The Coarsening of Our Culture

[Virgil]

In another thread (God’s Purpose, now closed because we’ve strayed off topic and of which I’d like to continue here with a new topic) madhura presented a situation quoted below that must happen a lot more frequently than I imagine. She was surprised at my feeling that this was a small minority of men.


Is it so inconcievable that man could ever be decent? Or is it that standards have fallen all around, so its a shock to most people to come across someone who expects others to actually be genuine? Situation: Girl on bus. Girl fights her way through sweaty crowd of people and takes an aisle seat. Standing over girl holding onto rails is gentleman of about fifty. Three minutes later, girl realises gentleman is not merely leaning over her because of the bus lurching, but that he is shoving his dick into her shoulder, while staring straight out of the window with a blank expresion on his face.

She asks about falling standards, and I think that is a important question to ponder. And I have pondered it in the past several years (perhaps even more than that), but somehow in that thread it didn't occur to me to bring it up. Then a couple of things I observed in the past day led my thought's back to madhura's question.

Number 1: I was jogging yesterday and my path took me around a local high school (14-18 year olds, for those outside the US). At the near by bus stop there were lots of kids standing and some dance music playing and what looked like a 14 year old girl was grinding her backside up against the front side of a young boy's hips, if you know what I mean, to the music, of course.

Number 2: I was in a waiting room last night with my mother-in-law, who's in her upper sixties and there was another fellow there who I would guess was in his seventies. The TV news mentioned some teen agers who were caught planning some terrible act, and the two of them got in a conversation how kids are horrible, direspectful, and out of control today as opposed to when they were young, which I guess had to be the 1950's. Normally I would chuck this up to nastalgia, but they got very specific: houses that didn't need to be locked, and that's in Brooklyn NY, no grafiti, parents feeling comfortable with their children out at night, and respectful dances that teenagers went to. Sort of like the Happy days TV show, at least that's the image created in my mind.

It has seemed to me that our culture has coarsened. Has respectful dancing been replaced first by giggling of body parts and now actual grinding of body parts together? What about the "shock jocks" on the radio making infintile jokes, and not just of sexual nature but the lowest, crudest type? what about the violent video games and movies? And why do most movies have to have a sex scene in it?

I know this is not a question that applies to our times alone. Someone once pointed out that the mores of a culture go in cycles. There is a quote from Cicero, O tempora! O mores!, [Oh, the times! Oh, the customs].

Here are the questions I'd like people's responses to:
(1) Has culture coasened over your life time?
(2) Why do you think that?
(3) If so, how do we improve our culture? What are the solutions, if you think solutions are warrented?
(4) And for the women, has that experience (or something similar) described on the bus happened to you or someone you know, how often do you think it happens, and how many men do you think participate in such behavior?
(5) Does music, art, and literature play a role in the coarsening or are they reflective of society?

[blp]

I was ready to laugh this off as the usual myopic handwringing from the title, but you've won me 'round to some sense of coarsening - even if you're not sure about it yourself.

As a first stab at thinking about it, and without wanting to go full on Marxist about it, I'm inclined to say yes, there's been a coarsening and put a lot of it down to economic factors. The rich have got a hell of a lot richer in the west since the fifties or even the seventies, while overall GDP has remained about the same. Since GDP's an average, that means there's also a hell of a lot more poverty. The work of a journalist like Barbara Ehrenreich in investigating what life is like at the lower echelons of society in the US reveals a scandalous level of hardship and poor prospects in one of the richest societies in the world - one that has always prided itself on providing all its citizens with the opportunity to get ahead by sheer dint of hard work.

Some of this is paralleled here in the UK, though the situation's less extreme.

[kilted exile]

1/2) Has culture coarsened over the coarse of my lifetime? This depends on what you are refering to if you mean in a purely sexual nature, then yeah I guess it has got a bit "coarser" but only in so much as people are familiar with sex at a young age.....after all the '60s/70s were not exactly the period of chastity and purity. If you are referring to overall attitudes of the youth of today I would say we still have taboo subjects and there are still lines which are quite clearly there - for example I would suggest that jokes of a racist/homophobic/ mentally handicapped nature are far less acceptable in culture today than even 10years ago.

3) How do we go about improving society? Well this would depend on what you think would be an improvement, and whether you believe it is societies place to change the attitudes of todays youth or whether this is an issue best left to parents (and if the parents are the ones to blame, sorry that aint my generation). To use the sixties example again, I am quite sure people were interested in changing the attitudes of youth then as well.

5) Role of Music,art,literature: lead or reflect? In my opinion both they influence fashion and attitudes, but if they did not also reflect the culture of the time period they would soon be ignored.

[Nightshade]

I suppose really I should stay out of this conversation because
a) Im not old enough or stayed in "this" culture long enough to qualify or for over your lifteime and b) I havent had any of that kind of experiance (thank goodness).
However having said that I cant resist.
last week here was an article in the newspaper blaming the way society is today on the Baby boomers. According to this essay it said some Calfornian wrote a book about it and how the baby boomers have never grown up so are a bad example and thinghs are going to rot. However becasue of this the younger generation having to live with this are become more and more moral and well stern and committed to rules and structure. That being said cant say Ive seen much evidence of this "morality" I rember being on the stairs behind some year 8s or 9 so 13/14 year olds and they were talking about how theyd got pissed and ratarsed at this other girls party :eek:
I mean honestly!
And there was somthing else I read recently ah "Romantised sinning on the television" or somthing ( it was a novel about a woman dealing with druggie daughter) and how this encourged the acceptance of somthing that is after all wrong. And acctually even Ive noticed on tele recently how its more oohh a convicted felon How lovley can I help you rob/cheat/ commit your next breaking of the law..
But I wouldnt say its really new I think its cyclic like you said (is that what you said I got :confused: ) anyway if you look at it historically it goes up and down like that you get the "wilder" generations then you get hit by reformations and some type of puritan (and Im not talking about the religon but rather the actual word as in wanting to makle the socity more pure like ohh the victorians?) and then you have a backlash against that that eventually gets worse and worse (about where we are I think) then bang someone decides society needs cleaning up and we are stuck in thyhe handmaids tale, though I highly doubt it will be that extreme butI hope you get what I mean.
:D

EDIT actually Ive just thought crime doesnt equate with coarsening does it? And the coarseinig was sort of dimmed in the media anyway in the what was it (1930s/20s???) with the decency act or whatever it was that banned all sorts of things form being shown on the screen as Irember suggestive dances nudetity and the like were on the list of banned things which means that maybe if media really does influence the behaviour of people then isnt it possible I suppose for the people who were more easily influenced whikle the media was at its most "innocent" lived in a less coarse society becasue they werent being shown it all the time and thus didnt belive it to be a socially acceptable norm?

[emily655321]

I agree with what everyone's said here. Night makes a very good point about the pendulum effect in our society. (By "our culture" I assume you meant Western culture, Virgil?) From the 1890's (the "Gay Nineties") through the 1920's (the "Roaring Twenties"), American and European culture made great strides in recovering from Victorian repression, and women began wearing shorter dresses, they cut their hair and started drinking and smoking, homosexuality became more accepted than it had been, etc. Then of course the Great Depression hit America and WWII hit Europe. People became more sober and conservative, and in the Post-War '50's a Conservative bent on life became the norm. These are the days Virgil's mother and friend seemed to be remembering as the Happy Days.

True, in more conservative times rule and order can make it seem as though everything is perfect and right with the world. But then, why did it change? Why did all those people in the '60's seem to think there was something wrong with it? Well, to begin with, the days were decidedly happier if you were a White middle-class Christian. Especially if you were a heterosexual male with no leanings toward liberal politics. Otherwise you might find yourself being beaten by the police for accidentally looking at a White woman the wrong way, or not smiling enough when someone ten years your junior called you "boy." God help you if your neighbor felt compelled to tell people you were a Communist, no matter whether it was true. True, you wouldn't find young girls bumping and grinding at the bus stop, but it was in large part due to the fact that female sexuality was preached against as shameful and women were confined to the kitchen, unless they felt like cutting loose and vacuuming in their heels and pearls.

We may see more "coarse" imagery these days, but it's due to a greater amount of freedom in society. As Kilted pointed out, our culture also encourages us to be much more respectful of others' differences, particularly with regard to race and homosexuality. Women are free to have careers, and men are encouraged to take on a larger domestic role. Of course, the downside to such openness is that the hard moral repression of the 50's has been lifted, and many people react to that by having lower personal standards for their behavior.

Although, I also believe what blp said about the worsening economic situation. "Coarse" behavior has always been around, and it doesn't go away and come back again. It is the norm for those stuck in poverty, and with growing poverty rates, it is becoming more widely seen. Teenagers think sexual promiscuity is pretty cool, and they emulate the behavior, regardless of their economic background. In this way, trashiness has come to be en vogue. But not to worry, polls have shown today's youth to be leaning back toward conservative values, so the good old social repression is waiting just around the corner.

As to skeezeballs on the bus... no, thankfully I've never experienced sexual abuse, in public or otherwise. I've never heard of public abuse happening to any of my friends, or of any man I know having done it. I don't hear of it happening very often at all, but it may just be that I don't get out much. I tend to agree with Virgil's own impression that it is not at all the norm—most men I know are steadfast in their protection of women from perverts. But I don't believe it's quite as rare as you seem to think, Virgil. Still, I believe such men are in the minority.

[Petrarch's Love]

I tend to agree with a lot of people here that society goes through waves of being more or less repressed, and that we've left certain kinds of coarseness behind even as we've become more coarse in other ways. As for dirty old men on buses, I have experienced some of that but I sense it is a very small percentage of men (certainly have never been remotely tempted to make a sweeping judgement about all men because of it) and though I'm willing to believe it occurs every day somewhere in this city (just about anything occurs on a daily basis somewhere in Chicago), it certainly isn't anything that happens to me personally very often (not something I'm thinking about everytime I get on a bus by any means). Strangely enough, though, when I was in Italy I got pinched and harrassed (or at least men attempting to do so and succeeding less and less as I caught on to how to deal with it) fairly regularly on buses as compared with here in the U.S., where it's really probably occured once or twice to me personally. It was during my travels that I really got expert in the most efficient ways of getting a man to back off. I wonder if it had to do with being an obvious foreigner and hence an easier looking target though? I suppose Koa would be able to tell us if her bus experiences differ as a native Italian woman. I certainly don't think there's a higher percentage of perverts in Italy or anything (I mean we're talking a few weirdos compared to the many many really wonderful people I met there--most of the people were so polite and friendly and I don't want to give a bad impression of a whole country or something), and I sure didn't think it was such a big deal that I couldn't figure out a way to handle it pretty quickly while expanding my vocabulary (it's the way I learned the word "basta!" :lol: ). Incidently nothing much appears to have changed bus-wise. My mother's experiences as a young girl twenty-five to thirty years ago (both here and on a trip to Europe) seem to have been pretty similar to mine, and I believe my grandmother (from the WWII generation) can think of at least one minor incident on a bus in her youth.

[emily655321]

My mother's experiences as a young girl twenty-five to thirty years ago (both here and on a trip to Europe) seem to have been pretty similar to mine, and I believe my grandmother (from the WWII generation) can think of at least one minor incident on a bus in her youth.An interesting observation. :nod: It would certainly seem that, while overt "coarseness" in our culture may wax and wane, it's the behavior on buses and the like that seems to remain constant. It's not the people who change; it's the acceptability of putting what's already there out in the open. My mother also has stories of male indescretion from 30 and 35 years ago, which I remember because she scared me with them to keep me on my toes when I went out with friends in junior high school. :p

[Xamonas Chegwe]

The "youth of today" have always been out of control and degenerating into bestial debauchery and the old have always looked back on their youth as a time of greater innocence and simpler pleasures.

Neither of these views are true - both are stereotypes. There have always been "wayward youths" and there always will be. The past was never as rosy as it appears seen through the rosy vision and cataracts of hindsight.

What has changed recently is that sexuality has been demystified and brought out of it's closet. But even this is not new - there have been periods in history that were considered just as licentious as ours is now - Take England in the years following the restoration as a prime example. Our prim and proper Victorian ancestors may have appeared so on the surface but their staid exterior concealed a London where brothels outnumbered churches by more than 100 to 1.

Human nature doesn't change, only the opportunities given to express that nature; and as has been pointed out already, this tends to go in cycles, there is a period of sexual freedom which is foillowed by a moral backlash, which in turn gives way to a new sexual revolution. And all the time, whether out in the open or behind closed doors, babies are making babies, or at the very least, practising hard.

[Sami]

These debates do recur. There’s also the problem that they tend to be cast in very vague terms and refer to things/problems that are very hard to accurately measure. For example, how are we to measure whether more men are harassing women on buses than a few years back? And, even if we could accurately gain this info., it’d still be very complicated to explain why this was happening. In any case, this is not really the kind of question that these debates about coarseness and declining moral standard usually focus on. Often I wonder if they’re wheeled out now and again to distract attention away from other factors, some of which would be easier to measure, such as the economic changes that have been mentioned earlier. (I’m not suggesting that any of the responses here are deliberately trying to conceal anything - I just mean generally).

My local radio show was covering a similar topic to this one the other morning, and the presenter read out the passage I’ve copied below. I thought it was funny, so I looked it up. It sounds a little like Virgil’s comments on coarse dancing, but in this case the dance is the Waltz. These comments were published in “The Times” in 1816.

"We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the English court on Friday last ... it is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressure on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by the civil examples of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion."
It’s interesting that the waltz is presented as a “foreign dance”. What is considered “coarse” or “proper” could be seen as very culturally specific. The accounts of experiences traveling on buses in different countries might suggest this is the case. This probably poses another problem for measuring whether culture has become more or less coarse.

[The Unnamable]

As usual, I find myself in neither camp. Yes, every age has probably looked back and lamented the loss of the world of yesterday but there has been a worrying enlargement (in terms of both incidence and influence) of the forces of ignorance. The self-regarding, mawkish, ill-educated, scarcely brought-up scum assemble in ever greater numbers to set the tone. In this they are helped by a media industry that is as devoid of principles as it is of talent.

Moral panics sell newspapers. Responses to moral panics sell more, albeit different, newspapers. A few years ago The Sun newspaper’s campaign to ‘Shop a Yob’ was as predictable as the backlash of outraged liberal sentiment that it activated. Although, for many people, yobbish behaviour is a part of the fabric of everyday life, for a journalism practised as a business, it’s simply a source of copy.

For those who believe that there is a social behaviour problem, neither the advocates nor the opponents of ‘name and shame’ offer much hope. Debates over whether saturation media coverage reflects or constructs an image of lawless Britain are of little relevance to anyone who has spent a Saturday night in any large town there.

Saying that there is widespread yobbish behaviour usually brings the kind of awkward silence that follows a suspected racist remark. To assume that yobs themselves are responsible for their behaviour is to deny Liberals an opportunity to display their sensitivity credentials. Anyone who can be represented as a persecuted minority must have their behaviour ‘understood’ and must be protected. Revealing criminals is a criminal offence.

To suggest that there has been any enlargement of the forces of ignorance is to invite scorn. Those who complain are marginalised as out of touch in their supposed yearning for an idyllic, non-existent past age. Their complaints are dismissed as the recalcitrance of an elite terrified by the waning of their power. Somewhere in the middle of this, the problem is forgotten; The Sun’s lack of concern for the rights of the individual is admonished, yobbishness continues unchecked and real debate is avoided.

Fear of such a debate arises from fear of the terms in which it would be conducted. The trepidation felt in confronting sensitive issues is apparent in the disclaimers that precede every potentially contentious opinion. “I’m not racist, but…” and “I’m not saying dyslexia is…” and so on. In schools, pupils’ behaviour is no longer ‘bad’ but ‘challenging’, people are no longer ‘unemployed’ but ‘job seekers’ and offenders are dealt with not by a police ‘force’, but a police ‘service’. If language is sufficiently sanitised, the unfashionable idea of personal responsibility can be eradicated: ‘challenging’ behaviour shifts responsibility to the teacher; ‘bad’ behaviour supposes free will. Western Liberalism demands that the right not to be exposed as a yob is as important as the right to be free from yobbishness. It’s an easy right to defend when your neighbourhood is yob-free.

For different reasons, both the tabloid and the broadsheet press are failing to do much to promote the rights of victims. In the case of the tabloids, it isn’t difficult to see why. The motivation behind “Shop a Yob” is financial. Editorial decisions are made on the basis of more readers, more profits. Telling people what they want to hear is a more successful business strategy than informing them of the complexity of issues. That simplification means falsification is overlooked.

Nevertheless, The Sun found it necessary to give us a justification of its campaign. The business ethic underlying its pretensions to be serving a democratic function can easily be masked if the correct sentiments are expressed. They are "proud to lead the fight back against the yobs... For too many years law-abiding parents trying to raise decent families have watched tearaways pulling society apart.” Such sentiments strike home precisely because people do perceive a decline in standards on the evidence of their daily life, not merely as a result of media coverage. Too many broadsheets ignore this. They are too concerned with not upsetting a readership that has subscribed to a populist ideology that insists that all values are now relative and the only absolute judgments to be made are those that condemn the values of the past. This new agenda insists that everyone is equal and every opinion valid. The remarkable thing about this process is the way that it has proceeded unchecked by the charge that there is nothing egalitarian about it.

This is where the media has failed in their duty to perform the vital democratic function, which, as long as it exists simply to stay in business, it cannot. Presenting readers with ideas that do not conform to their existing values and beliefs is the surest way to bankruptcy. Journalism’s role in creating an informed and circumspect electorate comes second to its role as a business. The development of journalistic discourse can partially mask this fact and enable us to remain oblivious to the inherent contradiction of truth as commodity.

Attempts at social engineering through politically correct representations in the media results in what an American visitor recently described as “propaganda with a straight face”. While commentators plot the revolution with manicured fingernails, the British National Party wins a seat in Broxbourne. It’s a reminder that if Liberalism fails to address the concerns of the electorate, there are darker forces waiting. Those who see a deterioration in behaviour are not looking back in anger, but around in despair.

[Sami]

Unnameable, I don’t agree that a focus on personal responsibility has become "unfashonable" in public discourse– if anything, it’s become more prevalent as a focus on structural/systemic problems has fallen out of favour. To use one of the examples you mention: Previously an unemployed person was seen as lacking a job, and this lack was met by a form of social responsibility. According to the critics, this allowed too much passivity. So, the unemployed have been replaced by the “job seekers”. The issue is no longer defined as a lack, but as an activity, “seeking”, for which the individual, rather than society, is seen as responsible.

[The Unnamable]

Sami,
The rebranding and repackaging of words and ideas have become all-pervasive but I was referring primarily to personal responsibility for bad behaviour in “lawless Britain” – or do you consider unemployment as precisely that? Have you lived in the UK for any length of time in the past thirty years? The linguistic sleight-of-hand you focus on is yet another example of the way those in positions of authority use language to mould our perceptions. However, it is not the result of any attempt to reposition personal responsibility so much as a simple way of pretending that Government is addressing the issue while, obviously, blaming the victims for their predicament. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used that one small example of renaming as you see it as contradicting the main point. I nevertheless stand by my claim that there are Liberals everywhere trying to explain and justify appalling behaviour – mostly those who don’t have to live next to it. Perhaps we should look closely at the men who shove their genitals into the shoulders of females on the bus and offer a heartfelt plea for compassion and understanding for those who are forced to live their lives on such degrading terms? It’s not the men’s fault – they are deprived / poorly educated / underprivileged etc. (for the stupid, I am being sarcastic).

[blp]

Attempts at social engineering through politically correct representations in the media results in what an American visitor recently described as “propaganda with a straight face”.

And that was said with a straight face was it? I'll take the UK media over American any day.



I nevertheless stand by my claim that there are Liberals everywhere trying to explain and justify appalling behaviour – mostly those who don’t have to live next to it. Perhaps we should look closely at the men who shove their genitals into the shoulders of females on the bus and offer a heartfelt plea for compassion and understanding for those who are forced to live their lives on such degrading terms? It’s not the men’s fault – they are deprived / poorly educated / underprivileged etc. (for the stupid, I am being sarcastic).

Well, my post probably sounded like a step towards that liberal justification you're decrying here. I certainly have those tendencies - something to do with the fact, perhaps, that so few of the young men I met from Westminster and Eton grew up to be football hooligans or aspirant gangstas, though some of them, god knows, are probably into some tidy white collar crime by now that of course hurts nobody except for thousands of facelesss shareholders. Just nicer boys I guess - and let the rest eat torts.

I should say in my defense that I do live next to it - not the guy with his dick out on the bus, but I can barely step out the door without running into last year's UK tabloid moral panic, kids in hoodies and, almost as if they were trying to live up to the hype, as soon as it started, I started getting hassle from them - at one point a gang of them surrounded me and tried to pull me off my bike and take my bag. A friend of a friend was attacked down in Whitechapel and his face was permanently disfigured with a brick. On an almost daily basis I see kids riding down the wrong side of the roads on their weird, too small little dirt bikes and it seems to be a matter of pride with them to try to frighten people. One of them even asked me, rather plaintively I thought, if he'd succeeded in frightening me. Say anything that might seem like admonishment to these kids and they start screaming obscenities at you and, gangsta style, making gun shapes with their hands.

Oh, but it's complicated. You also get kids who look exactly the same, but are the soul of politeness and good humour. And anyway, I can't tell if any of this is relevant since I also remember being scared of skinheads when I came to the UK some 25 years ago - and some of them also turned out to be nice enough, non-racist kids who'd gladly help an old lady across the road, even if she was black. I imagine I see an anger at a quotidien level that wasn't there before, but the present is always going to be more immediate than the past, so who knows. Still, to finish my address to Unnamable's woolly liberal blandishments, that anger is something I'm seeing among the poor and decidedly not elsewhere and that makes sense to me. I've been a little poor myself at times and poverty is bloody stressful. If this sounds like justification to anyone, I advise that they re-read my post. I haven't said anywhere in it that I think violence is just.

When we talk about 'our' culture, well, in this context, what that sounds like is what's coming from the States and this complicates things further, because what may have a specific socio-economic explanation at the source probably doesn't have quite the same one when it's copied abroad. It's hard to say the next bit without sounding like I've got a pole up my sphincter, so, hang it, I'll dive right in: I'm thinking particularly of the culture of bling and gansta rap. How doe we get from 'Power to the People', black pride and the civil rights movement to uzzis, glocks, diamond teeth and niggas as a term used by blacks and 'I like big butts'? Yeah, I see a coarsening there, a tragic one.

[Sami]

Have you lived in the UK for any length of time in the past thirty years? ...I nevertheless stand by my claim that there are Liberals everywhere trying to explain and justify appalling behaviour – mostly those who don’t have to live next to it.
Yes, I have lived in the UK. I’m English. I grew up in London and I’ve spent most of my life there, although I don’t live in the UK at the moment. I agree with your criticism “liberal excuses” to a very limited extent. I think you’re pointing out the naivety of some middle class lefties who feel badly about social problems, but don’t reflect on how their own comfortable lifestyle insulates them from the realities of those issues. If so, then this annoys me too.

But I really don’t agree that these liberals are “everywhere”. Willingness to look to social causes of “bad behaviour” doesn’t seem to be on the rise. I would say it’s declined in the UK over the course of my lifetime. Also, there’s a big difference between trying to explain cultural problems in terms of issues like poverty, and justifying them in the sense of excusing the individuals from any responsibility at all. Is it the same thing to try to understand why something happened, as saying that it’s okay that it’s happening? I think you’re collapsing two different things in your comment above. As I said earlier, debates about declining moral standards often seem to be a means to detract attention away from how cultural questions are connected to other areas, such as the economy.

[The Unnamable]

It’s a funny old world, blp – you and I are polar opposites in so many ways. I’m from the kind of housing estate currently infested with the vermin you mention. Some of my primary school playground companions did go on to graduate in petty and not so petty crime. My mother telephoned me only last month to tell me that another one of the old gang had been murdered. He and his brother were into small time drug dealing and had a disagreement that ended with the one kicking the other down the stairs before stabbing him. I can remember my eighty eight year old grandmother ‘red leading’ the doorsteps of her one-bedroom flat, sweeping the ‘front yard’ and caring about the cleanliness of the washing on her line. That simple dignity was precisely that – not some idyllic, rose-tinted image of my own - and I won’t allow it to be dismissed and replaced by the kind of mindless and aggressive lifestyle (as opposed to life) that you mention. Something happened to our world. As Larkin said, England has become "the first slum of Europe, a role it won't be so hard to win with a cast of crooks and tarts".

My way out of it was the local grammar school. I have no idea really why I went to university while my former playmates went to prison. I can think of no better place for them, though. This is perhaps why I have run out of sympathy for those who, in the words of a Telegraph commentator, “wear their ignorance like a badge of honour.” Too many of them had no more excuse than I did. Funny how I like the Telegraph and you appear to be a Guardian fan – it’s a paper I hate but one I’m supposed to read as someone educated into the middle class. Given our backgrounds, it should be you reading the Telegraph and me The Sun.

The cause of all this is unclear to me but a total failure of education is a prime suspect. Examination results have never been better and the number of young people going to university has never been higher. So why is everything so awful? Schools have become results factories in an era of pitifully low standards. Higher education seems more concerned with creating courses in Golf Course Management and Leisure Studies – either that or courses designed for no other purpose than to redress past injustice and validate minority claims.


It's hard to say the next bit without sounding like I've got a pole up my sphincter, so, hang it, I'll dive right in: I'm thinking particularly of the culture of bling and gansta rap.
You see – there’s that disclaimer I mentioned above. Why are we so scared of just saying what we are thinking? How did that happen? It’s a real loss, though – it means that we can’t discuss issues like single parenting and the culture of certain ethnic groups.


How doe we get from 'Power to the People', black pride and the civil rights movement to uzzis, glocks, diamond teeth and niggas as a term used by blacks and 'I like big butts'?
Aren’t you thrilled by the rich cultural diversity of it all?


I've been a little poor myself at times and poverty is bloody stressful.
:rolleyes: I’m sorry but I couldn’t let that one go. So, would you say you’ve had a tough life, Mr. Orwell? I hope you didn't catch TB during your time on skid row. :D

[kilted exile]

When I was growing up in Glasgow I fitted in perfectly to the notion of someone who would end up as a ned/yob/chav/scoundrel/ruffian etc. (lived in a housing scheme, single parent family etc) and I was constantly told such by the likes of the most evil woman in the history of the world (initials MT 3 guesses) and her henchman Tebbit. In an environment where nothing is expected of you it is quite easy to take the easy route and get involved in all the extra stuff that goes on, and I know many people who did, a few of them are on ASBO's (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) and one guy I went to school with from the age of 5 is currently serving a double life term for culpable homicide (he dropped out at 16 was a unemployed father of 2 by 19 and a prisoner by 21). I have done some things that would be considered "out of order" by some people but nothing too serious.

So what is my point here (assuming for once that I have one). I'm not even completely sure myself, but I think it is that society plays some part - there is no doubt that there is a correlation between economic status and tendency towards yobbishness - however the role of the parent in bringing up the child is also vitally important.

[blp]

Where do I begin? First off, my public school background isn't quite what it seems. My Dad's company's policy for employees abroad was to pay school fees we could no way have afforded ourselves. I'm a long way from being any kind of working class hero, but was almost equally far socially from many of my schoolmates.

As for my 'down and out' period, yeah, yeah, fair dos. I knew as I said it that my claim of having experienced poverty would sound risible, but it's true. I've been broke and I've lived in squalid conditions in dangerous parts of town. I haven't the least interest in romanticising that and it was a kind of choice and I always knew it was temporary, but it was enough to see how it can affect one's outlook. And since, despite your expectations, I have lived near all this, I think I understand your perspective. I've wished the vilest punishments on the kids who've threatened or hurt me in the street and felt the absurdity of my middle class tolerance and benevolance in the abstract vs the concrete malevolence of a fist in the head.

But yeah, like you, I want to know how we got here and, convenient as it might be, the 'bad to the bone, string 'em up' cabbie line just doesn't seem to help, especially when this particular demon seed only seems to turn up among the poor. Like you, I put some blame on educational failures. A little contradiction in your line there - you say your thug contemporaries had no more excuse than you do, then seem to say their latterday forebears can (possibly) be put down to educational standards. Still, as you seem to, I take all these exam passes with a pinch of salt in an era where so much of what's being taught just sounds like garbage.

Polar opposites? We're in a funny period now in the UK where it's possible for readers of the Telegraph and the Guardian to hate the government with equal vehemence. Yesterday's edition of my rag of choice carried a review of a new book on, whattayaknow, yob culture, tracing its distinctive spoor from the council estates up through the news media (Richard Desmond) to big business, Whitehall and the offices of Alistair Campbell (Blair's pit-bullesque former PR man, for those not in the know). The argument that all this is connected sounds a little woolly to me, but I'll buy it in as much as government educational policy now seems far more concerned with vocational training than anything resembling the life of the mind - and that that seems related to Blair's blind love for the asset strippers and hedgefund managers high up in the corporate world.

That disclaimer of mine you object to or lament - I'm not sure I made myself clear, but I was joking - about the weird pomposity of using that phrase in an intellectual(ish) discussion. I dunno. You seem to be far more bugged by the idea of PC than I am. Your concern might have been valid in the days when 'loonie lefties' at Camden Council was trying to ban the term 'black coffee' (as racist) in favour of coffee without milk if you please, but I think we've moved on. At this point, TV comedians like Reeves and Mortimer or Avid Merrion have even managed to revive black face makeup and leering at sexy girls with nary a squeak from any dungaree wearing physically challenged lesbian learning disabled vegan mixed race midgets. The anti-PC backlash often looks like it's lashed back as far as it can go. I might even aver that it occasionally could be said to have had a 'coarsening' effect.

In the end, I have no more interest than you do in wearing a PC combined hair shirt, straitjacket, which is why I'm happy to express my dislike for gangsta rap culture. I think it's one of the best examples we've got of a 'coarsening' of culture - a microcosm, historically and culturally, but I'm doubtful as to whether we'll be able to prove the point on a wider level.

[jackyyyy]

I was surfing the seven seas to work out how Denis The Menace went from being a black haired rag yob to a blond haired smiler yob during the space of umpteen years. The Beano was great literature, you were even given a moral story each time.

In a democratic society the Sun Television Show can exist. We cannot shake our own rule that allows free enterprise because 'it' wrote something that had, in 'our' view, a low moral standard. We accept you have your point of view, afterall. But, we can point out the choice. Incidently, I've yet to locate and re-educate anyone that actually buys it for news. People on the whole are not that stupid. And, just as the Beano, it offers a few pictures, then add the weather and some cellphones, but no moral standards, and maybe some moral fiction. I will add that I was unable to read all of it because of the glue on page 3.

As for yobs, they are floating around at all levels of all societies. They may not be Mowhawkish as in a Western, Tattoo'd up like an elephant man, could be teachers of occult mathematics, look acceptable to be pallatable, be writers of ministerial speeches even, offering commonly accepted principal, and even do society an occasional and outstanding yob.

I cannot completely blame an ignorant, frustrated person who feels like a trapped animal. I don't consider how they look, their sexual orientation or even how they mouth off. But, I will consider their actions. The bottom line is, and regardless the cause and motive, they are doing something wrong when they destroy instead of build, shoot instead of argue.

We have an incontrol class on this planet that on occasion has a wishy washy attitude to yob actions, while taking in our money. On the one hand it decries it as bad, and on the other, it exploits it. This goes for all media, not just newspapers. 'Education' is only part of the solution because, while people, young, old, male, female, rich, poor, thick or educated, whomever, are sitting around unsure of their reasons in this World, they will eventually lash out in unreason. Educate them to write like you can, instead of pulling trigers like they can. 'Example' is the other part to solution. The master yob here is the Editor in Chief of Newspapers Incorporated who does not have the moral upstanding to face the truth, bankrupcy and a lower paid yob.

[Virgil]

Wow, some really high quality responses from everyone here. I don’t know if I can reply to all, but I think I can interweave a little of each in my post. I will say that I don’t know very well the culture of other countries (I had to look up “yob”), so my reflections here are certainly colored by my experience.

Let me start by I think summarizing Xamonas’ post by stating his thesis as youth is always on the edge of social norms with the older generations superciliously looking down on them. I agree, and that is why I would normally have chucked off the comments of my mother-in-law and that elderly man. Nostalgia does play funny things with memory, and I’m sure they’re forgetting about gangs and street fighting that went on. And Sami rightly points out that all sorts of dancing through history have been classified as indecent. I would not typically consider that high school girl grinding her backside all that noteworthy except (1) it made for a nice contrast to the experience of madhura’s friend on the bus and (2) it does show how the norm has shifted in order for her to show how she’s pushing the envelope.

Emily frames this in terms of liberal/conservative government policy. I’m not sure I buy into that. First of all none of my liberal friends and family members would approve of such loutish behavior. Also I don’t think there has been a single piece of legislation (in the US) that caused any of this, and I’m wouldn’t advocate any legislation to turn this around. Even in the 1950s, while Eisenhower (perhaps on the right) was president, congress was on the left and so were most local governments. And since then administrations of both sides have been in power. The problems we’re describing are essentially a cultural phenomena, not political. True the liberals have concede some ground here (well, they’re dependent on the youth vote to some degree and don’t want to offend them), but this is all rhetorical rather than policy.

Emily does make a very good point that not all aspects of culture have been bad. Certainly the racial relations have improved dramatically since the 1960s, and this is truly the great accomplishment of Liberal activists. [Emily may be surprised to find that more Republicans voted for the civil rights laws of the 60s than Democrats, but that’s for her to research.] Unnamable feels that perhaps political correctness has gone to far, and perhaps he’s right, but at least in my country, since race relations have not completely ironed themselves out, I’m not in favor of easing up yet on political correctness. At some point, yes. And so I think to our current culture’s credit, we are far more tolerant of others than in the 50s.

blp brings out the economic argument, which I think was chimed in by others. Perhaps there is an economic component to this, but it is not (perhaps to no one’s surprise) along the lines that he is thinking. I think it’s just the opposite. First there is nothing that says that rich people are not as loutish. The standard of living for all (and here I don’t want to generalize for anywhere other than the US) has greatly improved over the past 50 years. The purchasing power of the people on the lower economic scale has greatly improved. We don’t have a hunger problem, we have an obesity problem. We don’t have an unfulfilled desire problem, we have a materialistic problem. Just look at all that gets spent around holidays. Everyone has the latest fads in jeans and clothes. Families don’t just have a car, they have multiple cars, and usually one of them is a minivan or SUV. Home ownership, even among African-Americans, is at an all time high. Could it be that we have too much economic power, too willing to enjoy materialistic things, too much free time on our hands? I certainly buy into this argument as a contributing factor.

blp also talks about getting mugged and a youth sub-culture in ghetto neighborhoods. For the first time in my life, a year and a half ago I was mugged myself by three young punks who couldn’t have been more than seventeen. What a shock to my sensibilities; I still remember every detail of that ten minute experience. A great politician (on the left, BTW, and yes I can admire politicians on the left) Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a sociologist before entering politics, continually pointed out that the socialization of young men was the single biggest problem society faces. The inability to socialize young women bring about their own issues, but they, with enough money, can be worked out. No matter how much you spend on unsocialized young men, it usually just affects the margins. I don’t want people to think I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I too grew up poor. I too had a childhood friend who was executed, by the mafia in my case. Has a sub-culture of reckless young men, and in a more general sense, men who don’t wish to grow up, been allowed to define the culture? Have their values of degrading women and not being responsible fathers permeated the general public? As Petrarch points out, it’s not women who pinch the behinds of young men, but the converse.

Nightshade and Kilted bring up the baby boomer generation and its impact. You know, there’s something to be said for that. Interestingly I may be the only person in this discussion who is actually a member of the baby boomer generation. Normally a generation of young people is a fraction of the general population at large, and so the moral center is usually with the older generation. Bring back Xamonas’ point here that youth tend to push the envelope of social acceptability and you can see that the baby boomer generation shifted the center of gravity (if you’ll allow me my engineering metaphors) of social behavior, just based on their population. Also, they were the first generation of youth with purchasing power. They had the power to buy what appealed to them, and a lot of what appealed to them dealt with hormones. Sex sells, and youths suck it up. There has always been pornography, but pornography has never been so widely distributed. Music is no different. I love both Frank Sinatra and The Rolling Stones, but look at the difference in their songs. And I don’t even know what goes on in today’s music. So now that the baby boomers have aged, why hasn’t it normalized?

Which brings me finally to Unnamable points, and I find some of his points convincing. (Hooray! I always have to celebrate when Unnamable and I agree, and amazingly here in a philosophic discussion.) Yes, the media (and I would expand the media here to realms of entertainment as well) bear a responsibility. There was no law in my country in the 1950s which forced TV and radio and advertisers to put out entertainment and propaganda that was decent. They did it out of self restraint and responsibility, for the most part. Somewhere that changed, for all the reasons we’ve mentioned above. The reason this issue has been going on in my head for the past few years is because of the morning radio shock jocks that have proliferated the country, the most famous being Howard Stern. I car pool to work and one of the car poolers just loves him. Now if you like listening to women strip naked (I know it’s the radio) and discussing whatever sexual perversions they think men like listening to, then that’s right up your alley, but I find it infantile and degrading. If I have to watch on some TV news show once again Hugh Hefner talking in his pajamas about his three live in girlfriends/harem I think I’m going to vomit. William F. Buckley, a conservative commentator, made an interesting observation a number of years ago which has stuck with me. He said that sex has become the “wallpaper” of our lives. It is now there in the background of everything we do, from advertisements, TV shows, and magazine articles. And this was before the internet.

Unnamable mentions personal responsibility. He mentions media and companies, but really, ultimately the fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves. These companies are just reacting to our wishes, we the people of democratic countries. I have blame to bear. I watch, even love, The Sopranos. Now there is a show filled with profanity, violence, and sex. I must say, it’s well done. I read James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and William Faulkner. They have their share of sex. I may claim that they are high art, but is that an excuse? If I endorse (by me watching) The Sopranos how can I blame my car pooler for listening to Howard Stern? I’m certainly not in favor of limiting free speech. So there we are. Hey, The Sopranos are on tonight. But first I’m going to listen to Mick Jagger whine about not getting satisfaction.

[RobinHood3000]

I'm with Virgil and Unnameable.

I don't know about culture being coarsened--sexual tendencies prevail throughout the ages, for obvious reasons--but I do think it's become considerably more blatant. I hate to chalk it up to desensitization (teenagers get too bored and too lazy to bother learning to swing dance as a means of touching each other, so they cut right to the chase instead--and how!), but I have difficulty imagining how else that teenagers can think that a girl giving a boy a lap dance in front of their friends (the assumption that it was JUST a lap dance depends on whether or not she was wearing effective underwear at the time--it happened at my junior prom, so it's hard to say either way) in public is normal social behavior.

I also agree that more and more responsibility is shifting from the person to the environment. All of a sudden, you're not responsible for your actions--instead, it's everyone you've ever seen, heard, felt, or come within 50 meters of. When my classmates and I, even the ones who grind with enthusiasm, can reminisce like geezers (no offense, Virgil :p) about how the television shows of the 90s were so much better than the TV shows now, it's getting serious.

[kilted exile]

We don’t have a hunger problem, we have an obesity problem. We don’t have an unfulfilled desire problem, we have a materialistic problem. Just look at all that gets spent around holidays. Everyone has the latest fads in jeans and clothes. Families don’t just have a car, they have multiple cars, and usually one of them is a minivan or SUV. Home ownership, even among African-Americans, is at an all time high. Could it be that we have too much economic power, too willing to enjoy materialistic things, too much free time on our hands? I certainly buy into this argument as a contributing factor.


Virgil, I agree with a lot of what you posted. However, I have a problem with this part - my disagreement is probably mainly a political/ideological one, but I'll attempt to not mention politics if I can.

Now I am more familiar still with UK (specifically inner-city scotland) but I think what I am about to say applies to the US as well.

Firstly the obesity part, a large problem in the poorer areas of glasgow at least is not due to overeating - it is due to people being unaware of what to eat and diet, this is coupled with the fact that due to the need for the parent to work difficult shift type work (in order to have any work at all) children are left money to go to the local fish & chip shop for dinner or feed themselves with microwable, processed crap. In more affluent areas, there is far less occurence of this. It is no surprise that the average life expectancy in Glasgow is around 6 years less than other areas of the UK (cant remember exact figures but I think it is something like 70 in Glasgow).

Next unfulfilled desire/materialistic problem. I do not deny there is a materialistic problem, but I am sure at the heart of it is very much an unfulfilled desire problem among large sections of the population that see TV/Films/Music videos showing all manner of things that they would love to have but know they never will. Your statments about everyone owning cars, latest fashions is imo a huge generalisation.

Now "too much free time on our hands", yeah this is a huge problem. For those in the slums however (and there still are plenty) this is due to there being nothing to do, and as a result people hang around the streets - at an increasingly worringly youger age - a couple of examples from my youth; there was a section of around 20 football (soccer) pitches which were commonly referred to as the "reccy" (recreation area) the council wanted to cut taxes - something about if more people had money they would spend more and increase the economy - so the stopped maintaining the reccy and dismantled the pitches. The only places left for young lads like myself was now the 5-a-side pitches that got privatised and you then had to pay to use, course we couldnt afford the fee. We used to sneak on when the staff weren't watching & then of course get chased off, while they shouted at us for being damn useless kids. The next example is the accessibility of libraries, these were also cut back on - or you had to walk through an opposing scheme to get there, and there weren't none of us about to take a beating to go to the library.


EDIT: Just seen Robin's post. I would like to make it clear that I do believe people are responsible for there own actions, however I also strongly believe that environmental factors must be given their due consideration as well.

[Nightshade]

When my classmates and I, even the ones who grind with enthusiasm, can reminisce like geezers (no offense, Virgil :p) about how the television shows of the 90s were so much better than the TV shows now, it's getting serious.

And do you know what one of the BEST examples of the change in social norm and acceptibility over the last 16 years is? The Simpsons. Nopw the simpsons were first broadcast in september 1989 ( I only know this becasue it happens to coinside with my sisters birthday.) Anyway When it first came out It was (apparntlyIm going on what the maker said on TV recently And an incedent I rember from when I was 5 as am not really in a position to rember the politis of it here) often boycotted and whats the word (said to be bad and indecent? :confused: ) ANyway that was back then now It is the number 1 most popular Cartoon and tv show in thee uk ( as voted by the UK 100 favouite Cartoons and the 100 Best tv shows (channel 4) ) NOw the biggest point is it hasbnt changes. If you do an evaluation of tghe content in the old episodes and compare it to the newer ones tthe content is all on the same level. But now it is acceptable. I even have a personal exampele. When I was 4 or five I was watching TV and it was the simpsons and My mum came in turned off the tv and said I was never to watch that becasue it was unsuitable and I think she also may have used the word disgusting ( then again that might just be my impression) I can even rember which epoisode it was it was when bart was taking a photo of his but and lisa sees and yells about it. ( I rember mostly I suppose because it was such an odd thiing to do in my mind that it sticks out. ) Anyway Now my mum happly lets my 6 yesr old sister watch it and doesnt even remmber this incedent.
And there you go f that is not a shift in social acceptibility I dont know what is. :nod:

[blp]

Thanks, Kilted Exile. I'd forgotten the rampant selling off of things like school playing fields that's gone on under the present government. It kind of does make the link between the thuggery in the corridors of power and on the streets.

In general, Virgil, your idea of an increase in quality of life sounds like la la land, not least because of the evidence about people not locking doors in Brooklyn you yourself open with. But trying to use increased rates of obesity to make the point - that really, ah, takes the cake.

[emily655321]

The standard of living for all (and here I don’t want to generalize for anywhere other than the US) has greatly improved over the past 50 years. The purchasing power of the people on the lower economic scale has greatly improved. We don’t have a hunger problem, we have an obesity problem. We don’t have an unfulfilled desire problem, we have a materialistic problem. Just look at all that gets spent around holidays. Everyone has the latest fads in jeans and clothes. Families don’t just have a car, they have multiple cars, and usually one of them is a minivan or SUV.I have no idea where you got this idea. I'd actually be really interested to know what gave you this impression. "The purchasing power of the people on the lower economic scale" is improved only so far as they can max out credit cards, and many of those people have no hope of ever recovering from that debt. There is an obesity problem because unhealthy food is the cheapest, and many people find it difficult to afford anything else—even if they are educated enough to know how to care for themselves in that regard, which many aren't, as the quality of education in this country has steadily dropped over the past few decades. People are saving less of their money than since the Great Depression, and racking up massive credit card debt on top of it. We've become a "spend, spend" culture, certainly, but that is not a reflection of widespread wealth. The bare figures actually dispute that; there's a larger gap between the wealthiest and the poorest Americans than there has been in generations, and it's the number of poor who are growing the fastest. As for "the latest" clothing and multiple SUVs, I'm pretty certain you aren't talking about the lower income bracket. Or even the median income bracket. I can't even really respond to this, because I have no idea where this statement came from.

There has always been pornography, but pornography has never been so widely distributed.That could have something to do with the advent of VHS tapes and VCRs. Photographic pornography has been around as long as photographs, but the industry didn't really take off until strict legislation was lifted on X-rated movies in the 1970's and they could be widely distributed. Even then, they didn't become hugely profitable until there was a convenient way for people to watch them in their homes, as opposed to being seen in a public theater or messing around with a projector and film in their basement. I would argue that the interest has always been there, just not the means.

So now that the baby boomers have aged, why hasn’t it normalized?Because they passed their values onto their children. The youth of the 60's are constantly portrayed as courageous in their spirit of rebellion and pushing the social/sexual/chemical envelope. Their stodgy war-era parents are portrayed as old fogeys who didn't understand the beauty of the human condition. Now the message their children hear is, "Sure, we went against our parents' wishes, and we're heroes. But don't you do it." Kids aren't that stupid.

Emily frames this in terms of liberal/conservative government policy. I’m not sure I buy into that....The problems we’re describing are essentially a cultural phenomena, not political.I don't see where I said otherwise. I'm afraid you've wasted your time refuting a point I didn't make. I never brought up partisan governmental politics, rather shifting cultural attitudes. America is at the moment under control of a historically ultra-conservative government, and yet your own opinion of American culture seems to be that it is "coarser" than ever before. Election results are clearly a poor indicator of the overall social climate. Perhaps you only skimmed my post? I get the distinct impression that you completely missed my real point, but perhaps I didn't outline it clearly.

[Emily may be surprised to find that more Republicans voted for the civil rights laws of the 60s than Democrats, but that’s for her to research.]Ha. [You'd be amazed at what numbers on a page do not indicate. As I hope I've already cleared up, partisan bias was not what I referred to when I said "conservative." But being that you brought it up, I can only hope that the Civil War is not considered "current politics." I say you brought it up because I'm sure you know that until recently the American South was a Democratic stronghold. This was a reflection of stubborn tradition rather than an acceptance of the party's evolving philosophy. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and represented the (literally) conservative idea that the Union should remain intact, while the Democratic South represented the radical idea of secession therefrom, in order to maintain the "old" way of life. During the 20th century the ideals of the parties began to shift, but many Southern families passed down their Democratic voting habits, while the regional culture remained old-fashioned with regard to race relations. Those families who voted Democrat out of support of traditional Confederate ideals were, not surprisingly, the ones least likely to support the Civil Rights movement. But I don't doubt that this is old news to you, as you've done your research. I wouldn't want to question your knowledge based on my own misunderstanding of the facts.]

[The Unnamable]

Where do I begin? First off, my public school background isn't quite what it seems.
Not a public school boy – damn! There goes my image of you as Rupert De Marjoribanks -dressed like Anthony Andrews in Brideshead Revisited and carrying your favourite teddy bear, Osric.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

There are two factors which I think have been overlooked in the main in this thread: modern technology and the increase in the population size. I'll take these in turn.

Technological advances have had a couple of distinct effects upon behaviour. Firstly, advances in broadcasting and transmission of images mean that an old lady being mugged in the street can be in every sitting room in the country within minutes. Secondly, advances in domestic appliances have led to people being afforded far more leisure time than even a few decades ago. The first of these leads to a perception of our living in an increasingly violent and morally-lacking society. The second has led to an increased number of youngsters 'hanging about'; a century ago, they would have been down the pit at 14 or even younger.

The rapid increase in population means that we are crowded closer together than previously, there is more competition for everything and a far larger underclass of youths with low/absent aspirations (no larger as a percentage perhaps, but 10% of more is more than 10% of less). These are then prodded with the stick of 24 hour, wall-to-wall advertising for everything they can't ever have.

I'm not saying that either of these factors is solely to blame for a change in society's values; I'm not even sure that there has been a fundamental change in those values. But I think that they are an important part of the overall mix and that they bear due consideration.

At heart though, I still hold that there have always been yobbish and selfish ****s in the world, that there always will be, and that there will always be a nostalgic view of bygone days taken by the old. Besides, we used to have a lot more wars in the good old days, so we could ship our scum off to foreign parts and let them run riot there.

[Nightshade]

You know what I think? I think we need a working definition of Yobbish behaviour. I mean Young obnoxious boy, right? But it’s in no way limited to males or in fact the young either.
Xamonas (I’m going to have to start calling you Xam I hope you don’t mind if you do say now or loose your chance! :D :brow: )
Anyway where was I oh yes you mean the old devil makes work for idle hands?
I understand though what Virgil was saying ( I think) because we were discussing this in my book club just the other day. Today society apparently want so much more so much faster that they cant be bothered to work for it properly ( sort of the world owes them a living or something) so they tend to get angry and frustrated when they’re wishes are not forfilled.
Personally I think society gives people too much excuses. Oh yes I come from a disadvantaged background so I get all these extra things and perks so my life is basically ok why should I bother to work harder? I am not saying this is a commonly spread idea or even if it is an ideology that exists Im just saying it bloody possible.
Actually Emily youll find pornography has been around a lot lot longer than photographs
But yes I agree its probably more wide spread now because of the capabilities of mass production. Also the whole equality thing. I believe there was a case in some early history period either Romans or early Christians when an artist was hired to build either a church ( though somehow Im not sure :confused: ) or some other thing for the rich upper classes anyway he used moulds for the walls (sculpture ?:confused: ) anyway the man who made the moulds was allowed to keep them so oh a few years later he is hire to build this lush bath for some one and ends up being executed for indecency and inciting bad morals or whatever basically for pornography. Yes it was a church because it was the church that tried him for using it in a bath house while they had it in a church! :eek:
Or something maybe someone who is better at art history will know what Im talking about.

now that had better all be spelt right becasue I used word:nod:

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Xamonas (I’m going to have to start calling you Xam I hope you don’t mind if you do say now or loose your chance! :D :brow: )

As I said elsewhere, A rose by any other name would have as many thorns and still thrive on ****! ;)

[Virgil]

There are two factors which I think have been overlooked in the main in this thread: modern technology and the increase in the population size. I'll take these in turn.

Technological advances have had a couple of distinct effects upon behaviour. Firstly, advances in broadcasting and transmission of images mean that an old lady being mugged in the street can be in every sitting room in the country within minutes. Secondly, advances in domestic appliances have led to people being afforded far more leisure time than even a few decades ago. The first of these leads to a perception of our living in an increasingly violent and morally-lacking society. The second has led to an increased number of youngsters 'hanging about'; a century ago, they would have been down the pit at 14 or even younger.

The rapid increase in population means that we are crowded closer together than previously, there is more competition for everything and a far larger underclass of youths with low/absent aspirations (no larger as a percentage perhaps, but 10% of more is more than 10% of less). These are then prodded with the stick of 24 hour, wall-to-wall advertising for everything they can't ever have.

I'm not saying that either of these factors is solely to blame for a change in society's values; I'm not even sure that there has been a fundamental change in those values. But I think that they are an important part of the overall mix and that they bear due consideration.

At heart though, I still hold that there have always been yobbish and selfish ****s in the world, that there always will be, and that there will always be a nostalgic view of bygone days taken by the old. Besides, we used to have a lot more wars in the good old days, so we could ship our scum off to foreign parts and let them run riot there.
Xam (I like that shortening too. I always confuse myself as to where the "a" and the "o" go) - I think you make excellent points here.

[jackyyyy]

I like Xam too, somewhere between 1am and noon.

Technology works both ways, and so does education. A larger World population means we need more food, and people were starving 2000 years ago. I am not sure anyone is really talking of practical solutions that can be effected today, or are they?

[Virgil]

Oh goodness. I'm sorry I brought up any economic angle. Let's let economics be left to the economists.

My point was that poverty wasn't a defining factor in coarseness. That car pooler who likes Howard Stern is an engineer like me, and he didn't grow up poor like me. It scales all economic levels.

[blp]

Not a public school boy – damn! There goes my image of you as Rupert De Marjoribanks -dressed like Anthony Andrews in Brideshead Revisited and carrying your favourite teddy bear, Osric.
Hey, if that's how you want to see me, what's an elastically tolerant liberal such as I to do?

Plover's egg anyone? Not you, Osric, you irascible bear.

[jackyyyy]

Oh goodness. I'm sorry I brought up any economic angle. Let's let economics be left to the economists.

My point was that poverty wasn't a defining factor in coarseness. That car pooler who likes Howard Stern is an engineer like me, and he didn't grow up poor like me. It scales all economic levels.I am agreeing with your points, there are rich and poor yobs - more money leads to more need, and we know some people can do a heck of a lot with very little. I was referencing technology, education and the size of population. The more tech. goverment has, the more stealthy the yobs get, and its just a larger problem because the population numbers increased. A single murder is as unacceptable as a genocide, isn't it? I'll say its all deterministic, but.. what I am trying to point out is, I disagree the solutions are coupled in technology/education alone. A spade being always a spade, the yob has always persisted. So, how to eradicate yobism, when we take money, education, mental problems, gross circumstance out of the argument? I alluded to 'example' earlier, which I can see people wincing at, as kinda lame. Afterall, it does not have the immediate crowd pleasing effect of an electrically wired cap strapped to the yob's faulty thoughts. If I look at some cultures, there exist examples of how to contain yobism. I am not sure they even know it themselves, because they are too busy fighting some other plague. Morality is not a constant that can be isolated and measured so easily, we do not all see the right way the same way.

[RobinHood3000]

A single murder is as unacceptable as a genocide, isn't it?
I dunno about that. I'm pretty sure that if Hitler had killed just one person, we wouldn't be remembered quite so "fondly." Both are unacceptable, but just as there are varying sizes of infinity, there are also varying degrees of horror. You'd usually have to be a terrible person to commit a single murder (assuming the specific parameters of the act are morally unjustifiable); you'd have to be a rare kind of terrible to commit genocide.

[jackyyyy]

I dunno about that. I'm pretty sure that if Hitler had killed just one person, we wouldn't be remembered quite so "fondly." Both are unacceptable, but just as there are varying sizes of infinity, there are also varying degrees of horror. You'd usually have to be a terrible person to commit a single murder (assuming the specific parameters of the act are morally unjustifiable); you'd have to be a rare kind of terrible to commit genocide.Yes, rating it would be a different matter.

[The Unnamable]

Plover's egg anyone? Not you, Osric, you irascible bear.
Reminds me of something I overheard in the Camden branch of Sainsbury’s.

Thirty something woman, immaculately dressed, to her son (about ten):

“Tarquin, could you help find the mung beans for mummy?”

[Grumbleguts]

I dunno about that. I'm pretty sure that if Hitler had killed just one person, we wouldn't be remembered quite so "fondly." Both are unacceptable, but just as there are varying sizes of infinity, there are also varying degrees of horror. You'd usually have to be a terrible person to commit a single murder (assuming the specific parameters of the act are morally unjustifiable); you'd have to be a rare kind of terrible to commit genocide.

Surely it is more a simple question of opportunity. Crimes of passion aside, any premeditated murder requires the same degree of cool detachment and sociopathic inclination that genocide does. A few years ago there was a bomber in London that set off devices in black and asian districts and outside a gay pub in Soho, I suspect that had he access to larger devices he would quite merrily have slaughtered thousands instead of the few that he did manage to kill.

And speaking as someone approaching 70, I can confirm that the youth of today are out of control, that we never did that in our day, that we used to leave our doors open when we went on holiday and that the neighbours would come in and fill our larders for us while we were away. Bring back national service and give them all a short sharp shock. Only language they understand. :nod:

[Virgil]

I am agreeing with your points, there are rich and poor yobs - more money leads to more need, and we know some people can do a heck of a lot with very little. I was referencing technology, education and the size of population. The more tech. goverment has, the more stealthy the yobs get, and its just a larger problem because the population numbers increased. A single murder is as unacceptable as a genocide, isn't it? I'll say its all deterministic, but.. what I am trying to point out is, I disagree the solutions are coupled in technology/education alone. A spade being always a spade, the yob has always persisted. So, how to eradicate yobism, when we take money, education, mental problems, gross circumstance out of the argument? I alluded to 'example' earlier, which I can see people wincing at, as kinda lame. Afterall, it does not have the immediate crowd pleasing effect of an electrically wired cap strapped to the yob's faulty thoughts. If I look at some cultures, there exist examples of how to contain yobism. I am not sure they even know it themselves, because they are too busy fighting some other plague. Morality is not a constant that can be isolated and measured so easily, we do not all see the right way the same way.
Jacky - I'm sorry. My post, although it came right after yours, was in no way in reference to yours. I had been reading previous posts.

As to your points, I in no way advocate reversing modern technology or the modern world. Goodness just the difference in how we wash our clothes between today and say just a hundred years ago should jar anyone into appreciating our current life and standard of living. And that's a superficial thing. Life expectancy, a non-superficial thing, has nearly doubled since 1900, and infant mortality rates have plummeted. Coarseness is one thing, but making people's lives better is still more important in the long run. The point drawn is whether there is a relationship between the two.

Which brings me to a couple of points you make that are quite profound. First:

Morality is not a constant that can be isolated and measured so easily
This is absolutely true. We brought up a lot of various points in this thread, searching intuitively for causes. One of my best engineering teachers I had in college always strove to emphasize that one should never trust one's intuition when when analyzing problems and data. Intuition can and does lead astray. Symptoms that run in parallel are not neccesarrily related. Because they are running in parallel at the same time, the mind inductively draws a correlation, and a correlation may or may not exsit. I've come across this not just in my engineering world many times, but also with doctors who were trying to explain someone's ills that to me appeared related but were seaparate issues. Another thing too to consider is what is the relative weight of each variable, given that each variable correlates. This is just for the purpose of an example, but what if we knew that 2X + 10Y +4Z =(or leads to) coarse behavior, where X is free time, Y is media content, and Z is genetic. If you could actually pull such data together, then you would know that your best bet in improving the situation would be to attack the Y variable. Unfortuantely real life doesn't lend itself this way. Which brings me to your other profound statement:

we do not all see the right way the same way
I think that's self explanatory. Thanks.


And speaking as someone approaching 70, I can confirm that the youth of today are out of control, that we never did that in our day, that we used to leave our doors open when we went on holiday and that the neighbours would come in and fill our larders for us while we were away. Bring back national service and give them all a short sharp shock. Only language they understand. :nod:
You know, Grumbleguts, I used to chuck this up to nastalgia. But I've come to believe it.

[emily655321]

And speaking as someone approaching 70, I can confirm that the youth of today are out of control, that we never did that in our day, that we used to leave our doors open when we went on holiday and that the neighbours would come in and fill our larders for us while we were away. Bring back national service and give them all a short sharp shock. Only language they understand. :lol: That was back when Santa Claus was real, right? Before rabid satanic hippies killed him back in the 60's.


If I look at some cultures, there exist examples of how to contain yobism. I am not sure they even know it themselves, because they are too busy fighting some other plague.I think this is actually a very good point, Jacky. I recall watching a documentary about the history of the islands of Scotland, I believe it was. They were talking about how Gaelic is falling out of use and fewer children are staying on the islands, so the communities are dying out. But they asked the older people what they think of the newest generation—the same problems we're discussing: violence, sex, etc.—and they said, "Of course we weren't like that. We didn't have time! We were out working to bring food home to our families, why would we want to make things harder by fighting with them?"

That's not to say people today don't have to work hard, but it's mostly for wages, not producing goods themselves. I think that probably gives one a sense of control over his life that most modern jobs don't provide. We also don't usually work together alongside our families, and so tend to devalue them or misunderstand each other's differing life experiences. In cultures where families are more dependent on each other for survival, there is still a lot more respect and less selfish behavior (I don't think it can be denied that promiscuity and violence is selfish?).

[Grumbleguts]

You know, Grumbleguts, I used to chuck this up to nastalgia. But I've come to believe it.

Sometimes I get the impression that you are older than I will ever be. :D


(I don't think it can be denied that promiscuity and violence is selfish?).

Would you call intervening to prevent a mugging selfish? Or that the war against Hitler was waged purely by the selfish?

And promiscuity is human nature. Monogamy is the female ideal, polygamy the male. You may not like this but it is true.

Most things are deniable. :D

[jackyyyy]

Bring back national service and give them all a short sharp shock. Only language they understand. :nod:
My daughter, who is living in Paris, explained to me that since they dropped National service in France, many regret. We have seen of the recent riots, so we can make some comparisons. NS alone is not a solution, and I totally disagree with electrodes, but maybe something to draw from in building a solution.

[Grumbleguts]

And speaking as someone approaching 70, I can confirm that the youth of today are out of control, that we never did that in our day, that we used to leave our doors open when we went on holiday and that the neighbours would come in and fill our larders for us while we were away. Bring back national service and give them all a short sharp shock. Only language they understand. :nod:

Did everyone think I was serious here? :confused:

All future posts will be equipped with a high-visibility irony warning. :D

[jackyyyy]

Did everyone think I was serious here? :confused:

All future posts will be equipped with a high-visibility irony warning. :DYou mean, we can put the electrodes back in the box now, or you changed your mind because you have been a Saturday night yob, just never got caught????? <<----hehe

[blp]

Did everyone think I was serious here?
Well I understood.


Reminds me of something I overheard in the Camden branch of Sainsbury’s.

Thirty something woman, immaculately dressed, to her son (about ten):

“Tarquin, could you help find the mung beans for mummy?”

Hey! Sounds like you crossed paths with the wife and little 'un. (l'enfer c'est moi!)

Seriously, though, Tarquin?! Doesn't calling a child this constitute some sort of abuse? And isn't feeding it mung beans a way of compounding the fellony? First yobs, then this. What a world.

[jackyyyy]

Jacky - I'm sorry. My post, although it came right after yours, was in no way in reference to yours. I had been reading previous posts.I was being wordcheap, answering five posts in one. I must remember to quote in the references properly, my mistake.

[The Unnamable]

There are two factors...let them run riot there.
What I find interesting about this, XC, is that it’s the kind of thing I thought when I was living in the UK. One of the best things about being an ex-pat in a country so far away from ‘home’ is that you get a good sense of the way the rest of the world see Britain. It’s in a way that you would never assume they do. They consider us largely irrelevant to world politics (I’m not interested in whether or not this is so) and hardly worth mentioning. The mighty UK has no impact on the daily lives of vast numbers of people. I love that fact. The reason I mention this is because your view is very much of the British situation (bear with me, I know you weren’t making any claims to be talking about anywhere else). A lot of what you say just doesn’t fit with what happens here and in the other places I’ve lived. It was suggested somewhere above that poverty is a major cause of yobbish behaviour but I see far more extreme poverty here and almost no yobbish behaviour – In six years, our only experience of a violent fracas involved a pissed up Scot and two thugs from Yorkshire.

There is an area of Kowloon that is the most densely populated place on earth – everywhere you go it’s as if the rock festival has just ended - but there certainly isn’t the same aggression and violence that you see in any major UK city centre on a Friday and Saturday night. I see a far greater work ethic here in Asia than I ever saw in the UK. People here barely survive doing the most menial of jobs – jobs that people simply wouldn’t do in the UK. Obviously there are many, many other factors that are relevant to the issue but actually living in another culture does help defamiliarise your own and also makes you ask some interesting questions about your own assumptions.

I also find it interesting that you doubt there has been any fundamental change in social values (although I’m not sure who said that the change was ‘fundamental’ – it’s certainly alarming). Would you agree that values do in fact change ever or is it always just the lament of old farts like me? We no longer burn women believed to be witches as public spectacle. This suggests to me that values do change and, given your identification of the speed and capabilities of modern technology, perhaps they change far more quickly now than ever? You see, I think the views you express are a part of what’s angered me in the last two decades. You say, “there will always be a nostalgic view of bygone days taken by the old. Besides, we used to have a lot more wars in the good old days, so we could ship our scum off to foreign parts and let them run riot there.” This is a view I have seen many times, primarily from Guardian readers. Anyone who decries a fall in values must be an oldie befuddled with nostalgia. (It’s a shame the word has been appropriated in this way – etymologically it means the pain of going home.) It’s as if the fact that awful things existed in the past means that we should accept pitifully low standards now. Each generation has looked on the next with supposedly greater understanding – ‘we were no different’ – but we were. My world certainly was and I disagree that I simply look back and remember only the nice bits. If you refuse to be judgmental of modern youth because you think that we were no different, then you fail to give them any worthwhile sense of responsibility. For me, the most important lesson you can teach children is that they aren’t adults. That way they eventually make better adults. Whether intentionally or not, you are providing them with excuses and they will grab them as inalienable rights. They seem to learn quickly when it comes to rights. When I was teaching in the UK I remember one despicable student telling me, “You’re only saying that to me because I’m white.” He’d seen the benefits to be had by playing the race card and decided he was going to have some.

Despite Virgil identifying my argument as being primarily with political correctness (which I believe might have been mocked out of use as a phrase but not as a sentiment), I would say that my main gripe is with dumbing down and the attempt to accommodate rather than address poor behaviour. This of course means that I long for a time when you could leave your doors unlocked and we had National Service.

Grumbleguts – you express a similar view to XC’s. No, I didn’t think you were serious but I do think you are avoiding the issue. It’s far easier to denounce views like mine as the intolerant conservatism of someone living in an imaginary Eden of the past. That way you don’t have to address the kind of appalling behaviour that made me, as a damn good teacher, get out of the UK. You see, when you are confronted with it every day for six years it appears more like a reality than the misunderstanding of a nostalgic old fart.

On the subject of National Service, I once taught an Israeli lad who told me that for his ‘gap-year’ he would be returning to Israel to do his bit for his country by enrolling for NS. I had nothing but admiration for him, although I could have satirised him as a gung-ho, brainwashed idiot who had no idea how he was being manipulated to risk his life for an abstract ideal. Had he been English he could have sung out, “England is mine, it owes me a living.”

You’ve let them in boys – you’ve allowed them to exploit democracy in the area where it is most vulnerable – its tolerance.

[Grumbleguts]

Sometimes I wish I didn't bother getting out of bed.

I am not advocating bringing back national service but neither am I saying that it would be altogether a bad thing. I am no woolly-headed liberal. The only views I expressed were that there was not such a step up between murder and genocide as was claimed by Robinhood3000, the rest of my post was intended as a piece of frivolous fluff.

If you want my opinion, I do feel that standards are slipping in the UK and that they have been fro many years. I do not feel that the blame lies as squarely with 60s liberalism as some but yes, I do think that they have a share in the burden of responsibility.

I taught myself (science), for many years in fact. I gave it up in 1990 because I could no longer bear the ever-increasing burden of bureaucracy coupled with an utter lack of discipline and respect. I never once caned a pupil in all my years of teaching, but by the time I left I truly wished I could. When a child of 11 turns to you and says, "I was too ****ing stoned to do the homework." there's no way to answer. It's just time to get out.

[Stanislaw]

Heh, I think humans should all have there brains put in nutrient rich jars...and there bodies burned as fuel. Its the only lasting solution!

Seriously though, the problem with society, is the lax attitude, and the slipping standards. Whatever happened to punishments for bad behaviour. Our society has gotten to accepting and spineless, and the worst criminal of this degenerating society is the media. (newpapers, movies, video games) As a society we need to change, and shift to a more traditional lifestyle. City living has infact been the key elemnet in our downfall, and if we are not carefull, we will go the way of the romans, egyptians, greeks, babylonians, syrians, persians, vikings...and more. Our culture is slipping due to lax laws and controls. I think we could learn alot from traditional confuscian teachings.

[emily655321]

Did everyone think I was serious here? :confused:I didn't.


Would you call intervening to prevent a mugging selfish? Or that the war against Hitler was waged purely by the selfish?

And promiscuity is human nature. Monogamy is the female ideal, polygamy the male. You may not like this but it is true.God, I love it when people focus soully on the one sentence of a post that doesn't have to do with my main point.

Well, if you wanted to argue this point (which I don't, because I don't feel like getting the thread closed), no one started fighting Hitler until their own countries had been attacked. So, was it selfish? But let's let that remain rhetorical. There's "good selfish" and there's "bad selfish." Violence in self-defense is selfish, but in the "I don't wanna die," totally justifiable sense. Violence in defense of another has deeper evolutionary roots that belong in an entirely separate thread. By "violence" I meant armed robbery, gang wars, bar brawls... the sort of thing applicable to the subject of "the coarsening of our culture." I'll try to clarify myself better in the future.

Any sexual behavior is selfish from an evolutionary standpoint (propogation of your genes and whatnot). We could debate the relative merits/demerits of promiscuity in the context of declared monogamy (God knows that's a constant that doesn't vary with shifting cultural attitudes), but promiscuity as an alternative to any form of lifelong partnership is the least socially beneficial (and therefore the most selfish), because it doesn't result in the raising of a socially-contributing family unit. I referred to this in my post as an example of the different priorities held by people in cultures where the support and mutual labor of a large family unit is a key to survival; places where, if you live your life running from one childless relationship to another, you will die because you have no family to spend all day toiling in the fields with you or to care for you when you get sick. People in this situation make regular sacrifices of personal gratification out of necessity, including recreational sex with multiple partners. When you remove the element of necessity, as has been done in Western culture, it gets replaced by the moral dilemma we have now. I would argue that overt sexual displays became regarded as distasteful because recreational sex was frivolous and self-indulgent; sex within the context of marriage—and which resulted in children—was the only socially productive form. Raising kids was serious business, not just the by-product of a little fun. But when raising a family is no longer the top priority, is promiscuity still wrong? And if it isn't, then are overt sexual displays to become acceptable? The media seem to tell us "yes" on a daily basis, which is a message that teenagers seem to find especially palatable, but one which has concerned Virgil and others.

So, yeah, promiscuity is human nature, but what is human nature but selfishness? Human nature is the evolutionary drive to get what you want. It's up to society to decide which parts of human nature are considered socially acceptable (i.e. "good selfish" versus "bad selfish"). Human nature is what's in your pants when you're dancing closely with an attractive person at the bus stop. Society is what says those pants have got to stay on. This debate is about if and why society has changed its opinion over the years of just how close you can get to taking them off without breaking the rules.

Hope I've clarified myself.


You’ve let them in boys – you’ve allowed them to exploit democracy in the area where it is most vulnerable – its tolerance.Who are "they"?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: P.S., Grumbleguts, among the promiscuous men I've met (which are surprisingly few, if we go by your statement), monogamy is a male ideal, provided that it applies only to their sexual partners. Promiscuity seems to lose its appeal when one's girlfriend decides to practice it.

[The Unnamable]

Who are "they"?
The barely educated scum who steal all of our moments with their brash, aggressive encroachments. I suggest that if they don’t want to take part in contributing to society, they shouldn’t be allowed to avail themselves of its benefits. Turn off their water, gas and electricity and let them finance their own anti-social outlook.

[blp]

The barely educated scum who steal all of our moments with their brash, aggressive encroachments. I suggest that if they don’t want to take part in contributing to society, they shouldn’t be allowed to avail themselves of its benefits. Turn off their water, gas and electricity and let them finance their own anti-social outlook.

Oh yeah them. Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, hanging's too good for 'em. Whoever they are.

I'm not sure, but I think I started the yob strand of this discussion. It's a shame really because I was never convinced it was a new phenomenon and it's not precisely the thing I'd say could be put down to economic factors. All I said was I thought I perceived a new intensity of anger, but I immediately added that I couldn't be sure of that either. From what I can gather, the English, maybe the Brits, have had a yob element for centuries. I couldn't claim to know why. At any rate, you're quite right to remind us how localised that problem is, Unnamable. It points up the main flaw in this thread: the word 'our'. Some necessary defining of terms has yet to take place here: whose culture exactly, and what period of time is implied by 'coarsening'?

I'm solipsistically interested in what I've experienced - the period of history from 1970 to now - and what led up to it, specifically in Europe and America. I'll pre-empt any jokes you might want to make about this, Unnamable, about unpardonable liberal sins of eurocentrism or whatever. I was never a gap year hippy and my interest in the rest of the world is mostly down to the way it wrongfoots a rather blinkered western sense of progress in the 20thC.

I grew up with a belief in progress that, in a very broad way, could be described as modernist. Too bad this dream had already started unravelling at around the time of my birth. At the same time, it didn't unravel completely. There are things from the sixties - notably feminism and civil rights - that I would never want to take back. But at bottom, the decade seems to me to be based on an infantile and totally erroneous idea of the fundamental goodness of people, resulting in a basically misguided liberal idealism, to whit, give people total freedom and they will do what's right. Yeah right. Bring on the cults and drug casualties, the blood spattered on the walls of Sharon Tate's house. And while you're about it, bring on the kids who never learned basic grammar because some groovy educationalist decided it would inhibit their ability to express themselves, man.

A particularly unpleasant side effect of all this, though, is the way it opens the door to equally dimwitted 'bring back the birch' authoritarians. And concurrently, a great irony of it is the fact that the sixties was also, in the shape of the work of Milton Friedman, the birth of economic liberalism, a credo whose proponents generally get lumped in culturally not with humanist liberals but the 'bring back the birch' school. And yet, the term liberal fits because so much of its rhetoric is the same. Humanist liberals believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity. Economic liberals believe in the fundamental goodness of markets. At times, notably in the work of Francis Fukuyama, they even resort to the same Hegelian dialectical underpinning as Marxism uses to posit the dictatorship of the proletariat to argue for the millenarian inevitability of the free market system. At the bottom of all this may be legislation in the US and England that gave corporations the same rights as individuals. But in practice, often as proponents of 'bring back the birch', liberal economic types often seem to believe more in the rights of corporations and the goodness of markets than of people.

I don't believe in either. I don't believe in any fundamental goodness anywhere and I think the facts bear me out. Depravity is as old as the hills, power always seems to corrupt and power and absolute freedom are barely distinguishable phenomena. It's kind of amazing to me that there are still any free marketeers left after what the rapid liberalisation of Russia's markets did to it (to give just one example - the wrecking of the Thai currency would be another), but that's faith for you - if you love an idea enough, you can learn to ignore any amount of unpleasant reality.

It's often said that we're in a post-ideological moment. If only. The fractious twin factions of economic and humanist liberalism have defined a great deal of what we've lived through in the last 30 to 40 years. Suggestions of curbing freedoms on either side are generally met with outrage. Freedom is god, worshipped in only slightly different ways, and always with some contradiction and hypocrisy. This isn't a new thing to say, but what I think we're living through is the fallout of an absolutely seismic collapse of hope - a collapse that was always inevitable because the hope was naive and utopian. Unfortunately, but equaly inevitably, it makes space for equally blinkered dogmas of authoritarianism - whether PCness or good old 'old fashioned values or Muslim fundamentalism or jerks like Alan Dershowitz arguing openly in favour of torture - and the nihilism of Ice Cube's: 'Is that kid lookin' up to me? Yo, life ain't nothin' but b itches and money'.

[The Unnamable]

First ten year old: My friend has two mommies.
Second ten year old: How many is two?


Oh yeah them. Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, hanging's too good for 'em. Whoever they are.
Okay I was exaggerating because I expected to be lampooned for calling scum scum. I don’t want to bring back the birch and have never advocated corporal punishment in schools, not even when I was told by a fourteen year old boy, “I’m gonna stick a ****ing broken glass in your face if I see you out.”

But I did leave the UK because I couldn’t stand living there any longer. There was one too many late night train journeys through the detritus of southern England (when the train wasn't cancelled).

I found your outlook interesting and it’s good to see a bit of snarling but I think the perspective needs to be wider. History is broader in scope than the last forty-odd years. And History is coming for us, as it always does to those who fail to learn from it.

I see political correctness and dumbing down as linked. The former has necessitated the latter. The insistence that everyone is equal and every opinion valid has resulted in what someone called ‘the culture of narcissism’. Students learn by studying themselves – so gay students want to study the virtues of being gay, black students want to study black history and female students want to search the white western male canon and beyond for further examples of how marginalized they have been. They may well end up knowing more about their own culture/gender/sexual orientation, but nothing else.

I’ve mentioned this before on the Forum but I think it’s relevant here:

Recently, I read “A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945”. He was at the siege of Stalingrad. The Russians fought literally to the last bullet. When German soldiers were captured, sometimes wounded, sometimes not, the Russians simply had to kill them. They couldn’t keep them as prisoners because that would mean feeding them and there was not enough food for the Russians themselves. However, how do you kill a man? You shoot him in the head. But that uses a bullet and every one is needed to defend the city. So it was the job of the fittest and healthiest young women to despatch the equally young Germans with, usually, shovels or hammers. Seventeen-year-old girls cracking the skulls of eighteen-year-old boys. Just because it’s ‘wrong’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t or won’t happen. And a sense of this, the perspective of ourselves that it gives us is what’s missing today. Why study human behaviour when you can celebrate your own worth by studying yourself? You see this attitude time and again on this forum. The biggest lie of all is the one that pretends there isn’t a price to pay for all this. Consider me rabidly reactionary if you wish but, as I said above, if Liberalism fails to address the concerns of the electorate, there are darker forces waiting. I’m not going to start birching people but there are plenty who will. The more you reinforce the idea that the choice is primarily between ‘'bring back the birch' authoritarians’ and misguided liberalism, the more the situation will go unaddressed. I’m aware of the problems I face in allying myself in the Telegraph camp – I really don’t like the company – If you were serious about your contempt for the decision to dispense with grammar teaching, then you must understand this – who is in your camp over this issue?

The number of applications to study History at university in the UK has fallen. 'No bad thing in itself' to quote the Junior Minister for Higher Education. (Not if it means the cretins have gone for Sports Science or Golf Course Management). Please let History come for these people. I will take my chances if it means living in what the Chinese curse calls 'interesting times'. fayefaye once called me ‘dark’ for saying this but it’s often all that remains, what with the louts themselves and those who prop them up.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)”

Let them.

[blp]

I don't have much problem with most of what you're saying here, Unnamable. Glad to hear you're not entirely at peace with Telegraph readership and re your departure from England, I'm even trying to work out my own escape route from this silly country, if only because, if I ever do get round to having a family, I wouldn't want my kids to grow up here.

I'm very serious about the grammar thing. The real life version of your opening joke above is an intelligent friend of mine saying 'Sorry, what's a noun again?' More to the point, I've seen from the work I did as an editor a few years ago how directly poor grammar usage links to poor thinking. I was editing financial training material and knew nothing about the subject matter (a ridiculous situation, I grant you) and yet I spotted numerous errors, inconsistencies and outright lacunae in the texts just by trying to give the sentences proper structure.

I'm not quit sure why you think I'm snarling - the line about no fundamental goodness I suppose. I could add basic stupidity as a constant in human history to the equasion for the full misanthropy effect. Oops - more to say, but out of time. Back later.

[The Unnamable]

I've seen from the work I did as an editor a few years ago how directly poor grammar usage links to poor thinking.
Indeed. I was taught ‘clause analysis’, which involved working through decontextualised sentences and applying labels to different sections – ‘adverbial clause of time’, ‘adjectival phrase’ and so on. It was not easy at the time and was hardly thrilling. This means that it no longer gets taught – we wouldn’t want students thinking that they aren’t all wonderful; that might hurt their self-esteem. They are no longer people who need to learn things but consumers with preferences. If they don’t like your goods, they’ll take their custom elsewhere and justify it on the basis of freedom of choice. Yet, when one day my father, completely perplexed, gave me a three-page tax document riddled with subordinate clauses to see if I could understand it, I realised that I could. It was the first of many occasions when I realised the extent to which language is power.



if I ever do get round to having a family, I wouldn't want my kids to grow up here.
What happened to Tarquin and that lovely woman in Sainsbury’s? :D

[blp]

Yes, there's nothing quite like the experience of learning something difficult - humbling, befuddling, but finally vivifying. I think to give someone something they don't want, but actually need is probably the best, most difficult and most generous thing a teacher can do. It's a good ambition for an artist too.

So, as you may already have gathered, polar opposites or not, I think our views on education are pretty damn close. Private Eye recently ran the diary of a young teacher and it was shocking stuff. He was utterly, utterly hamstrung in trying to impose discipline his students by the various bits of legislation that had been brought in to protect their rights. Said students, who were abysmal at learning the stuff he was actually supposed to be teaching them, knew these rights inside out and perpetually taunted him with them.

A less serious, but still perhaps interesting example of the same tendency is my time at art school: three years of learning sweet fanny adams except for a few handy hints from tutors (thin your paints a bit more, have a look at Robert Ryman's work - that sort of thing) and what I found out myself. Students without a previously instilled sense of the value of didacticism were basically left to stagnate. In the first year, a popular theory of learning (to describe it very generously) went that we should all 'just play', whatever that meant. The worst of it, and the thing I relate most to what you're saying, is that what teaching I did get so often took the form of attempts to identify some hypothetical a priori artistic identity for me, as if that could be the basis for all future learning, rather than the learning itself slowly, perhaps even painfully, forming an identity. In the second year, I had roughly half the tutors dropping by to tell me I was 'basically a traditional painter' and the rest telling me I was 'basically a conceptual artist' to no beneficial effect in either instance. When I remarked to one younger tutor that I could have done with a bit more help with theory (I'm talking about wading, unaided, through Derrida, Kristeva and Deleuze and Guattari and not even realising that I would probably have been better of starting with Plato), she averred blandly that it was just sort of something some people were 'suited to' and some weren't. It was all so ridiculous. Artists bloody love to go on about making 'challenging' work, but everything in that place seemed to be geared to ensuring none of the aspirant artists had to be challenged for a second.

Well, I guess I'm snarling now, if I wasn't before. Who's in my camp? I'm really not sure. And other than that, a great deal of whatever it was I meant to say before has gone out of my head. But to go back to the two forms of liberalism I described earlier and your beef about golf course management courses, what's interesting to me about this is that it seems like this bland vocationalism could be the place where, weirdly and quite unexpectedly, the two apparently antithetical liberalisms meet. I find this very interesting.


What happened to Tarquin and that lovely woman in Sainsbury’s?

I'm sorry, but at that time in my life fatherhood completely stifled my need to explore the infantile aspects of my personality. And I would ask that you respect that.

[Dante Wodehouse]

Generational expectation has been declining since the 70s. The current youth are expected to be crass, rude, visceral, violent, profane, and depraved adolescents who will never develope healthy relationships or incomes and wouldn't know a conversation if it gave them a swirly and took their lunch money. Kids who excell and are excellent are by definition rare, but fulfilling expectations comes naturally. It is the parents of this generation who have been the most foolish of any. The parents either believe that trying to prevent their children to fullfill the foresaid stereotype is futile, or they expect their children to be born, learn to eat food, walk, and then psychoanalyze themselves to the point where they can decide what will be best for their future well-being and, therefore, be teaching their peers why marijuana is not a solution by the time they enter preschool. Children may have a large capacity from the time that they are born, but this is something of a ridiculous expectation. There's my two cents.