A serious question for the old timers

[schmosef]

Seriously, I'd like only old timers to reply. The older the better. 50+ is good. 60+ is better.

Were people always this stupid?

People say that contemporary Western society doesn't reward intellectual intelligence anymore. This presupposes the assumption that intelligence was prised at one time. I’m wondering if this is propaganda or if it really was this way.

I'm just so sick of banging my head against what feels like a brick wall every time I have to deal with some stupid customer rep.

They don't even know their own jobs and somehow I'm supposed to "automate" their lives.

It's like people can't THINK anymore. They have to learn everything by making the mistake for themselves and then decide how to solve their problems. They can't anticipate because they can't visualise.

I know I'm ranting but I'm just wondering if this is a new trend or if it was always like this. No one seems to take pride in their own competence. Somehow, personal development is now about yoga and tantric breathing and not about actual skills.

I hate that I have to comport myself in a PC manner; that I can't just say to someone "you're stupid!"

[Dr Mordrid]

No, they weren't.

When I grew up people had reverence for something called "common sense" and practiced it regularly. Now the first thing the education system tries to do is destroy any notions of common sense in favor of intellectualism, which gives rise to all manner of problems in todays society.

As Mr. Miagi said: there must be balance; as in between intellectualism and common sense.

Another problem is the mass media. I'm not talking about political balance, I'm talking about programming balance.

For many, many years the marketing has been to young people and has shown their parents and most authority figures as either stupid, incompetent, crooks or doddering fools. To be sure a small percentage are, but by no means the vast majority.

Unfortunately this has contributed to an erosion of respect for their elders and society and its norms as a whole. The result is the kind of civil unrest you see when a bowl team loses or sometimes just on any Saturday night in some cities and towns.

This kind of crap would hardly ever have happened when I was a kid and if it did a cop would only have to say; "c'mon kids, break it up" and it would have been over.

Then there is the loss of control in our schools. Several causes for this, but one of the main ones is a weakening of "absentia parentis" to the point where teachers/principals etc. cannot discipline the kids at all, save for expulsion and that's not even a punishment. They just go home and flip on the plasma TV or X-Box.

The result is that the kids know they can virtually, and sometimes almost literally, get away with assult/rape/murder and there will be few consequences. These kids grow up and have their own little beasties, don't discipline them and the next thing you know we have the real monsters prowling our schools today.

This, combined with the other things mentioned above, has tilted the plane so far that in many of our schools teachers are afraid to leave their classrooms...and sometimes even that can't keep them safe.

Contrast: in my day from Kindergarten on we knew that if we misbehaved the teacher/nun/principal/whatever would bust our asses if we got out of line. The result was that they rarely had to. Just the (exaggerated) horror stories told by upper classmen would keep the population of the school in line for the whole year.

If a spanking did occur that year the place was quiet as a tomb for months.

That every principal (and more than a few teachers) in the district, K-12, had a "board of educaton" on the wall helped to enforce that notion, which was a great idea IMO. In some states this still happens, but unfortunately not in the most populous ones.

Best example: Mr. Brumm in 7th grade (math/science). An EXCELLENT teacher, loved by the teachers and kids, but it was not nice to mess with him because of his 24" perforated ash wood paddle

Needless to say he had one of the best behaved classes in the school. Even the school bullies wouldn't mess with Mr. Brumm.

Dr. Mordrid

[degrub]

We used to make the paddles, special order, in wood shop. The most wicked one had 1.5 inch holes drilled in .125 inch. Inside was drilled out, a hundred lead BBs poured in, and plugged. All the principal had to do was flick his wrist . OUCH!

You're right, we lost something when the kid's got coddled and spanking went out the window. There were few sadists though, like my 7th grade typing teacher. If you didn't get your hands in correct position, a quick rap across the knuckles with a ruler would get them there quickly.

[Fluff]

Apologies i'm only 25. I agree. We didn't have much trouble at our school due to the fact alot of the teachers were 'old' and still knew how to control people.

One of them was a deadly aim with a board rubber.

It's down to this culture of the parents taking power away from the teacher. And kids threatening to sue. I mean what the hell is up with that.

In cultures like in Pakistan I think older people are still respected. If you see a child misbehaving and it's not your child it is still acceptable to give the kid a clip round the ear.

[KvHagedorn]

I will say one word. Multiculturalism. Attack me about it if you dare.

[Fluff]

I don't know if that was directed at me, I would like your view on Multiculturalism.

[rylan]

It relates to the dumbing down and pansification of America.

[High_Jumbllama]

My parents would have flipped if a teacher had dared to lay a hand on me. I never had to be afraid of any teacher. However . . . .

When I was really young, they would have done any spanking if necessary. Later on all it took was a lifting of the hand and later than that I was old enough and smart enough to reason with. They took responsibility for molding my behavior.

[degrub]

One could argue that multiculturalism was only the symptom. It really started with the generation after the war, so much sacrifice, so much suffering, do it all for the kids and future generations....little for oneself. SO the next generation looked out for itself and ran into Vietnam....

[KvHagedorn]

Multiculturalism is the tenet that more than one culture with differing value systems and ideas about right and wrong can live harmoniously together in one town or country, everything will be wonderful cultural exchange and diversity benefitting all, sugarplums will fall from the heavens, and other such nonsense. It is a concoction derived from an unholy alliance between naive social liberals and big business. How is this? Well, it all boils down to the principle of "divide and conquer." While clueless cultural liberals bombard any opposition to mass immigration with epithets of "racism," businesses welcome immigrants from any of the poorest nations, to exploit their willingness to work for below minimum wage. This results in many opposed groups living within a certain area. For example, those of Northern European descent, mostly protestant, sharing similar values have a community. Torrents of Mexicans come across the border and settle in the community because they want to escape the squalor of their own society. There is a cultural schism.. the values and attitudes of each of these cultures are vastly different (in more ways than I choose to innumerate here) yet economics and weak leadership (capitalists and cultural liberals) have inconsiderately thrown these two groups into a common bathtub for their own shortsighted ideals or monetary benefits. The cultures must relate to each other, if only in the most basic of ways, so a commonality begins to take shape, based upon the lowest common denominator set of values held by each group. What does this do? Essentially it destroys both cultures. You get no commonality at all, except that based on the most lowly of motives.. selfishness and greed, basically.

This is why parents don't trust teachers to discipline their kids.. "God know what value system those teachers subscribe to.. they are probably utterly alien to ours." is what people feel, even if they can't articulate these feelings. The very rich can send their kids to private school, but the multiculturalist nazis hold sway there, too. "If there is no diversity, you must be some sort of evil racists or something".. that leaves class as the only differentiating factor. So you get the kids of rich athlete thugs in with old money whiteys and they get another LCD commonality going.. pretty soon the old money whiteys are seriously into drugs and treating their women like shit, and subsume all else to their newfound religion of selfishness and greed.

America is the most utterly diverse "nation" on the planet and has the least commonality as a culture, unless it is the twisted mentality fed to us by corporate advertisements on TV, the most recent trend of which shows a person (YOU, the viewer) abandoning all things of true value (his wife and children, for example) to acquire their product. This is supposed to be "amusing" or "artful exaggeration" or whatever, but I find it really disturbing. Kids see this stuff, and their value systems are just forming.. and what with daddy being moved three times a year by his corporation (another factor in the destruction of communities) if I was a kid nowadays, I would take such advertisements in perhaps a different way than that in which they were meant.. as a mockery of all love and human values.. the commandment that thou shall worship the god of thy corporate owner--profit-- above all else.

[KvHagedorn]

I forgot to expound on the "divide and conquer" aspect.. When a political entity (they can't be called nations anymore) has no common cultural virtues or values holding them together as a community which might advance those common virtues and values, all is subsumed by the LCD commonality of greed and selfishness, and you get the present-day United States.. A whole bunch of poor people who don't even have a common culture to call their own, a few rich people who are selfish, thoughtless pricks, and corporations feeling they are in heaven.. they can do whatever the hell they want to. Think it's bad now? wait until the old people who've held onto their values die off.. life will just not be worth living anymore.

[Jessterw]

Knew there was a reason for that whole Tower of Babel thing...

See my issue with the whole multiculturalism rant is that the problems in our society are prevalent in the most ethnically diverse area and in ones where the only thing ethnic is the burritos in the refrigerator. Nevermind that these problems have been around since the time of Moses (and before that). We line in a world where the problems in society are ever more prevalent and noticeable due to the wide range and speed of communications. That, however, is not the problem, it only serves to amplify how we perceive it.

Part of the problem is that, more and more, younger generations are increasingly under the opinion that the generations before have somehow failed them, and with that their sense of respect to their elders has decreased significantly. That is only one aspect of the overall issue, as narrowing it down to any one cause is to ignore that many others that are equally as responsible.

Then again, I can only speak for my generation and as someone who grew up in a rather ethnically diverse part of the US.

[DGhost]

I blame the parents.

[Wombat]

Ah yes. It's the children. And multiculturalism.

When the entire country is run by a rich, white bread moron who's convicted of DUI and did coke, and abuses his office to benefit cronies, we must look at the children as an example of why this country/world is failing.

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint"

-Hesiod, 8th century, B.C.

[KvHagedorn]

The point is, he's NOT running the country. He's just letting the corporations rape and pillage at will.