Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?

[Paulclem]

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

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

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

[stlukesguild]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[MarkBastable]

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

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

[JCamilo]

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

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

[Emil Miller]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[LitNetIsGreat]

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

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

[Emil Miller]

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

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

[MarkBastable]

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

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

[MarkBastable]

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

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

[JCamilo]

But the aristocracy had occasionally tasted better strawberries.

[LitNetIsGreat]

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

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

[Emil Miller]

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

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

[TheFifthElement]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[MarkBastable]

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

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

[Emil Miller]

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

I'm afraid it doesn't:

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