything, we do reduced the number of private weapons, it didnt increase.

Drugs? Lets repeat: Drugs have always been a problem. It is not a signal of XIX century. People used them in old europe. People died for alcohol before. There is a reason some religions forbade icertain drugs centuries ago.

What I may know or not about the subject? More than Prince Charles. When he was young he never saw a poor kid in his school. Now he know there is poor people. World has declined.

[Emil Miller]

Having grown up in South London in the Seventies, I can tell you that we had all that. I can even tell you in which schools we had it, if you like. To quote an earlier contributor to this thread, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

I don't doubt it for one moment, the problem really took off in the sixties when the idea that reasoning with recalcitrants rather than punishing them became the norm. Your subjective and anecdotal submission gives further credence to the original post's proposition.

[MarkBastable]

I don't doubt it for one moment, the problem really took of in the sixties when the idea that reasoning with recalcitrants rather than punishing them became the norm. Your subjective and anecdotal submission gives further credence to the original post's proposition.

Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were.

Lovely of you to take part in the discussion, by the way, but don't you fear you've violated the original terms of the thread?

[OrphanPip]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk

[Emil Miller]

Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were.

Lovely of you to take part in the discussion, by the way, but don't you fear you've violated the original terms of the thread?

There may have been people who had knives during that period but they were not schoolboys.
I have very much enjoyed giving my thoughts on the the subject but I don't know in which way I have violated the terms of the thread.

[AuntShecky]

I'd like to make just a couple of specific replies at the moment.

You know, I'm beginning to move more closely to the opinions expressed in the very first replies to this thread--and the later one ( #30 by Emil Miller) that this apparent "deviance defined down" (to use Daniel Patrick Moynihan's term) began decades ago and thus Toynbee (the younger) and Burnham were on to something, early. But I do think Stanley Crouch's point was timely and beautifully expressed, esp. with the reference to Corinthians. (By the bye, lately the Web is rampant with postings concerning how modern males, especially American ones, are stuck in adolescence. That's a generalization, though.)

I'd like to make just a couple of specific replies at the moment. The first is to #29 by Billl (incidentally, long time no see on the LitNet, Billl): Your points about vulgarity were well-taken. Dwight MacDonald's seminal essay, "Masscult and Midcult" apparently uses that term, but his main point was that in the mid 20th century, "middlebrow" art and literature--the kind of stuff which flatters the middle class and confirms the status quo--had begun to take over the vaunted place once occupied by "high brow" material. (I tried to write a "poem" about this subject in my anti-poetry thread in the "Personal Poetry" forum.)

Finally, whoever reminded us that anecdotal evidence is pretty much worthless is correct. Yours fooly is often guilty of that very flaw. Nevertheless, I maintain that at least part of this vulgarity arises from careless ball-dropping by parents and especially the educational school system. An anecdotal case in point: a few minutes ago I read an online article about an MLB team releasing a certain relief pitcher who had been beset, unfortunately, with performance problems. The article itself was fairly well-written, but the reader comments spoke volumes (pardon the cliché.) One commentator, whose location was listed as a high school, typed "Good riddens." [sic] Well, at least she didn't punctuate her version of "riddance" with apostrophes and five exclamation points. The "real time" of this posting was well within the time frame of a normal school day. So I have to ask: in addition to the horrible spelling mistake, why was this person surfing the 'Net instead of paying attention in class?

[Emil Miller]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk

The first sentence doesn't surprise me at all. The countries mentioned in the second are those that have either been occupied by the USA or have come under the hegemony of the US dollar. This is already changing and in the coming decades, 'pop culture', which is directly connected to American influence, will wain as China replaces the US as the World's dominant economic power and eschews the fag end of Western civilisation while retaining those elements that still have some value.
While today's pop music is all pervasive in the West, on those occasions when I have been in China I haven't noticed that to be the case.
What I have noticed is a very great interest in classical music and you can rest assured that strumming a guitar has little kudos in comparison to playing the piano, violin or virtually any other instrument.
Japan and Korea may take longer in ditching their Americanisation because they have been subject to the aforementioned occupation, but it is inevitable that they will do so as Chinese influence spreads throughout the region.

[JCamilo]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk


It is because it is pop, change your name to OrphanPop and you will be declining...

[LitNetIsGreat]

I agree, and am appalled at notices in public hospitals advising that no weapons are allowed inside and that, as a result, there is a security door and guard to check.

Is that a sign of declining culture, or just larger population thence more scumbags? I tend to think the latter, but I also don't think it has a bearing on cultural decline.
Well I was speaking about a social decline specifically, but I suppose you could question what the impact of postmodernism and technology is having on society, it would be an interesting angle I think. Anyway, whether this is a cultural or a social decline, it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today and that is my argument, certainly in the UK, which is fast becoming one of the worst countries in Europe.

[Emil Miller]

... it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today .

No, you are wrong Neely. That's just your perception. Never mind though, soon someone will roll out some statistics to prove that everything in the garden is lovely. It will make you feel so much better.

[Jozanny]

If, Aunt, you might be interested in what perspectives a literary author might have to offer on the issue of cultural disintegration, you might try reading A.S. Byatt's "Raw Material", which is a very subtle critique of contemporary British suburban norms.

American culture has been decadent since the death of Cotton Mather, and our modern urban violence is in part the fault of near absolutist corporate models toward gun manufacture, one that has spread like a cancer.

I'd look for a more precise thesis about what answers you're after.

[Paulclem]

Well I was speaking about a social decline specifically, but I suppose you could question what the impact of postmodernism and technology is having on society, it would be an interesting angle I think. Anyway, whether this is a cultural or a social decline, it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today and that is my argument, certainly in the UK, which is fast becoming one of the worst countries in Europe.

I also grew up in the seventies, and yes my evidence is partly anecdotal, but it is also based on the news. Football hooliganism was much, much worse than it is today. That my well be because the policing of games is much better than it was then, but the impulse to violence by young men was by no means weaker. My Dad - now deceased - used to tell me of fights he had in the 1950's during the Teddy boy era. (He was rough all his life - he had his last fight aged 55).

I'm pretty sure that the midle aged of that era believed that the world was going to pot with the sight of DA bedecked gangly young men in beetecrushers scrapping in the streets. Those same teddy boys probably bewailed the advent of long haired hippies and then - horror of horror - punk.

As Mark has claimed earlier on in the thread - it's an old story - going back to Egypt as St Lukes has pointed out. I think, as a middle aged man who was never in touch much with culture when young, that the challenge is to maintain an uncritical and positive view where I can. How can I maintain an understanding which can couple with the positive aspects they are expressing. Kids are much more in touch about the environment, racism and ay rights. Much more than my generation were.

It is so easy to condemn young people and hardly realise that they are going through much the same internal changes as we as did - albeit in ways we didn't and perhaps more loudly. Just look at our seniors 20 or 30 years older and how difficult it is for them to understand us and us them. We can talk, but our whole terms of reference are different. I find their assumptions are frequently not mine, as mine are not the young of today.

I see the statement that culture is becoming trash as a failure to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Of course the loud and vulgar get airspace -that seems to be what the media thinks we want to read about - perhaps to pander to the view that culture is becoming trash. Yet there are always people who are quietly developing in the background and beginning new movements.

[Emil Miller]

Civil unrest is often a precursor to decline, even if the roots of the decline are due to other factors. Egypt is a good example. Rome is another.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Paul, it’s a good argument and I can certainly see positives today, don’t get me wrong. There are obvious pluses such as the greater tolerance towards minorities and some opportunities for certain things, but I can’t help but come from a pessimistic angle. True, perhaps I am getting old and beginning to see the world in a different way, maybe I’m more attune to things being a father or maybe I’m just under the weight of working in a “challenging” school. However, I can’t help witnessing what I see as a general decline in behaviour and common decency, not just in school but around and about.

As I said before, what sort of society has to remind people not to attack the people who are trying to help them? Quite ridiculous.

It’s impossible to really look at crime statistics over the last 50 years with any degree of certainty. You can find anything between an eighteen to fourfold increase in recorded crime over such a period, but this is recorded crime. The obvious counter-argument is that more crime is recorded due to greater ease of reporting crime and the need for insurance claims, police efficiency, the invent of cyber crime etc, etc. So as ever statistics are somewhat unreliable even if they do suggest a dramatic increase in crime in this period.

What I go on is my day-to-day dealings with people, with teens I suppose. Yes, I take into account the difficult social backgrounds of some, of the issues they may face, but still, common decency seems to be a thing that is not that common. It just seems that what passes for the “norm” in behaviour and general attitude just wouldn’t have stuck ten years or so ago.

[Paulclem]

I know it's frustrating - I've been there too. My wife's a nurse and used to tell me of the drunks and addicts clogging up A&E and threatening the staff. It seems as though things are getting worse - but those who shout loudest are heard most, and unfortunately they tend to be the idiots.

I can't bring myself to condemn my children's generation, especially as some of them are likely to be more talented and capable than my own. After all, we - the older generations - are in fact the cause of what happens. The culture, the youngsters, are not some aliens seperate from us, but are linked to us and how we brought/ are bringing up our kids. The challenge is to do it better.

I think we are doing it better, given that we are moving into a highly technical information age, and, whilst the kids are messing about on their mobile phones and annoying us on the bus etc, they are schooling themselves in what will be a major communication tool in the future.

[stlukesguild]

In the days to which you refer, manure had to spread on the land by hand, it was know in England as muck spreading. With modern technology it can be spread much wider and thicker in a much shorter time. Moreover, I don't buy into the theory that the sins of the fathers will automatically be visited onto the sons; what happened in former times has little or no relevance within the context of today where a paradigm shift in technology is fundamentally altering people's attitudes in ways that have heretofore been impossible.

What is absurd about your statement that the past is irrelevant is that your diatribe concerning the decline of Western culture is wholly dependent upon comparing the present with the past.

But I always return to my own experience when discussing this subject and I can categorically state that when I was at school none of the things mentioned as being today's norm would have happened. And that people generally were more considerate in their dealings with each other. Now if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

How valid a proof is the personal experience of one individual? I grew up in a middle-class/upper-middle-class community in the wealthiest nation in the world. I attended a school that was virtually all WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). There were one or two Jews in my school, but none of us knew they were Jewish. There were virtually no Hispanics, no Blacks, no Catholics, no Asians. A great many things that I witness in public schools today never occurred in my school... as far as I know. Even so, drugs were most certainly prevalent. Students smoked pot in the bathrooms and on the bus. Students snorted cocaine or did LSD in the back of class. Even those who weren't using could tell you who was and who was dealing.

As JCamillo points out, drug use is far older than you let on. Opium dens existed throughout the slums of London in the 19th century. Figures such as DeQuincy and Coleridge seriously damaged their careers as a result of such abuse. In America from the 1920s on cocaine and marijuana etc... were is use throughout all the large urban centers. Most of the great jazz musicians were using one or the other... and many even wrote songs about it.

It wouldn't take much effort to research the history of drug abuse... and alcohol abuse as well as the history of violence and gangs and highway robbery etc... across Europe in past centuries.

Yes... there are certain forms of antisocial behavior that are more prevalent today than in the past. When I was a child we never saw Blacks or Hispanics or the poor in the stores or restaurants we frequented. Neither would a child have been permitted unaccompanied by a parent. Anti-social behavior would not have been tolerated by the proprietors. Nor would the news of such have been reported in the news. The studios that managed actors and actresses and popular performers made it clear as to what sort of public behavior was expected. Transgressions would be covered up (the studios made it clear to the press that revealing unflattering details about their contract players would result in a blacklisting of that press. By the same token... actors or actresses that proved a repeated problem would be equally blacklisted. The dirty laundry was not aired in public. This has changed... but you are sadly mistaken if you assume the behavior itself was far more high-minded and moral in the past.

As I and others have suggested, those who have been announcing doomsday have been around forever. In most instances, I have found that they actually relish the notion of being proven right because they exhibit an almost Puritanical desire to see those who do not live up to their moral standards punished. There is also a sense that such individuals cannot face change... actually fear it. We see the problem in the US with the Neo-Cons who would have us return to the 19th century, eliminate workers rights, build a wall along the Texas/Mexico border to keep all those "darkies" out that are diluting the population of "true Americans, ban gay rights in the name of preserving traditional marriage (because had it not been illegal I most certainly would dump the wife and run out and find a hunky guy right now:rolleyes::crazy:) etc...

[MarkBastable]

I tend to agree with you - it's a sort of gleeful dread dressed up as grave, regretful concern. And because it's so much about a projected fear of change, the expression of it - and the offered evidence of it - is necessarily drawn from narrow and unverifiable personal experience.

Statistics show that 79% of people who think this way also believe that strawberries don't taste the same as they did when they were children.

[JCamilo]

World is lost, people are eating strawberry children...

Plato said writing was a signal of decline. We are obviously downhill as we type...

[Emil Miller]

In the days to which you refer, manure had to spread on the land by hand, it was know in England as muck spreading. With modern technology it can be spread much wider and thicker in a much shorter time. Moreover, I don't buy into the theory that the sins of the fathers will automatically be visited onto the sons; what happened in former times has little or no relevance within the context of today where a paradigm shift in technology is fundamentally altering people's attitudes in ways that have heretofore been impossible.

What is absurd about your statement that the past is irrelevant is that your diatribe concerning the decline of Western culture is wholly dependent upon comparing the present with the past.

But I always return to my own experience when discussing this subject and I can categorically state that when I was at school none of the things mentioned as being today's norm would have happened. And that people generally were more considerate in their dealings with each other. Now if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

How valid a proof is the personal experience of one individual? I grew up in a middle-class/upper-middle-class community in the wealthiest nation in the world. I attended a school that was virtually all WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). There were one or two Jews in my school, but none of us knew they were Jewish. There were virtually no Hispanics, no Blacks, no Catholics, no Asians. A great many things that I witness in public schools today never occurred in my school... as far as I know. Even so, drugs were most certainly prevalent. Students smoked pot in the bathrooms and on the bus. Students snorted cocaine or did LSD in the back of class. Even those who weren't using could tell you who was and who was dealing.

As JCamillo points out, drug use is far older than you let on. Opium dens existed throughout the slums of London in the 19th century. Figures such as DeQuincy and Coleridge seriously damaged their careers as a result of such abuse. In America from the 1920s on cocaine and marijuana etc... were is use throughout all the large urban centers. Most of the great jazz musicians were using one or the other... and many even wrote songs about it.

It wouldn't take much effort to research the history of drug abuse... and alcohol abuse as well as the history of violence and gangs and highway robbery etc... across Europe in past centuries.

Yes... there are certain forms of antisocial behavior that are more prevalent today than in the past. When I was a child we never saw Blacks or Hispanics or the poor in the stores or restaurants we frequented. Neither would a child have been permitted unaccompanied by a parent. Anti-social behavior would not have been tolerated by the proprietors. Nor would the news of such have been reported in the news. The studios that managed actors and actresses and popular performers made it clear as to what sort of public behavior was expected. Transgressions would be covered up (the studios made it clear to the press that revealing unflattering details about their contract players would result in a blacklisting of that press. By the same token... actors or actresses that proved a repeated problem would be equally blacklisted. The dirty laundry was not aired in public. This has changed... but you are sadly mistaken if you assume the behavior itself was far more high-minded and moral in the past.

As I and others have suggested, those who have been announcing doomsday have been around forever. In most instances, I have found that they actually relish the notion of being proven right because they exhibit an almost Puritanical desire to see those who do not live up to their moral standards punished. There is also a sense that such individuals cannot face change... actually fear it. We see the problem in the US with the Neo-Cons who would have us return to the 19th century, eliminate workers rights, build a wall along the Texas/Mexico border to keep all those "darkies" out that are diluting the population of "true Americans, ban gay rights in the name of preserving traditional marriage (because had it not been illegal I most certainly would dump the wife and run out and find a hunky guy right now:rolleyes::crazy:) etc...

Reading what you have written reminds me of this quote from the original post:

It's quite true that criticism of a culture, especially one's own, can lead to all manner of antagonism, if not overt violence. Even the middle class, resting comfortably in its inherent complacency, will bristle at the slightest disparaging remark about its precious lawn ornaments.

With regard to your opening statement, I am saying that peoples attitudes have been, and are being, altered by technology to an extent that they cannot be compared with earlier generations in the same way as heretofore although, obviously, the past will still be the natural precursor to change.
You then state " How valid a proof is the personal experience of one individual," before, amusingly, proceeding to give an account of your own experience in support of your position.

I'm fully aware of De Quincy and Coleridge's drug habit and I have agreed that laudanum was mistakenly prescribed in large quantities during the Victorian period, although when it was found to be addictive it became subject to prescription. As for opium dens, they were most likely to be found in Victorian penny dreadfuls or in areas where immigrant Chinese and other orientals lived. They may have been sometimes used by dissolute members of the aristocracy, but narcotics, apart from laudanum, were not in the public domain as they are today.
Notwithstanding the brief period of excessive gin drinking in England during the 18th century, alcohol abuse may not have changed significantly since former times, except possibly in the UK where it has become of major concern to the medical profession.
It was on account of gang violence and highway robbery that the World's first police force, the Garde Chasse, was formed in 18th century France and represents a highlight in Western civilisation that was subsequently copied throughout Europe.

You admit that anti-social behaviour is more prevalent today and that it would not previously have been tolerated,and I can attest to the veracity of this assertion, as I do with your subsequent statement that people in the public eye were expected to behave properly. You then say their transgressions were covered up and some were blacklisted, as if it were a fault. I would submit that it is better to sweep a mess under the carpet than leave it in the middle of the living room if the consequence of such an action leads to a general increase of the mess. This is exactly what has happened and is just one more indication of cultural decline.
With regard to the last point in your post, the 'morally superior' are most strongly represented today by the "PC let it all rip brigade" and not by the so called Neocons; some of whom have questionable morality.
Change is most feared by the liberal establishment who are afraid that their ivory tower, so assiduously constructed since WW11, will be blown away.
Which it probably will judging by events that are now taking place in Europe and the Far East.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Statistics show that 79% of people who think this way also believe that strawberries don't taste the same as they did when they were children.

Well, incidentally in a funny old way, they might have a case. The only strawberry you will find in the supermarkets is the Elsanta variety. Elsanta is well known to be a very average tasting strawberry, it is nothing at all special, but it has the advantageous qualities of looking very red, travelling well and lasting on the supermarket shelves. :sosp: The same process of Tescoification can be applied to almost any fruit or veg, giving weight to the claim of the decline of such produce.

[Emil Miller]

Well, incidentally in a funny old way, they might have a case. The only strawberry you will find in the supermarkets is the Elsanta variety. Elsanta is well known to be a very average tasting strawberry, it is nothing at all special, but it has the advantageous qualities of looking very red, travelling well and lasting on the supermarket shelves. :sosp: The same process of Tescoification can be applied to almost any fruit or veg, giving weight to the claim of the decline of such produce.

Yes but it's anecdotal and therefore untrue according to those who wan't to pretend otherwise.:lol:

[MarkBastable]

Well, incidentally in a funny old way, they might have a case. The only strawberry you will find in the supermarkets is the Elsanta variety. Elsanta is well known to be a very average tasting strawberry, it is nothing at all special, but it has the advantageous qualities of looking very red, travelling well and lasting on the supermarket shelves. :sosp: The same process of Tescoification can be applied to almost any fruit or veg, giving weight to the claim of the decline of such produce.


I've said it before and I'll say it again - there's definitely a case for inventing a font exclusively for use on the Net, called Facetious Sans Serif.

[MarkBastable]

Yes but it's anecdotal and therefore untrue according to those who wan't to pretend otherwise.:lol:

No - the anecdotal is not intrinsically true or untrue. It's just not proof of anything.

[JCamilo]

But the aristocracy had occasionally tasted better strawberries.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there's definitely a case for inventing a font exclusively for use on the Net, called Facetious Sans Serif.

I know it wasn't meant as a serious remark silly, but even so there is a serious side to the effects of supermarkets and the Tescoification of society. So just think on that the next time you are munching your water-pumped, tasteless Elsantas and cream.

[Emil Miller]

No - the anecdotal is not intrinsically true or untrue. It's just not proof of anything.

"Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were." :lol:

[TheFifthElement]

The only strawberry you will find in the supermarkets is the Elsanta variety.



Yes but it's anecdotal and therefore untrue according to those who wan't to pretend otherwise.:lol:

No, but it is a great example of why relying on anecdotal 'evidence' is intrinsically unreliable, as a quick trip into the Manchester City Centre Tesco (to pick up milk for the office tea bellies) evidenced Sabrosa and Festival variety strawberries on offer and not an Elsanta in sight!

There's an intrinsic danger in relying on sentimental nostalgia as a guide as to whether things are 'worse' or 'better' now than they once were. The comments about kids not carrying knives until recently nearly made me choke on my Braeburn. Kids have always carried knives, the difference is that now it's seen as a problem where it didn't used to be, so it wasn't reported. It's simply a perception issue. As an illustration, let me offer you an alternative nostalgic anecdotal vision of that innocent, earlier age in which there was no anti-social behaviour, no violence, a nostalgic memory right out of the world of Swallows and Amazons, The Railway Children or The Famous Five. In this nostalgic memory we find a young lad, let's call him 'Billy' in his little short trousers with scuffed and dirty knees out in the countryside digging himself dams and having great adventures with his pockets full of string and whistle and squashed up sandwich and stones and bluetack and his pocket knife which he uses to dig with or whittle himself a little toy from a stick he found in the undergrowth. A nostalgic little memory which is familiar to many, I'm sure.

Poor little Billy now isn't permitted a knife for any purpose because, apparently, these days it's assumed that he could only possibly want it to stab someone with, and the fact that boys have been carrying knives as a nifty little tool as long as they've had pockets to put them into is one little piece of 'nostalgia' that is, too often, forgotten. Little Billy now would be splashed over the news as evidence of anti-social behaviour and the ever declining society which we're all supposed to be afraid of.

As to anti-social behaviour - is it worse or better? Who knows. The concept of 'anti-social behaviour' is a recent phenomenon, and police, I'm sure, never used to record the amount of times they cracked a bunch of young 'upstarts' over the head and told them to go home. Of course we're supposed to feel disgruntled that the police can no longer dole out summary punishment without following due process, but to my mind that's an improvement because the violence now is recorded and not simply doled out by those in positions of authority. In terms of supposed in school violence - my kids have never seen an actual fight at school, though their Dad at a similar age had been in many (and had become the c*ck of the school - an honour bestowed by means of being the best scrapper of all the lads - remember that anyone?) and I had seen plenty before I reached high school too. If anything I'd say the standards of behaviour have improved, teachers certainly focus plenty of attention on it, whilst the bigger problem in schools these days seems to be one of apathy rather than open rebellion or violence. Certainly that is what I see in the schools my kids have been to, anyway.

I think the bigger issue, for Britain at least, arises out of overcrowding. All the places I used to play as a child: the school playground, open countryside or fields, are now either blocked off with 6 foot fences or have been turned into supermarkets or housing estates. So we're all on top of each other and kids, wherever they play, are watched over by disapproving eyes because they are noisy or playing or running around and being inconveniently alive. If people see a group of teenagers on the street it's instantly considered 'anti-social behaviour', something threatening, but the fact that those teenagers might have nowhere else to go isn't entertained for a moment. No parent wants 16 kids in the house, all the open land where teenagers used to go when I was a kid has been built on, parks are closed in the evening and social or youth groups tend to operate one day a week only. They might not be causing any trouble, and in most cases they really are not even slightly interested in the passerby, but the mere fact of them being there seems to be a problem. If they were out of sight, as they used to be, no one would really care. But instead we're all right on top of each other, you can't escape it and there's rarely an acknowledgement from the adult's side that their reaction to the teenagers being there, the desire to remove them from the street, is as much a part of the 'anti-social behaviour' problem as the kids themselves are supposed to be. And the poor kids can't win because if they're outside they're considered an anti-social menace, and if they're inside their considered to be layabout couch potatoes who spend all day on their mobile phones, the X-box or Playstation, or messing around on Facebook.

[MarkBastable]

"Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were." :lol:

Precisely my point. My dad's anecdote directly contradicts yours - so what use is either as evidence of anything?

[Emil Miller]

Precisely my point. My dad's anecdote directly contradicts yours - so what use are either as evidence of anything?

I'm afraid it doesn't:

"There may have been people who had knives during that period but they were not schoolboys."

[MarkBastable]

I'm afraid it doesn't:

"There may have been people who had knives during that period but they were not schoolboys."

According to him, they were. Also knuckledusters, chains and all the other stuff of hand-to-hand gang warfare.

But so what? He says so; you say otherwise. The two are contradictory and useless as evidence for or against cultural decline.

[LitNetIsGreat]

No, but it is a great example of why relying on anecdotal 'evidence' is intrinsically unreliable, as a quick trip into the Manchester City Centre Tesco (to pick up milk for the office tea bellies) evidenced Sabrosa and Festival variety strawberries on offer and not an Elsanta in sight!

They're earlies, give it a few weeks and you can go and get your Elsantas.:thumbs_up

[Emil Miller]

No, but it is a great example of why relying on anecdotal 'evidence' is intrinsically unreliable, as a quick trip into the Manchester City Centre Tesco (to pick up milk for the office tea bellies) evidenced Sabrosa and Festival variety strawberries on offer and not an Elsanta in sight!

There's an intrinsic danger in relying on sentimental nostalgia as a guide as to whether things are 'worse' or 'better' now than they once were. The comments about kids not carrying knives until recently nearly made me choke on my Braeburn. Kids have always carried knives, the difference is that now it's seen as a problem where it didn't used to be, so it wasn't reported. It's simply a perception issue. As an illustration, let me offer you an alternative nostalgic anecdotal vision of that innocent, earlier age in which there was no anti-social behaviour, no violence, a nostalgic memory right out of the world of Swallows and Amazons, The Railway Children or The Famous Five. In this nostalgic memory we find a young lad, let's call him 'Billy' in his little short trousers with scuffed and dirty knees out in the countryside digging himself dams and having great adventures with his pockets full of string and whistle and squashed up sandwich and stones and bluetack and his pocket knife which he uses to dig with or whittle himself a little toy from a stick he found in the undergrowth. A nostalgic little memory which is familiar to many, I'm sure.

Poor little Billy now isn't permitted a knife for any purpose because, apparently, these days it's assumed that he could only possibly want it to stab someone with, and the fact that boys have been carrying knives as a nifty little tool as long as they've had pockets to put them into is one little piece of 'nostalgia' that is, too often, forgotten. Little Billy now would be splashed over the news as evidence of anti-social behaviour and the ever declining society which we're all supposed to be afraid of.

As to anti-social behaviour - is it worse or better? Who knows. The concept of 'anti-social behaviour' is a recent phenomenon, and police, I'm sure, never used to record the amount of times they cracked a bunch of young 'upstarts' over the head and told them to go home. Of course we're supposed to feel disgruntled that the police can no longer dole out summary punishment without following due process, but to my mind that's an improvement because the violence now is recorded and not simply doled out by those in positions of authority. In terms of supposed in school violence - my kids have never seen an actual fight at school, though their Dad at a similar age had been in many (and had become the c*ck of the school - an honour bestowed by means of being the best scrapper of all the lads - remember that anyone?) and I had seen plenty before I reached high school too. If anything I'd say the standards of behaviour have improved, teachers certainly focus plenty of attention on it, whilst the bigger problem in schools these days seems to be one of apathy rather than open rebellion or violence. Certainly that is what I see in the schools my kids have been to, anyway.

I think the bigger issue, for Britain at least, arises out of overcrowding. All the places I used to play as a child: the school playground, open countryside or fields, are now either blocked off with 6 foot fences or have been turned into supermarkets or housing estates. So we're all on top of each other and kids, wherever they play, are watched over by disapproving eyes because they are noisy or playing or running around and being inconveniently alive. If people see a group of teenagers on the street it's instantly considered 'anti-social behaviour', something threatening, but the fact that those teenagers might have nowhere else to go isn't entertained for a moment. No parent wants 16 kids in the house, all the open land where teenagers used to go when I was a kid has been built on, parks are closed in the evening and social or youth groups tend to operate one day a week only. They might not be causing any trouble, and in most cases they really are not even slightly interested in the passerby, but the mere fact of them being there seems to be a problem. If they were out of sight, as they used to be, no one would really care. But instead we're all right on top of each other, you can't escape it and there's rarely an acknowledgement from the adult's side that their reaction to the teenagers being there, the desire to remove them from the street, is as much a part of the 'anti-social behaviour' problem as the kids themselves are supposed to be. And the poor kids can't win because if they're outside they're considered an anti-social menace, and if they're inside their considered to be layabout couch potatoes who spend all day on their mobile phones, the X-box or Playstation, or messing around on Facebook.

Poor little Billy sounds awfully cute with his penknife but not everyone thinks so:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7484103.stm

[Jozanny]

This debate has seemingly devolved into your social pathology is better than mine, and it is not really an indicator of cultural apex, cultural golden age, or cultural decline.

Look, I complain on my blog about social pathology all the time. The attendants who have victimized me have kept my post traumatic stress symptoms alive and well, and turned my biases into a nearly entrenched certainty of experience, so my heart bleeds, truly, for instructors on the front line-- but luke and Neely and Brian and Fifth and me can sit down over coffee and revel in Wilde's attributes, yes?

Isn't that a retention, even a strength, of Western cultural resilience? I don't like muddy waters when it seems no one has a decent definition of what they mean.

[mortalterror]

It wouldn't take much effort to research the history of drug abuse... and alcohol abuse as well as the history of violence and gangs and highway robbery etc... across Europe in past centuries.
As for the Araxes, it is, according to some accounts, larger, according to others smaller than the Ister (Danube). It has islands in it, many of which are said to be equal in size to Lesbos. The men who inhabit them feed during the summer on roots of all kinds, which they dig out of the ground, while they store up the fruits, which they gather from the trees at the fitting season, to serve them as food in the winter-time. Besides the trees whose fruit they gather for this purpose, they have also a tree which bears the strangest produce. When they are met together in companies they throw some of it upon the fire round which they are sitting, and presently, by the mere smell of the fumes which it gives out in burning, they grow drunk, as the Greeks do with wine. More of the fruit is then thrown on the fire, and, their drunkenness increasing, they often jump up and begin to dance and sing. Such is the account which I have heard of this people. -Herodotus Histories

[The Atheist]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

:s,ilielol5:


Anyway, whether this is a cultural or a social decline, it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today and that is my argument, certainly in the UK, which is fast becoming one of the worst countries in Europe.

How do you rate them on the goodness and badness scale?

How do they compare against life say, 400 years ago, under the fuedal system. Was virtual slavery an advantage in cultural excellence.

I think you're getting closer to Aunty S's problem though, which is actually: "Cultures Change".

SLG has been berating the point, but I'd like to add that cultures do change, and the evidence for that is pretty obvious. Change does not equate to improvement or regression, it just means change.


After all, we - the older generations - are in fact the cause of what happens. The culture, the youngsters, are not some aliens seperate from us, but are linked to us and how we brought/ are bringing up our kids. The challenge is to do it better.

Amen.

[Emil Miller]

This debate has seemingly devolved into your social pathology is better than mine, and it is not really an indicator of cultural apex, cultural golden age, or cultural decline.

Look, I complain on my blog about social pathology all the time. The attendants who have victimized me have kept my post traumatic stress symptoms alive and well, and turned my biases into a nearly entrenched certainty of experience, so my heart bleeds, truly, for instructors on the front line-- but luke and Neely and Brian and Fifth and me can sit down over coffee and revel in Wilde's attributes, yes?

Isn't that a retention, even a strength, of Western cultural resilience? I don't like muddy waters when it seems no one has a decent definition of what they mean.

Got to agree with this; it's unfortunate that threads which address this and similar subjects, always break down in this way. I don't think Aunt Shecky's original post re Western cultural extinction has been adhered to and is rapidly devolving into nit picking.

[JCamilo]

As for the Araxes, it is, according to some accounts, larger, according to others smaller than the Ister (Danube). It has islands in it, many of which are said to be equal in size to Lesbos. The men who inhabit them feed during the summer on roots of all kinds, which they dig out of the ground, while they store up the fruits, which they gather from the trees at the fitting season, to serve them as food in the winter-time. Besides the trees whose fruit they gather for this purpose, they have also a tree which bears the strangest produce. When they are met together in companies they throw some of it upon the fire round which they are sitting, and presently, by the mere smell of the fumes which it gives out in burning, they grow drunk, as the Greeks do with wine. More of the fruit is then thrown on the fire, and, their drunkenness increasing, they often jump up and begin to dance and sing. Such is the account which I have heard of this people. -Herodotus Histories


But those people are not aristocratic, neither schoolboys. They didn't live in England, so they do not account for Western Civilization. Plus, statistic is bad, unless they are used as something vague, numberless.

After a time travel, I finally found a society without social revolt. There was no decline, saddly no improvement either. They are called dinossaurs and they have two suns. One that moves straight to the earth, according to Mr.Flintstone. By the way, I am nitpicking because the irony of irony cann't be well understood unless a prostitute (this recent invention of human society) threw the naked truth on me.

[AuntShecky]

Got to agree with this; it's unfortunate that threads which address this and similar subjects, always break down in this way. I don't think Aunt Shecky's original post re Western cultural extinction has been adhered to and is rapidly devolving into nit picking.

Rest assured that it doesn't break down until it reaches the point of Godwin's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law). (Although the earlier references to Goering come close!)

Back to the point of whether we've only recently begun to slip down the proverbial slippery slope or if it goes back 40 years or more, here's some more "anecdotal evidence"(a contradiction in "terms.")

Back when Dwight MacDonald was writing his seminal essay, there was no Internet, no cable. The predominant mass medium was broadcast television. We were the famous "last family in the neighborhood" to get a TV, and I think I was about 8 years old when we finally had one, which only brought in one VHF channel well, another family member having broken the dial.

But this was the time of "The Golden Age of Television,"which offered important plays on the Philco Playhouse,Kraft Theatre, Playhouse 90, and the like, with the works of Odets, Serling, Chayevsky, etc. Those drama series were somewhat like the equivalent of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS today, or since they were contemporary teleplays, like HBO without the swearin'. Keep in mind though, they were on network tv, which today offers soul-killing "reality" shows, and the dumbest fare you can think of.

But even then, Newton Minnow of the FCC complained about the "vast wasteland," as many viewers watched the "l.o.p."--"least objectionable program." There were just as many lame-o sitcoms in the early 60s as there are now,
but they were tempered with real talents, such as Sid Caesar,Carl Reiner, Dick van Dyke, even Woody Allen and Neil Simon.

These days it's rare for even PBS to broadcast an opera, a ballet, or a concert of classical music. (Their more-and-more frequent "pledge breaks" have been going the "pop" music route. Last week they even had "The Beatles" --in the personae of a "tribute" band!)

But can you imagine one of the 3 American networks actually putting classical music on during prime time. But they did at one time. Now, this is going way, way back, but when I was little I used to watch Leonard Bernstein explain the various instruments of the orchestra and how they related to the symphony that they were about to perform. Even then, when I was so young and uncouth and never introduced to the finer things in life, I thought it was wonderful. This is what the rich kids have," I remember thinking, "this is what they've got in Westchester County and Connecticut." Just last fall when
I learned about Earl Shorris's humanities (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=985814#post985814) program, I realized that decades ago I must have had the same feelin as
his students

So --in the very limited domain of the idiot box, yes the culture has definitely deteriorated.

[MarkBastable]

The two most popular free-to-air TV shows in the UK in the last year I paid attention (2009, I think) were Big Brother and the BBC's dramatisation of Bleak House - all ten hours of it. The figures suggest that the audiences overlapped by a high percentage. The Proms at the Albert Hall are screened every year, and get huge ratings.

Ordinary people like loads of stuff. The audience's tastes are less stereotypically predictable than marketing strategists would have us believe.

[MarkBastable]

.....

[Emil Miller]

The two most popular free-to-air TV shows in the UK in the last year I paid attention (2009, I think) were Big Brother and the BBC's dramatisation of Bleak House - all ten hours of it. The figures suggest that the audiences overlapped by a high percentage. The Proms at the Albert Hall are screened every year, and get huge ratings.

Ordinary people like loads of stuff. The audience's tastes are less stereotypically predictable than marketing strategists would have us believe.

Interesting. Could you provide the overlap figures that suggest a high percentage of Big Brother's audience also watched the ten episodes of Bleak House ? I am also one of those who occasionally watch the Promenade concerts, but I would be interested to see the figures for those particular audiences, throughout the whole of the season and not just the razzmatazz of the last night, compared to those of, say, X Factor or any of the mass audience programmes that habitually occupy television screens today.

[MarkBastable]

Interesting. Could you provide the overlap figures that suggest a high percentage of Big Brother's audience also watched the ten episodes of Bleak House ?

That'd be statistics. You wouldn't want that, except to dismiss them.

[JCamilo]

I really hoped that you would say "I will ask my father."

Anyways, could you provice the anedoctal evidence anyways? Give Emil some credit (or rope), plus it is interesting data. (Even if irrelevant, Dickens was accused as one of the motors behind the decline of higher literature, in his books there is not much aristocracy and many boys out of school, so Bleak House is obviously ready for trashcan).

[Emil Miller]

That'd be statistics. You wouldn't want that, except to dismiss them.
Agreed, but I was more interested in the word 'suggest' than the figures themselves.

[MarkBastable]

Agreed, but I was more interested in the word 'suggest' than the figures themselves.

I think I can help you there, by presenting it in your own terms.

I looked at the figures at the time, and it's obvious that everyone who watched Big Brother also watched Bleak House. And they all also watched The Teletubbies and Seinfeld. If you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

[Emil Miller]

I think I can help you there, by presenting it in your own terms.

I looked at the figures at the time, and it's obvious to an idiot that everyone who watched Big Brother also watched Bleak House. And they all also watched The Teletubbies and Seinfeld. If you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

In other words you are not prepared to corroborate your statement that: "Ordinary people like loads of stuff. The audience's tastes are less stereotypically predictable than marketing strategists would have us believe. "

[MarkBastable]

In other words you are not prepared to corroborate your statement that: "Ordinary people like loads of stuff. The audience's tastes are less stereotypically predictable than marketing strategists would have us believe. "

Excuse me - I think I just did.

[Emil Miller]

Excuse me - I think I just did.

Think again.

[Paulclem]

In terms of supposed in school violence - my kids have never seen an actual fight at school, though their Dad at a similar age had been in many (and had become the c*ck of the school - an honour bestowed by means of being the best scrapper of all the lads - remember that anyone?) and I had seen plenty before I reached high school too. If anything I'd say the standards of behaviour have improved,



I remember the c*ck of our school. I had three fights with him that I didn't want from age 8-ish to 15. I didn't win one, but I was getting closer. The good thing about fighting at school was that you knew - because of the rumpus it caused - that someone would come along and break up the proceedings. The worst words were - "I'll see you at half three" - especially in the morning where the word would go round the classes and a sense of excitement would grow amongst everyone but you - slowly filling with a dread of anticipation. It was a relief to get the whole business over with a few bruises and muddy trousers.

One of the older c*cks was called Sid Okker - a name that would put terror into our young hearts, though I never saw him lift a finger in anger. He did have a face like the back of a bashed up bus.

They used to say that school was the best years of your life, but it wasn't. In the 70s it was full of random violence, bullying that was never addressed, and someone was always out to "get" you - (or was that just me). The potential for a fight was there the whole time at the rough comprehensive I went to. I remember a sixth former being put in hospital by three lads who were 2 years younger than him. After I'd left school, two of my brother's classmates beat a lad I knew to death with a golf club, and another bloke, who used to be at school with us, murdered his girlfriend. He'd been picked on terribly at school, and I couldn't help thinking that it was somehow part of that terrible thing.

The school couldn't and didn't cope with bullying at all. My impression of schools now is that there is a lot more posturing and shouting, but less actual violence. Like you Fifth, I think they try to deal with it now. I didn't hate school, but when I left I realised gradually what a horrible place it was, and how crap some of the teachers were. Some were very good. Lots were mediocre at best.

[MarkBastable]

Think again.

I've thought again. And, yep, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

[Emil Miller]

I've thought again. And, yep, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

there's definitely a case for inventing a font exclusively for use on the Net, called Facetious Sans Serif.

[Delta40]

there's definitely a case for inventing a font exclusively for use on the Net, called Facetious Sans Serif.

Cheers of applause from that class of person who enjoys your serious discussions very much but is ill-equipped to participate! :ladysman:

[MarkBastable]

Originally Posted by Emil Miller
there's definitely a case for inventing a font exclusively for use on the Net, called Facetious Sans Serif.

Cheers of applause from that class of person who enjoys your serious discussions very much but is ill-equipped to participate! :ladysman:

See, Brian, you do write posts that are appreciated.

[Emil Miller]

See, Brian, you do write posts that are appreciated.

Yes it's rather unfortunate but I'm sure she meant well.

[stlukesguild]

I don't like muddy waters when it seems no one has a decent definition of what they mean.

I actually quite like Muddy Waters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjPezeHN9Hc

and John Lee Hooker as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg&feature=related

although Brian undoubtedly recognizes the fact that they would garner serious attention... especially by a cultural snob such as myself... is proof positive of the decline of Western Civilization.

Don't worry Brian... I'm currently redeeming myself... listening to some marvelous operatic arias by Johann Christian Bach sung by the amazing Philippe Jaroussky. This brilliant young singer is rapidly becoming a classical super-star... and one more example of the decline of Western culture:goof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1yUQJj7NbI

[Delta40]

Yes it's rather unfortunate but I'm sure she meant well.

I did! I trust you all know you have an admiring audience...

[prendrelemick]

I remember the c*ck of our school. I had three fights with him that I didn't want from age 8-ish to 15. I didn't win one, but I was getting closer. The good thing about fighting at school was that you knew - because of the rumpus it caused - that someone would come along and break up the proceedings. The worst words were - "I'll see you at half three" - especially in the morning where the word would go round the classes and a sense of excitement would grow amongst everyone but you - slowly filling with a dread of anticipation. It was a relief to get the whole business over with a few bruises and muddy trousers.

One of the older c*cks was called Sid Okker - a name that would put terror into our young hearts, though I never saw him lift a finger in anger. He did have a face like the back of a bashed up bus.

They used to say that school was the best years of your life, but it wasn't. In the 70s it was full of random violence, bullying that was never addressed, and someone was always out to "get" you - (or was that just me). The potential for a fight was there the whole time at the rough comprehensive I went to. I remember a sixth former being put in hospital by three lads who were 2 years younger than him. After I'd left school, two of my brother's classmates beat a lad I knew to death with a golf club, and another bloke, who used to be at school with us, murdered his girlfriend. He'd been picked on terribly at school, and I couldn't help thinking that it was somehow part of that terrible thing.

The school couldn't and didn't cope with bullying at all. My impression of schools now is that there is a lot more posturing and shouting, but less actual violence. Like you Fifth, I think they try to deal with it now. I didn't hate school, but when I left I realised gradually what a horrible place it was, and how crap some of the teachers were. Some were very good. Lots were mediocre at best.

It is a shame, I believe in the comprehensive system, but it can and does go very wrong. Discipline is the root of the problem.


Our comprehensive was fairly strict on the discipline until the old head retired and a "progressive" educator took over - things went down hill rapidly then - although at the time it seemed better to us . They removed the old system and had nothing ready to replace it with. Things became pretty anarchic until another strong man was put in charge - In time for my own kids, thank goodness.

I was (to my suprise) **** of the school for my last year at juniors, and was consequently given a severe beating on entering high school.

[MystyrMystyry]

There have always been smarties and dummies wherever cultures have existed - in ancient Greece there were Herakles and Jason for the dummies, and Theseus and Perseus for the smarties

There were two classes and two standards of education - the elites needed extra for purposes of governance and marshaling armies, and their 'special' heroes had a form of moral compass the gods seemed to lack

On the debate about Big Brother the mental age had a lot to do with those who watched (check the actual numbers and you'll find that it's still a tiny fraction of the total population - same as Bleak House, you're looking at two extremes)

You could extend that argument to the popularity of The Beatles during their peak - though the world knew who they were they'd sold as many records by the time they broke up that amounts to only one person in a hundred in all Britain having bought one album apiece - and this was before the widespread cassette copying craze (the rest of the money coming from movies, merchandising, and touring)

But everyone was familar with the songs from the cartoon series, endless radio plays, and being taught them in music class

Why am I chattering about The Beatles? Because my Grandmother was convinced that they alone were singlehandedly the end of Western Civilisation

[LitNetIsGreat]

If anything I'd say the standards of behaviour have improved.I guess it comes back to “invalid” anecdotes again. I nearly spilt my sub-standard coffee at such words, but it is all about your experience of the world, if your experience is positive then you are likely to think that way I suppose.

As a front line worker in the thick of education today I can tell you that it is not my opinion. Three/four fights a day, bullying at epidemic proportions, drugging kids to give teachers half a chance to get them to sit in chairs etc, etc, is all a "normal" part of my day. However, I am not basing my arguments solely upon my own observations (as if a person lives in isolation to the world anyway) it is based on having spoken to numerous, numerous people in education who work across the region (also I always speak to supply teachers as I feel sorry for them).

Here, the overwhelming consensus is that things are getting worse. More accurately things are getting worse at schools in the bottom of the socio-economic scale. Schools at the high end are generally excellent, getting better or at least maintaining their superiority (same old, same old) but the behaviour and standards at the average, or bottom end, are getting worse and have been slowly getting worse for a while.

A lot of the problems (if you believe there are problems) can be boiled down to having replaced common sense and discipline, with ever changing buzz strategies, some of which are imposed on schools from above. I’m not going to go into this, but ask anyone in education today and they will tell you the same thing here most likely – (have you checked your 4Rs and focused on your AFs having incorporated your BLPs into your Accelerated Learning Cycle, etc, etc?) However, I also think that what’s happening in the classrooms merely reflects what is happening outside of them – a general erosion of respect, maybe not a massive decline, it is difficult to tell, but a decline nonetheless for sure.


How do you rate them on the goodness and badness scale?

How do they compare against life say, 400 years ago, under the feudal system. Was virtual slavery an advantage in cultural excellence.
Ahh, the good old feudal system, a time when torture and slavery was far less sophisticated than it is today and mass media brainwashing had not yet been invented!

I’m speaking of what I see as a general decline in manners, in respect, over the last 40/50 years – or really in my lifetime. There are some great positives today for sure; a greater openness for minorities and certain flexibilities, but as I sit on the bus (observing the “please give up this seat for elderly or disabled people” or the “do not abuse the driver” signs, look out of the window at all the boarded up shops (due to the domination of the supermarkets) attempt to read over the “slap your bit*h up music” which comes from the back of the bus, I think that not all change has been good.

[MarkBastable]

But everyone was familar with the songs from the cartoon series, endless radio plays, and being taught them in music class




...cartoon series?

[MystyrMystyry]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wUk_b2rHk4

cartoon series

[JCamilo]

I guess it comes back to “invalid” anecdotes again. I nearly spilt my sub-standard coffee at such words, but it is all about your experience of the world, if your experience is positive then you are likely to think that way I suppose.

As a front line worker in the thick of education today I can tell you that it is not my opinion. Three/four fights a day, bullying at epidemic proportions, drugging kids to give teachers half a chance to get them to sit in chairs etc, etc, is all a "normal" part of my day. However, I am not basing my arguments solely upon my own observations (as if a person lives in isolation to the world anyway) it is based on having spoken to numerous, numerous people in education who work across the region (also I always speak to supply teachers as I feel sorry for them).

Worse than what exactly? To the time when black people are not allowed to study together in school? Than a time that mroe than half of the kids in western world (hahahaha, I laugh of those claiming the end of western civilization and only talking about England and United States, such hypocrisy) had no access to schools? It was not that long ago. The system of education got worst, but it is an improvement to discuss which system to teach rather how to make kids go to school in masses in first place.

As for changes, the man in your signature could live to his 80 year birthday today. A more inclusive society has advantages and new problems. That is simple.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Worse than what exactly? To the time when black people are not allowed to study together in school? Than a time that mroe than half of the kids in western world (hahahaha, I laugh of those claiming the end of western civilization and only talking about England and United States, such hypocrisy) had no access to schools? It was not that long ago. The system of education got worst, but it is an improvement to discuss which system to teach rather how to make kids go to school in masses in first place.

As for changes, the man in your signature could live to his 80 year birthday today. A more inclusive society has advantages and new problems. That is simple.

Worse than what I said here:


I’m speaking of what I see as a general decline in manners, in respect, over the last 40/50 years – or really in my lifetime. There are some great positives today for sure; a greater openness for minorities and certain flexibilities, but...

You'll also notice included in there, my belief in the positive changes and freedoms for minorities today, the type that people like Wilde had to die for in the past - granted, but neither do I walk around thinking that the world is rosy either.

Also, I do not place Yorkshire, UK, at the centre of the universe. Rather, that this is my own immediate experience, limited experience perhaps, but my own experience nevertheless. This is not hypocrisy, this is simply common sense. People have a tendency to see things from their own perspective, in their own society and if I lived in the Congo then my experience would be different, but this does not make me an hypocrite.

I was speaking to a lad who comes from Gambia the other day. He was laughing at why people here criticise the quality of the roads so much here (Sheffield). He says that back in Gambia you need a 4x4 just to get around even on the "best" roads, which are dirt tracks. But things are relative and this is not a valid comparison. If I was to come off of my bike because of the pot holes, am I not to complain? What does the roads back in Gambia mean to me with a bruised head?

In short, I'm primarily talking about the decline of the UK, as this is where I live.

Edit: and if anecdotes are invalid, how do you expect me to talk about Brazil when I've never been there?

[JCamilo]

It is not even directed to you, but I can talk about england. I did. 40 years ago, the punk movement was persecuted. Police didnt allowed it. Use of drugs was very dangerous, most because of hygiene.

Of course, the question is again, worst than what? Manners? What exactly? Lord Dumpty threated Lord Humpty well? We do not leave the bus seating for ladies? All of this come in consequence of inclusion - Women may have lost some special treatment, but they have others.

And of course, today we are less blind to international consequences. Civilizaition in england and trash can in India. Democracy in America, dictadors in South America. All of this is Western civilization.

[LitNetIsGreat]

And of course, today we are less blind to international consequences. Civilizaition in england and trash can in India. Democracy in America, dictadors in South America. All of this is Western civilization.

Well, I couldn't agree any more with that. That is what I meant when I said that we have a more sophisticated system of slavery and torture today than under the feudal system - read back - is this the improvement you speak of by the way?

However, you keep asking more than what and I keep explaining; a fall in common decency and general respect. I am mostly speaking in regards to education. Firsly, because this is what I know, and secondly, because it is so important for the future and it reflects something of society at large. Here, myself and about 95%+ of the people I speak with, see and feel a decline; it is quite apparent.

[JCamilo]

Again, I cannt even agree: 40 years ago, only 30% brazilians had finished basic school, today 90% are considered alphabetized. This is education improving. In the 40's the questions about literacy is if the kid could read or not, today if they could understand or manipulate the text, which implies the stage of basic literacy is fullfilled. This is improvement. I do think a educational system that is too inclusive (an improvement) also generate a downgrading of certain educational areas (a set-back).

As common decency: combat to racism, care with people with special needs, women rights: they seem to have improved, dont you agree? General respect? Today we are imposed the respect the different sexual opinions, race, believes. 30 years ago? I just point that the inclusion and acceptance of differences generate conflicts. But that it is improvement.

And I do not think society have went down or up, I think it is finding solutions and creating new problems since ever.

[Paulclem]

Again, I cannt even agree: 40 years ago, only 30% brazilians had finished basic school, today 90% are considered alphabetized. This is education improving. In the 40's the questions about literacy is if the kid could read or not, today if they could understand or manipulate the text, which implies the stage of basic literacy is fullfilled. This is improvement. I do think a educational system that is too inclusive (an improvement) also generate a downgrading of certain educational areas (a set-back).

As common decency: combat to racism, care with people with special needs, women rights: they seem to have improved, dont you agree? General respect? Today we are imposed the respect the different sexual opinions, race, believes. 30 years ago? I just point that the inclusion and acceptance of differences generate conflicts. But that it is improvement.

And I do not think society have went down or up, I think it is finding solutions and creating new problems since ever.

I remember my wife telling me the classifications they had for the various conditions they had in hospitals in the UK in 1979 - Cretin was still used, as was Mongoloid etc etc. I broadly agree with you JC.

[Paulclem]

It is a shame, I believe in the comprehensive system, but it can and does go very wrong. Discipline is the root of the problem.


Our comprehensive was fairly strict on the discipline until the old head retired and a "progressive" educator took over - things went down hill rapidly then - although at the time it seemed better to us . They removed the old system and had nothing ready to replace it with. Things became pretty anarchic until another strong man was put in charge - In time for my own kids, thank goodness.

I was (to my suprise) **** of the school for my last year at juniors, and was consequently given a severe beating on entering high school.

I couldn't agree more. Discipline, as I quickly realised, needs to be there before learning can take place.

And c*ck of the school was never a job I would have relished. The c*ck with whom I had dealings also had a hard time in secondary school for a while. It became clear that you needed friends. A severe beating sounds pretty bad. Was it a hospital job?

[OrphanPip]

Hell, a little over 50 years ago in Quebec the children of unwed mothers were forcefully removed by the state and sent to medical institutions because bastards would be mentally ill, this was done in conjunction with the Catholic church that dominated public policy in Quebec at the period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans

I can't imagine anyone getting away with forcefully removing children from unwed mother's today.

[Emil Miller]

Bringing this thread back to its original premise, I have been consulting some back numbers of Le Monde and Le Figaro ( I seldom read English newspapers these days because, in my view, they are not as informative) and in relation to what I have written earlier about the decline of Western culture and its replacement in the East, I have noticed that this is something frequently aired in French newspapers and magazines.
American influence is already on the wain in China as evidenced by this article from Le Monde:

Bye-bye Barbie! In China the culture is turning red.

In Shanghai, the American flagship toy company Mattel consecrated to Barbie has closed its doors but the Chinese equivalent is not yet ready to replace the famous doll.
The article goes on to say that only 25% of television programmes are foreign
and foreign films represent only a third of total projection time.
The search engine Baidu has over 80% of the market and Google has withdrawn from China.

Here is another headline from Le Figaro:

Ostentatious luxury has no place in Peking
Hide this luxury which runs contrary to equality

Peking is attacking the advertising of bling-bling. The authority for Industry and Commerce enjoins advertisers to cease promoting hedonism and the cult of foreign products in the Chinese capital. The words 'luxurious', 'class', 'royal' or 'supreme' are henceforth forbidden to publicists.
The article then states that eminent politicians have denounced conspicuous consumption of luxury products by the economic elite as being detrimental to the harmonious development of a middle class.

Another item from Le Monde has the heading: China's new affirmation of power reflects its nationalism
American diplomats have seen a change in Peking's attitude and a condescension to the world, notably towards Europe.
The recent Wikileaks scandal has revealed the extent to which China's economic power has impacted on its foreign policy in the increasing willingness to stand up to the West in its dealings on the international stage. The attached picture graphically underlines the way things are heading.

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/8307/scan0006xt.jpg


The article continues with quotations from Wikileaks that confirm this: the most revealing being Hilary Clinton's remark concerning Tibet: "How can the US get tough with it's banker?"


Returning to another facet of the thread that has generated differing viewpoints i.e. anecdotal as opposed to statistical evidence, here is what Claude Gueant the French Interior Minister has to say about the National Front's dramatic gains in last week's cantonal elections: "The French feel that an excess of immigration, an illegal and unrequired immigration troubles them, upsets them. If we persist in denying the reality which is evident to their own eyes, we are paving the way for extremism."

[Paulclem]

Have you seen this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeoKQbT8BKs

It's all about the education. It does make it seem that the efforts on education are currently piecemeal.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Interesting video. Does it also not raise the question why IT is NOT a core subject in schools? There are changes to the core subjects of English, Maths and Science, to these, plus a Humanities and a Language, but again, no IT? Crazy. In fact IT is being devalued. Another top move by the old boys at the top.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I haven't had time to read through all these, but it seems to me that the only evidences to suggest that culture is in some sort of amorphous trashcan are shaky-at-best anecdotes. Someone even went so far as to point to lack of maturity on an MMORPG (massive multiplayer on-line role-playing game, i.e., World of Warcraft) to support this? Two things. First, online games are not meant to be taken any more seriously than the content they provide. Second, when I played WoW, I found plenty of people who could discuss politics, art, music cogently and effectively. Surprise, surprise, they weren't the same minority who spends time on Trade Chat shouting poop jokes.

It seems every anecdote presented is nothing more than a bad experience that somehow counts for more than exactly what it was--a bad experience. Someone told a story of how after giving out pens to a classroom, all pens were destroyed within minutes. I had four classes where, and in a week, after letting people borrow dozens of pens and pencils, I would lose maybe four-or-five by the end of the week. And these were kids who just misplaced their pen or pencil--almost all my students habitually brought all required materials (something else suggested to be an impossibility).

To add a caveat, I don't think anecdotes are completely invalid. They're just not valid enough alone to carry enough weight to win an argument (in my mind, at least).

Two assertions, at least within the first few pages had been made. That culture was on the rise and that it was on the decline. I think it's probably where it always has been. High art has always been something enjoyed by the minority--if there's been a time when their equal to jazz and opera was bigger than their equal to Justin Beiber, I am unaware of it.

[Paulclem]

I wonder if it's because they see it as a skill that the kids develop themselves? I remember that IT was going to become the fourth core essential subject. They backtracked on it though - perhaps because in Adult Learning a niche of forty- somethings who were working in low paid employment were the ones likely to be without IT or the oportunity to deveop it, whilst the kids were getting plenty in school, and either It had caught you already, you were working in an industry with IT, or you were a silver surfer with the opportunity to go to classes.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I wonder if it's because they see it as a skill that the kids develop themselves?

Perhaps, but that is hardly a solid foundation to take out into a competitive world. Being able to use Facebook/My Space and all the rest of it, is hardly going to carry much weight with potential employers. Instead, actually, I just think that it's another backwards decision from the Etonians.

Oh, and to throw out another wasted anecdote (otherwise known as an empirical observation of the world which holds weight in many philosophical or political contexts but not on Lit Net) that comes back to me from the IT department and English, many of these whizz students at 13/14/15 do not know the very basic things like copy and paste, how change the font on Word etc, etc. Yes, they can manage their Facebook accounts and are brilliant with phones, but many struggle more than people might think with the basic stuff.

For me leaving IT to chance is not the way forward.

[Paulclem]

I agree with you Neely. I was just wondering what the rationale for it was back then. We get young adults who are rubbish with IT too. I bet it was the money.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Absolutely it is all about the money I suspect. But is it not a question of cutting the nose off?

[Paulclem]

Absolutely it is all about the money I suspect. But is it not a question of cutting the nose off?

Maybe. The propsals were pre-credit crunch, but it might have had lots of hardware implications even so.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I agree about not teaching IT, but what about other stuff? How about a class for teaching everything a person needs to know when they get out into the "real world." Things like buying a house (when, where, how, why? Buying versus renting) paying a mortgage (what a mortgage is, why you get one, benefits of having one, how to pay one off, etc.), paying taxes (sales tax, income tax, yearly taxes), getting a job (this is sometimes addressed, but not enough--usually it's just how to do an interview), and the numerous other things that I can't think of that one has to do to be an adult.

We teach kids plenty of things that they will never use, and neglect giving them essential knowledge which leaves most of them lost when first encountered.

[MystyrMystyry]

How about a mandatory class every morning about the importance of respecting other people so you have millions of friends - and the importance of independent reading so that you always have something to talk about, and philosophy so they see both sides of an argument, and how to spot a con - and cause and effect so they avoid doing anything ridiculous, and and and...

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

How about a mandatory class every morning about the importance of respecting other people so you have millions of friends - and the importance of independent reading so that you always have something to talk about, and philosophy so they see both sides of an argument, and how to spot a con - and cause and effect so they avoid doing anything ridiculous, and and and...

I assume you're mocking me? Or others? If so, I'm not sure to what end.

[Hurricane]

You might laugh at kids going out into the real world without any idea of how to do that stuff, but it's kind of a big issue. Hell, I can barely do my own taxes and mine are very uncomplicated. It's stuff that parents should be teaching, but a lot aren't.

Also, considering most people don't read independently or see both sides of an argument...I mean...

[MystyrMystyry]

Mutatis - not mocking anyone, just got tired of the line I've been towing for years (thus the and and and...)

Hurricane - state schools just need an internal agenda on the fundamentals of education's aims - I mean we're way past the Gradgrind stage of facts facts facts - right now with all the open thought amongst teachers would be the perfect time to try something that will stick

Discuss openly the modern media culture in forum groups involving the students and they'll soon adapt to the concept that their ideas and contributions are as valid as anyone's, if they initially don't feel like talking, they'll soon learn to when they see their mates doing it, and perhaps also discover a new element to their self-esteem, and that it's fun

[YesNo]

Hell, I can barely do my own taxes and mine are very uncomplicated.

Me, neither. And unfortunately I procrastinate.

[Paulclem]

How about a mandatory class every morning about the importance of respecting other people so you have millions of friends - and the importance of independent reading so that you always have something to talk about, and philosophy so they see both sides of an argument, and how to spot a con - and cause and effect so they avoid doing anything ridiculous, and and and...

This begins in primary school and is taken all through the school system. I'm not saying it works in every school, but they're all trying it in the UK.

How do you do a class on spotting a con? A con is a new short scam that, by it's very nature, will work until enough people are warned about it.

I also don't see how cause and effect can halt the experience of being ridiculous occaisionally. And anyway - there's no better way to learn. Humiliation is a powerful memory tool... I find...

[The Atheist]

How do you do a class on spotting a con?

By teaching simple logic - if A -> B, then C.

A few simple aphorisms like "if it's too good to be true..." might help as well.

Also, not a kid in the developed world doesn't know what spam is and most of them are scams, so there are lots of relevant examples to hand. They know that they haven't really won 89.4 Euros in a lottery.

[billl]

By teaching simple logic - if A -> B, then C.


What kind of logic is that?

[Delta40]

[QUOTE=The Atheist;1019672].

A few simple aphorisms like "if it's too good to be true..." might help as well.QUOTE]

Alot of people are guided by 'if it walks like a duck....' Some of these scams are very good. There are entire call centres dedicated to the cause. They prey on the penny wise pound foolish population (which is often the older generation!) They are very difficult to investigate.

here is one such example:

http://www.ato.gov.au/onlineservices/content.asp?doc=/content/62347.htm&page=6&H6

[Paulclem]

By teaching simple logic - if A -> B, then C.

A few simple aphorisms like "if it's too good to be true..." might help as well.

Also, not a kid in the developed world doesn't know what spam is and most of them are scams, so there are lots of relevant examples to hand. They know that they haven't really won 89.4 Euros in a lottery.

I agree about the internet scams etc. I was thinking - rather narrowly about the cons that people do on you face to face, where other factors can affect events like distraction, or false confidence.

[The Atheist]

What kind of logic is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic


Alot of people are guided by 'if it walks like a duck....' Some of these scams are very good.

I'm not so sure that they're as good as they appear on the surface - I've busted dozens of them They all have a common theme of appealing to greed, but even the well-designed ones almost always direct to an obviously incorrect url. They're slowly getting there - I received a tax refund one the other day that directed to something like: http/ird.govt.nz.scammingbastards.com

No doubt a few people never read further than the ird.govt.nz.


I agree about the internet scams etc. I was thinking - rather narrowly about the cons that people do on you face to face, where other factors can affect events like distraction, or false confidence.

I think you can carry the same ideas into real-life situations though. My kids are bombarded daily with rumours, urban myth and downright baloney from their friends at school. Despite their age - 11 & 8 - they seem to be able to spot the stupid pretty easily.

[billl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic



I'm not so sure that they're as good as they appear on the surface - I've busted dozens of them They all have a common theme of appealing to greed, but even the well-designed ones almost always direct to an obviously incorrect url. They're slowly getting there - I received a tax refund one the other day that directed to something like: http/ird.govt.nz.scammingbastards.com

No doubt a few people never read further than the ird.govt.nz.



I think you can carry the same ideas into real-life situations though. My kids are bombarded daily with rumours, urban myth and downright baloney from their friends at school. Despite their age - 11 & 8 - they seem to be able to spot the stupid pretty easily.



How do you do a class on spotting a con?


By teaching simple logic - if A -> B, then C.



What kind of logic is that?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

I'm pretty sure you must've been in a rush (or something...), but my best guess is that you meant to represent the modus ponens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens) argument in symbolic form.

That would be,

A -> B
A_____
B.

Your hasty example actually mixes English (if... then...) and symbolic logic ( -> ), and reads (when fully tranlsated into English):

IF (if A then B) then C.

This translated statement could possibly represent a useful assertion, but it does not stand on its own as an example of logical deduction.

It might represent a con of some sort, of course. More likely a way to rule out a con, perhaps... How about:
A = using the product
B = life gets better
C = buy the product

:thumbs_up

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm pretty sure you must've been in a rush (or something...), but my best guess is that you meant to represent the modus ponens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens) argument in symbolic form.

That would be,

A -> B
A_____
B.

Your hasty example actually mixes English (if... then...) and symbolic logic ( -> ), and reads (when fully tranlsated into English):

IF (if A then B) then C.

This translated statement could possibly represent a useful assertion, but it does not stand on its own as an example of logical deduction.

It might represent a con of some sort, of course. More likely a way to rule out a con, perhaps... How about:
A = using the product
B = life gets better
C = buy the product

:thumbs_up
Someone just got logic pwned. :lol:

[The Atheist]

I'm pretty sure you must've been in a rush (or something...),

Just lazy.

:)

[billl]

Similar reason, sort of--anyhow it was of course a valid point being made.

Regarding the education of kids against *online* scams, I remember seeing a website about how to avoid phishing and dangerous urls, etc., and really I think there's a lot of adults (esp. the elderly, like Paul mentioned) that need that sort of education, as well.

Also, I remembered that when I was in high school (the eightis) there was a class called Civics, in which we learned about our government, the stock market, drug abuse, probably checkbooks, and even spent an hour on deceptive advertising and retail shopping scams. I remember "bait-and-switch" was one of the scams, but that's it.

[Alexander III]

Instead, actually, I just think that it's another backwards decision from the Etonians.


Neely I have come to respect your opinion on the forums, but I cant let a comment like that go. Why is it that that comment of yours is accepted and unchallenged, yet if I were to say

"education is being ruined because it is no longer designed for the elite, but instead it panders to the working class masses; thereby lowering it's intellectual and cultural teachings"

This comment would be heavily opposed and people would find it offensive. (not that I particularly agree with the comment I made, merely using it as a hypothetical example of an opinion of mine)

The stereotype that the upper classes are unscrupulous and only care for the augmentation of their wealth is as true as the stereotype that all lower class individuals are thick-headed simpletons.

So I see no reason to pander to stereotypes.

( I have a close friend who studied at eton, so I found your remark to be insulting to me and him)

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well firstly sorry for any offence caused, that was never my attention and it would not sit well with me if I have done that, so apologies there if that is the case.

I have absolutely nothing against the well-off or privileged. Neither do I want to issue forth stereotypes of any kind. My comment was aimed at one particular prominent Etonian and his side-kick Robin (who didn't go to Eton) who I don’t particularly admire, shall we say? It’s not that I even dislike him (them) as people, (though I don’t particularly like them either) but rather it is the effect of their actions that bothers, and at times, angers me – if I let it. It was this in this aspect that my comment was made.

Maybe saying "Etonian" was not helpful though, I suppose. Though hopefully not as vindictive as saying something like "we do not want people from places like Sheffield affording holidays abroad" as one muliti-millionaire advisor uttered this week. I can't say I was impressed with that one.

[Paulclem]

Though hopefully not as vindictive as saying something like "we do not want people from places like Sheffield affording holidays abroad" as one muliti-millionaire advisor uttered this week. I can't say I was impressed with that one.

Who said that? AlthoughI too don't like stereotypes, I have heard things like that from some priviledged people.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I can't remember his name. A classmate was telling me about it the other day. I know he's some sort of government advisor though, if I find out I'll get back to you.

[Paulclem]

I can't remember his name. A classmate was telling me about it the other day. I know he's some sort of government advisor though, if I find out I'll get back to you.

Thanks.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Here we are Paul, Oliver Letwin.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/most-popular/2011/04/03/cabinet-minister-oliver-letwin-sparks-fury-over-cheap-flights-jibe-115875-23033993/

Of course, the irony here is that this "person" went to Eton!

[Emil Miller]

Here we are Paul, Oliver Letwin.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/most-popular/2011/04/03/cabinet-minister-oliver-letwin-sparks-fury-over-cheap-flights-jibe-115875-23033993/

Of course, the irony here is that this "person" went to Eton!

Hilarious to see two old Etonians scrapping over another airport for London. Despite his silly remark about Sheffield, Letwin does have a point though because if we go on building runways, we will end up looking like Airstrip One as Orwell (another old Etonian) suggested.

[Alexander III]

Well firstly sorry for any offence caused, that was never my attention and it would not sit well with me if I have done that, so apologies there if that is the case.

I have absolutely nothing against the well-off or privileged. Neither do I want to issue forth stereotypes of any kind. My comment was aimed at one particular prominent Etonian and his side-kick Robin (who didn't go to Eton) who I don’t particularly admire, shall we say? It’s not that I even dislike him (them) as people, (though I don’t particularly like them either) but rather it is the effect of their actions that bothers, and at times, angers me – if I let it. It was this in this aspect that my comment was made.

Maybe saying "Etonian" was not helpful though, I suppose. Though hopefully not as vindictive as saying something like "we do not want people from places like Sheffield affording holidays abroad" as one muliti-millionaire advisor uttered this week. I can't say I was impressed with that one.

Ahh ok I see you comment was addressed at a particular individual there is nothing wrong with that, just the way i read it it seemed a generalization against all etonians.

Wow I can't believe someone actually said "we do not want people from places like Sheffield affording holidays abroad" actually I can believe someone said that, but I can believe that they had the idiocy to get caught saying that.

[Paulclem]

Here we are Paul, Oliver Letwin.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/most-popular/2011/04/03/cabinet-minister-oliver-letwin-sparks-fury-over-cheap-flights-jibe-115875-23033993/

Of course, the irony here is that this "person" went to Eton!

Although I, like Alex III have met really nice people from all levels of society - I think it just gives a snifter of the attitudes of a certain echelon. You take the odd instances of comments over the years and you realise - as I have experienced - that whereas racist and sexual slurs are now frowned upon by most, class prejudice is still there in the attitudes in some of the most priviledged in society. And this bloke has got a big influence in running the country. Annoying and frustrating.

[Emil Miller]

It might be wiser to restrain one's comments on 'toffs' given that a number of public figures either went to Eton or were members of the Bullingdon club.
They look like the kind of people who would cut up rough and it would be most undignified to have members of Litnet debagged. That blond guy in the front row looks decidedly dangerous.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3720/cameronbullingdonclub.jpg


Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."

[Paulclem]

It might be wiser to restrain one's comments on 'toffs' given that a number of public figures either went to Eton or were members of the Bullingdon club.
They look like the kind of people who would cut up rough and it would be most undignified to have members of Litnet debagged. That blond guy in the front row looks decidedly dangerous.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3720/cameronbullingdonclub.jpg


Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."

They are posing as if they were in Duran Duran. They don't look so tough.

[Emil Miller]

They are posing as if they were in Duran Duran. They don't look so tough.

Nevertheless, I would hang on to the trousers just in case. People who go around trashing restaurants are usually quite capable of debagging their opponents. I'm wouldn't mind betting that Dave and George are just waiting to jump young Miliband in one of those darkened corridors of the House of Commons.

[Paulclem]

Nevertheless, I would hang on to the trousers just in case. People who go around trashing restaurants are usually quite capable of debagging their opponents. I'm wouldn't mind betting that Dave and George are just waiting to jump young Miliband in one of those darkened corridors of the House of Commons.

:lol:

Yes, my money's on the Bulls for that one.

Perhaps Milliband would get all nostalgic for it.

[LitNetIsGreat]

:lol:

I hear our friend (second top from the left) is surprised and outraged that not many "blacks" (i.e. one) have gone to Eton in the last 100 odd years. I mean, as if he's really shocked at this?

Boris really is such a clown, just had to say that - he's a big daft bear (but at least he defended "Northern folk" in the outburst with that scum chap.

I think you raise an interested point Paul regarding class prejudice. I think the UK has made great strides in terms of attitudes to homosexual and ethnic minorities over the last 20 years or so, but for me at least, there still seems to be plenty of class prejudice about.

I look forward to the day when a person is really judged (if people have to be "judged" by others) by the "content of their characters" and not by the intonation of their accents...we can hope.

[ralfyman]

Much of the "vulgarity" involves commercialized mass entertainment. One should consider, though, that such entertainment requires increasing levels of industrialization and mechanized agriculture, which in turn requires an abundance of oil and other resources.

The U.S. military, Lloyd's of London, the IEA, Morgan Stanley, and other organizations have reported that we may experience a permanent drop in global oil production by 2015, likely 2013. Since much of what we have requires a lot of oil (esp. petrochemicals) then that drop will lead to the destruction of a middle class lifestyle, which includes commercialized mass entertainment, and in the long term, problems ranging from food shortage to lack of medicine. Since other sources of energy cannot provide petrochemicals or have low energy returns, then we will experience much difficulty attempting to use these to replace oil. According to the IEA, at best, we will only be able to raise global energy production by around 9 percent during the next three decades. Meanwhile, demand may rise by around 2 percent each year.

Worse, this problem is accompanied by two others: debt-driven economies and the effects of pollution, including environmental damage and climate change.

Given that, we can probably argue that we may see a return to earlier forms of entertainment in the near future and in the long term.

[Emil Miller]

:lol:

I hear our friend (second top from the left) is surprised and outraged that not many "blacks" (i.e. one) have gone to Eton in the last 100 odd years. I mean, as if he's really shocked at this?
I look forward to the day when a person is really judged (if people have to be "judged" by others) by the "content of their characters" and not by the intonation of their accents...we can hope.

Given that it costs £26,400 a year to send a boy to Eton, it's unlikely that things will change radically in respect of its intake. The occasional token black
pupil may be there for window-dressing but this extract from a Daily Telegraph
article highlights the kind of people who actually go there.


..... the sheer number of Old Etonians prominent in all areas of life is a new phenomenon. Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Johnny Boden, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Zac Goldsmith, Damian Lewis, James Palumbo … the list goes on.

And last summer, a smattering of reports drew attention to the fact that no fewer than 14 Tory front-bench spokesmen were educated at Eton.

The headmaster of my prep school, a man of royalist leanings, was fond of a story, dating from the mid-1960s, about a young boy who was stopped by an American tourist on Eton High Street: "Tell me, son," said the Texan, "is it true that you have to be a lord to go to Eton?"
The boy considered this strange question: "Well," he replied, "you don't have to be. But we all are." :lol:

[Paulclem]

Brilliant.:lol:

What annoys me is the blindingly obvious outcome from a priviledged and well supported education, with all the positive reinforcement and the connections that are nurtured, is that they turn out to be well educated people in well paid jobs running the country. Anyone given those kinds of priviledges would be hard pressed not to do well. Yet you can smell the attitude some of them have to those of us who didn't have all that. And then there are those who have a positively debilitating upbringing and education, not just a so-so one. Such inequalities have ever been there. It does make the achievements of those who didn't have all that all the more impressive.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Given that it costs £26,400 a year to send a boy to Eton, it's unlikely that things will change radically in respect of its intake.

Absolutely, good point, though the costs have gone up a little (for some reason I looked last week?) now it costs a few pounds shy of £30,000 a year - not that money is an object for the top classes.

(Again, I don't hate those who have it, rather, I feel sorry for those millions who are good enough but never get the opportunity.)


Brilliant.:lol:

What annoys me is the blindingly obvious outcome from a priviledged and well supported education, with all the positive reinforcement and the connections that are nurtured, is that they turn out to be well educated people in well paid jobs running the country. Anyone given those kinds of priviledges would be hard pressed not to do well. Yet you can smell the attitude some of them have to those of us who didn't have all that. And then there are those who have a positively debilitating upbringing and education, not just a so-so one. Such inequalities have ever been there. It does make the achievements of those who didn't have all that all the more impressive.

Yes, true. It is all about those contacts if you ask me. It's like the local pub team trying to beat Man Utd on a 70 degree uphill pitch with a bias linesman. When someone does succeed in spite of all the odds, it is great and all of that, however it doesn't help in the long-term because they then become the exception to the rule and glorified, selling the system as truly socially mobile (think John Prescott if you must). The reality though is pretty obvious.