This was an idea put forth by someone in another thread. It's a beautiful idea.
It's simple: Here go general discussion and comments about signs that civilization is degenerating. It is not a thread for what to do about it, merely observations and general comments about such observations.
I'll start: Turns out 64% of all garbage on the streets here is used cigarettes. I remember when it was just 53%. Darn smokers.
Huh, what?
Crazy hippies.
The memories of folks around here much younger than me seem to be going these days. Comes to something when even the youngsters don't remember threads like *this* exist. Mind you, the way things keep being moved in these parts by that chap (?) with all the eyes, maybe the old links to it are all broken. Still, there are supposed to be all those hi-techy search thingummyjigs around, which folk never seem to use. And don't get me started on the declining standards of Aroden's English in online fanfictions. There are things called apostrophes, which are mighty useful. And if you can't be bothered to take the time to make sure your 'work' is readable to other folks out there, then why in tarnation's name are you posting it???
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I can't decide whether to hide this thread or wallow in it. Such delicious depravity, like chocolate and rancid butter.
Delicious, isn't it? =)
In other news: People can't get their thans and thens right. Not even having spellcheckers seems to help them. And, of course, it has only gotten worse as time burns its way into entropy. I know the difference, and english isn't my first language. Darn education system.
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Yeah that's less lack of education and more laziness really.
I can't decide whether to hide this thread or wallow in it. Such delicious depravity, like chocolate and rancid butter.
Oh I know you. You'll waver for a while, but you'll end up wallowing like a dixie pig.
This thread is going to skeeball into misanthropic depression territory pretty quick.
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It isn't already? That's why I'm here....
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When government seems to be operating on the Roman principle of bread and circuses, your society might be degenerating.
When fear cows many into submission to a few, your society might be degenerating.
When more and more fail to learn from history, thus repeating it - or in some cases, very deliberately repeating it to the detriment of others, your society might be degenerating.
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when is society ever on the rise?
when is society ever on the rise?
The Renaissance
The Belle Epoque1920's
According to Jacques Barzun, the society was delt a fatal blow by world war I, and has been in a slow decline ever since, and World War II simply hurried it up. Although the technical revolution and PC have provided economic development, no 'movement' in art, politics, or society since the 1960's has had any profound change. The last major event was the civil rights movement in America, and decolonization.
So minority rights, gay rights, are nothing?
While it has a long way to go, I think we've been steadily expanding our monkeysphere, and that's a good thing.
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when is society ever on the rise?
Exactly--No matter how much better things are in general, there will always be pundits claiming things are going to s@#%. I'd bet dollars to donuts there were Neanderthals claiming society was declining! OK...maybe the Neanderthals were on to something...so that was a bad example, but you know what I'm trying to say!
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That's all covered in the article; it's pretty thorough.
"But even the Arab rage at America is relatively recent. In the 1950s and 1960s it seemed unimaginable that the United States and the Arab world would end up locked in a cultural clash. Egypt's most powerful journalist, Mohamed Heikal, described the mood at the time: "The whole picture of the United States... was a glamorous one. Britain and France were fading, hated empires. The Soviet Union was 5,000 miles away and the ideology of communism was anathema to the Muslim religion. But America had emerged from World War II richer, more powerful and more appealing than ever." I first traveled to the Middle East in the early 1970s, and even then the image of America was of a glistening, approachable modernity: fast cars, Hilton hotels and Coca-Cola. Something happened in these lands...."
this is the paragraph leading to my link sentence.
Other problems go back to Israel. And more generally to the division of the area at the end of the colonial era, usually along lines intended to promote weak states with dictators who need Western support.
"Yet carelessness is not enough to explain Arab rage. After all, if concern for the Palestinians is at the heart of the problem, why have their Arab brethren done nothing for them? (They cannot resettle in any Arab nation but Jordan, and the aid they receive from the gulf states is minuscule.) Israel treats its 1 million Arabs as second-class citizens, a disgrace on its democracy. And yet the tragedy of the Arab world is that Israel accords them more political rights and dignities than most Arab nations give to their own people. Why is the focus of Arab anger on Israel and not those regimes?"
I kinda thought this was interesting.
I have yet to read your article, Comrade Spanky, but the Palestinians are nowhere near the heart of the problems as to why the Arabic world hates America (not that it really does--there's all kinds of pro-America people throughout the Middle East). It probably is at the heart of why the Arabic world hates Israel, though.
Of course, more than a good chunk of the Arabic world also hates whatever particular mullah, sheikh or colonel is in power over them, as the past couple of years has demonstrated amply.
EDIT: Ninja'd by Citizen X about the Arab Spring? [Shakes fists in rage]
That's all covered in the article; it's pretty thorough.I only skimmed it admittedly, but it barely mentioned the Shah, mostly talking about his "modernization", though it did add "repressive regime". Near as I could tell, it didn't mention the coup at all, nor the US role in it or in backing that repressive regime.
Just looking at the bit you just quoted, I'd simplify the whole thing by saying that in the 50s and 60s the Arab world hadn't realized that America was taking on the role of the "fading, hated empires" of the British and French.
Yeah you're right; I hadn't read the whole article in a few weeks, so I muddled the details.
We weren't taking on the same role though. We were fighting a Cold War with an evil empire.
Maybe getting some oil too, but in an idealized vacuum where the USSR didn't have any say in or responsibility for anything, there wouldn't have been a need to oust Mossadegh.
I started to read your article, Comrade Spanky, and did a doubletake when I got to the part about Pakistan not allowing American military bases, and then realized that the article was from two weeks (actually, four, I guess) after 9/11.
Why is the focus of Arab anger on Israel and not those regimes?"Perhasps you missed all the attention that was being paid to the "Arab Spring" some time ago.
Israel is a different case because unlike the Arab states which pretty much impose a uniform standard of law (or oppression). Israel is operating in a manner which has been often compared to with good reason for the South Africa of the apartheid era, a nation which was universally condemmed for it's practises. Israel's actions are of note because they are drawn from a double standard, sketched along ethnic and religous lines.
In other states, there's a ruling elite and there are subjugated masses.
The percentages of elite vs subjugated is much smaller, as are the end results; i.e. the ruling class can operate with impunity, whereas the subjugated masses have less rights than the Palestinians do.The article is pretty old though; Arab Sping was still a decade off.
I started to read your article, Comrade Spanky, and did a doubletake when I got to the part about Pakistan not allowing American military bases, and then realized that the article was from two weeks after 9/11.
It's a pretty old article.
I just thought it was interesting from a standpoint of "civilization in decline," and the signs and evidence for such.
Yeah, I just wanted to explain my first post was before I realized that.
Yeah, I just wanted to explain my first post was before I realized that.
I think that the Arab elite's sponsoring of Right Wing Whackjob Preachers to transpose the general populace's rage onto anybody but them is behind most of it.
Of course, if they had them preach about Russia's moral bankruptcy instead, they'd probably have a whole slew of Soviet Cold War travesties of justice to blame their anger on.
It would be nice if everybody could just ride bycicles and stop procreating and quit using oil, but even the Savior himself, Al Gore with his big mansion has a monthly electric bill that's higher than my mortgage, so I doubt we'll stop depending on middle eastern oil until we get a lot more frakking underway.
I thought we got most of our oil from Latin America and Canada.
So minority rights, gay rights, are nothing?
While it has a long way to go, I think we've been steadily expanding our monkeysphere, and that's a good thing.
The last BIG movement on this front was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Since then improvements are considered incremental by comparison.
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Reductionism may be a cute American affectation when it comes to foreign analysis, but it's also wrong in this case it's usually wrong elsewhere.
Says the guy who, not even a dozen posts earlier, compared Israeli's policies to Apartheid....
Yeah, I just wanted to explain my first post was before I realized that.I think that the Arab elite's sponsoring of Right Wing Whackjob Preachers to transpose the general populace's rage onto anybody but them is behind most of it.
Of course, if they had them preach about Russia's moral bankruptcy instead, they'd probably have a whole slew of Soviet Cold War travesties of justice to blame their anger on.
Plenty of that went on too, with or without official sponsorship, given that a mass movement, and a 'godless' one, too, is never going to be at the top of most devout Moslem clerics' list of favourites.
Anyway, seeing as this thread is about the degeneration of society, speaking as a degenerate, I say !
Only joking. Bring back flogging and conscription. That's the only language those ne'er-do-wells understand.
I started to read your article, Comrade Spanky, and did a doubletake when I got to the part about Pakistan not allowing American military bases, and then realized that the article was from two weeks (actually, four, I guess) after 9/11.That actually makes a little more sense. So it really would be 40 years back now:)
I can't really claim in all seriousness that the CIA's Iran operation didn't have anything to do with any of this; I think that for contextualization, thougy, the author was saying "the last 30 years" as opposed to "the roots of the problem lie 400 to 900 years ago" i.e. Ottoman expansion and/or the Crusades in the holy land.
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It's also hard to avoid the similarities between wood and metal being hard, so therefore they must both be of the element of earth.
Or, to simplify matters, "it's okay when Lazar does it, because.....bla bla bla......"
Used to be threads about degenerating society did not devolve inte discussions about the Middle East. Do continue. :-)
Plenty of that went on too, with or without official sponsorship, given that a mass movement, and a 'godless' one, too, is never going to be at the top of most devout Moslem clerics' list of favourites.
Anyway, seeing as this thread is about the degeneration of society, speaking as a degenerate, I say !
Only joking. Bring back flogging and conscription. That's the only language those ne'er-do-wells understand.
I second the call for more degeneracy.
Used to be threads about degenerating society did not devolve inte discussions about the Middle East. Do continue. :-)Well you could see it as being about he degeneration of their societies....
It was kinda an example of degenerating stuff's.
Quoted from wiki on societal collapse....
"Depopulation: Societal collapse is almost always associated with a population decline. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re-established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the case of Ancient Rome, which had a population of about 1.5 million during the reign of Trajan in the early 2nd century CE, but had only 15,000 inhabitants by the 9th century."
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“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” --Socrates
Yep. World is going to heck.
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Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian hegemony to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens sought to stabilize and recover from its humiliating defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government. Socrates appears to have been a critic of democracy, and some scholars[who?] interpret his trial as an expression of political infighting.
Claiming loyalty to his city, Socrates clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society.[14] He praises Sparta, archrival to Athens, directly and indirectly in various dialogues. One of Socrates' purported offenses to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of what he perceived as immorality within his region, Socrates questioned the collective notion of "might makes right" that he felt was common in Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the "gadfly" of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness.[15] His attempts to improve the Athenians' sense of justice may have been the cause of his execution. from Wiki
Maybe, just maybe, he was on to something there?
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” --Socrates
Yep. World is going to heck.
It always boggles my mind when people use this quote as a defense of "no, things were always like this, it's not just this generation". Isn't the goal to, y'know, get better as we move toward the future? And have less of this sort of thing?
Granted, I'm cynical enough to know that humans are notoriously resistant to change and our basic nature is unlikely to undergo any notable alterations, but hey that doesn't change that for most people it's the goal. (Me, I'd settle for being left alone nine times out of ten, I think that more likely to succeed.)
Yeah, and Sparta was the vital society that worked. Ask any helot.
Should we step back and define "degeneration" at this point?