The Sad Decline of Society

Could this be made into a film? I've got the title Weekend at Bernice's. LoL
They need therapy.

does anyone else not buy this "decline of society" bit?? since when has humanity been a picture of sanity and good judgment. back in the day kings beheaded wive who gave birth to daughters cuz they wanted someone to succedd the throne (couldn't you just have another baby?). ancient practices of circumcizing women, human sacrifices, mankind has ALWAYS been violent, perverted, and selfish. the holocaust, slavery, the slaughter of indians, these kind of things go WAAAY further back than your high-school textbooks allow. before europeans came over here and slaughter legions of native-americans, they hosted a civil war or two and killed off many of their own.

I don't buy it, either, Marley...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that " the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice".

Our society is not in decline. Never in human history have so many people lived so long, in such health and in such safety as they do now.


The fact that telecommunications, science, and an ever improving standard of what is moral can tell you about EVERY ignoble thing that happens anywhere in the world within minutes is not evidence that things are getting worse.... its just evidence that you have access to MORE knowledge, faster.

Used to be that a murder could happen in your own town and you never even hear about it for months...
Today... if some nun stubs her toe in New Delhi it will be on the CNN crawl within 20 minutes.

It was not that long ago when black people were hung from trees... and the MAJORITY of Americans, much less the world, had no idea it was going on.

Black civil rights was stymied for 100 years because of this ignorance of the majority. A time many today refer to as a "simpler time"... ( read that as a "more ignorant time")

But when television came along... when what was being done got broadcast into every home in America... when Americans could SEE it... see the mistreatment, the water cannons and the dogs attacking peaceful protesters...

That was when American finally got embarrassed into a higher moral standard.


It has gotten so that our current moral standard is so high, that the BIBLE has become, by comparison, shockingly barbaric in its moral standards.

Whenever I hear how we are in decline... I remember an interview I saw not long ago with an elderly woman.

She had been captured on film in the 1960's, screaming at and spitting on a young black girl as she was escorted into a school by national guardsmen...


In her interview she was explaining how she was so full of hate that day, so full of anger over desegregation... and that when she got home, she saw that image of herself on the television screen... and could not believe that was her, doing such a hateful thing to an innocent little girl...

She said that seeing herself in that moment, captured on film, changed her forever... and she ended up being a strong advocate for civil rights.


It funny... that we can see that image, over and over... years or decades after the event... and what we see is that woman full of hate...

She remains that woman full of hate in our imaginations...

Yet this lingering image transformed that very woman... and how many countless others, into finally understanding how wrong their perspectives had been.


No, my friend.... I have lived long enough to see that the world has gotten better... the things we complain about become so much less.

Today we decry the small actions of 3 lonely and pathetic perverts...

50 years ago, thousands marched in white hoods and terrorized whole segments of our national community.



Things ARE getting better.

We have become a better society.

We still have miles to go...but its steadily upward... toward the light.

Um, liberal academics bill this as text-book necrophilia... feel these vermin shouldn't be jailed, but instead need counseling and meds.





Seriously.

i think it's a double-edged sword. on one hand, with television essentially turning a mirror onto our own behavior has opened many eyes. other technological advances seem to dumben us into a sense of entitelement. i believe that every racist isn't a white hood-wearing, cross burning extremist, some are simply misinformed and their ignorance ends when they see real life experiences that disprove what they were conditioned to believe. at the same time, we do seem stuck in a rut of "fuck the starving countries, fuck the homeless people on the other side of town, the most important thing is that i get my 5 dollar coffees and brand new rims for my caddy and if i don't get either i'll cry that this is supposed to be the land of opportunity and privelege"

Um, yes , seriously...

"Liberal academics" also feel you could be significantly helped by counseling and meds....



( just so you know- the term liberal means "free to think" and academic means "learned student" So , yes, those who are free to think and to learn recognize that these boys are fucked up in the head. And that prison does little to address being fucked up in the head.)

I think you fail to recognize that no nation on earth does more for the underprivileged and poor of the world than the US.

To hell with what our government GIVES in aid ( the most actual money )...that is literally just the tip of the iceberg.

The US has been the strongest proponent of free trade on a global scale... the tennis shoes, and even the 4 dollar coffee you buy actually puts money directly into the pocket of workers in the third world.

When the Beijing olympics runs... take a good look at the impressive cities that are sprouting all over China... all PAID for by Americans and Europeans buying goods made in China.


I have BEEN to China... the people there are the most optimistic I have ever met.
Half the people you meet around age 25 to 30 have RIDGES in their teeth.

This tells you that when these people were 5 years old, they were literally starving.
today they have cell phones, designer jeans, plenty to eat and are shopping for cars.

To them, life has never been better... and it just keeps getting better every years.


Believe it or not, even the third world is a far better place than its ever been.

And the reason it is better is because you and I buy cheap foreign crap we don't really need.

That is moral justice.

what you said is true and i apologize if my wording generalized americans, but there are people EVERYWHERE in every country who read the bible, tell their kids to pray, open their homes for bible-study groups on saturday night then drive straight past the homeless and battered-women's shelter on sunday to go listen to to a man preach about being more god-like

So Phil... did these gentlemen commit a crime, or are they victims of their environment and physiological being and shouldn't be given any harsh consequence? (answer honestly, please)

wow... throw in the Christian attack here... regardless, as a non-Christian,.. I'll say they do more for the betterment than most non-Christians, thineself included. course, I'm not sure there are any "battered-womens shelters" in Mooslim heavy nations, maybe someone here can demystify....so unlike you, I can't speak for every country.

Sorry - I just have to pick you up on this. The US gives the largest amount of money because it is the largest single developed nation. It does not give the largest amount of money per head of population.

I can't lay my hands on the figures right now, my father and I were discussing this a couple of weeks back. I do recall that Ireland's figure for 2006 was something like 0.47% of GDP (which wasn't the highest either, just the one I recall) and the US was something like 0.2% GDP for the same year. Now, obviously 0.2% of the USA's GDP is significantly higher than 0.47% of Ireland's GDP (300m population versus 4m) but it does mean that the Irish government gives a higher priority to international aid than the US and is more generous with its citizens' money.

Completely OT, of course. Sorry.

On the OP and recent developments - the guys only actually desecrated a grave - they did NOT rob a corpse, nor did they perform sexual acts on it. Intent is important but not as important as actually doing something. Who is to say had they got the vault open that they would have gone through with it? For conceiving the plan and, more so, attempting it I feel they need some therapy. But serious jail time? No.

Muslims (please learn to spell it in at least one of the accepted Westernised forms) are not fucking savages. In most moderate Muslim societies women are treated very similarly to how they are treated in the 'west'. In other words, of course they have shelters for battered women, you ignoramous.

i wasn't attacking christians, i was attacking hypocrites. i was raised christian and my best friends are a christian couple. i was focusing on their behavior, YOU were focusing on their religion.

The drastic changes we've seen in society in the last few decades are a result of improved and new technologies. It isn't sad. We're doing great.