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I disagree. It's twisted in your mind. It's not God who makes people abuse, discriminate, project their crazy ideas on others, consume porn and kill in wars. It's the other guy.
If only old white men might just disappear...then, only then this society will be doing great. Each could make his/her own rules of moral values, how one feels in that moment of the day. Wouldn't that be sweet...Then, there will be so much happiness everywhere, finally! (sarcasm)
Technological advancements were tremendous in the last 100 years for instance. But spirituality in people (in consciousness, in mental habits, in the thinking process etc) didn't advance at the same level.
The degradation in moral values contributed to this also. This is reflected everywhere in society. In education, family, at work, entertainment industry, TV, the news, politics, nutrition, sports, art, social media, fashion, even religion.
Many think today that they can live without a moral compass, without some sort of moral rules of conduct. You may call it God or decency or some sort of self-respect and common sense. The voice of reason, your own conscience. It doesn't matter if you believe in a God or not. Your conscience tells you when you do right or wrong. If you don't listen to it and always do what you feel like/want in a moment (and you know it's bad)...then, gradually, you lose this conscience. You can't hear this voice anymore. And are lost. And miserable.
Lack of jobs/work (manufacturing industry went all to China) destroyed many workers' lives. A normal person needs to work. Many went into drugs/alcohol/other addictions in order to cope with this. Thus the result of: zombies on the streets, confused violent teens etc.
A return to simplicity and contentment, decency and moral values is going to happen. I don't know when, in a few years in a few decades...sometime in the future. It will be by force (war, depression, calamities) I have no idea. I can only speculate. But it will happen.
In my opinion it's all about vibrations. What vibrations do you send around. Every moment. Do you try to flirt online with married women? Negative vibrations. Do you drive like a moron without any regard for the other drivers? Negative vibrations. Do you go out dressed in your underwear and your breasts hanging out desperate for attention? Negative vibrations.
What you send out - you receive back. Until you start changing for the better, nothing will change.
("you" in general, this is valid for me too)
thank you for a cogent response to a disjointed question. I agree with you.
I'm not agreeing with a couple of these. I was raised in a two-parent family. My mom was the standard stay-at-home mom. She wasn't unhappy, but I knew I wanted something more from the time I was a small child. I never, ever wanted to be a stay-at-home wife and I never wanted to be a mother. I am so grateful I live in a time when I don't have to be either. Are these times so bad when I have the freedom to decide and then choose what I want? Or are these times only bad for the people who don't like me having any choice with what I want in my life?
This also makes me wonder if the two-parent families of yesterday were really as happy as everyone thinks. It has occurred to me that maybe the only people that want those old days back are white men, not women, and not people of color. White men were dominant in those days and today they have to adjust to other people sharing their limelight. Maybe that's why they always wish they were back in the decades before the 60s and happy while everyone else was silently miserable.
When it comes to religion, I think people don't need it to have morality. During the times when people had "faith" and went to church, we still saw world wars, discrimination, violence, child abuse, etc. Most of these things were done in the name of God and by people of faith. Their religion didn't keep them from doing bad things then and it won't keep anyone from doing bad things now.
As for porn consumption, really? To read this, you'd think young men had never seen porn or visited a prostitute before 2024.
We're going through a major change in what we believe and rely on today. It's a societal change, like how we finally all believe that drinking and driving is dangerous. We're slowly coming to realize that we have to set our own morality, our own boundaries. We can't say we aren't allowed to do anything with those easiest of excuses, God and religion, anymore. We have to say that WE think certain things are wrong and why. The responsibility rests on us now. We have to think for ourselves.
Likewise, we can no longer use God and religion for excuses of what we should do, either. I read once that: Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you're told and religion is doing what you're told, regardless of what is right. I believe that is so true.
This is our society at the moment. We have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday. Naturally there's going to be unrest and unhappy people. And there's going to be people who abuse their responsibility with choosing to view porn, or do drugs or to murder. But I do believe that when we finally get away from religion, however long it takes us, we'll be a much freer and happier society.
I completely agree.
I wasn't adamantly opposed to marriage or kids, but my first girlfriend was about seventeen years older than me. No more kids for her. The second girlfriend couldn't have kids. I had a lot of one night stands and short flings throughout my early-mid 20s - who knows, maybe I have a kid out there somewhere I don't know about, but I was never in a stable enough relationship for years after that to have kids.
I graduated in 2010 and lived/worked in six different states over the next six and a half years. That's not really conducive to family life. I didn't get into another long term relationship with someone "age appropriate" for years - I was 32 and she was 24. She wanted kids, but had a lot of health issues. It always gave me pause. She died of those medical issues in early 2022.
At 37, that ship has kind of sailed for me - while I wasn't opposed to traditional family life at first, it never really worked out for me. When I look at the trouble a lot of friends and family have had with their own kids, I'm glad I haven't had that to deal with.
Financially, things were a struggle until I was 30. I'd hate to have had to juggle all I did plus a kid.
I'm not agreeing with a couple of these. I was raised in a two-parent family. My mom was the standard stay-at-home mom. She wasn't unhappy, but I knew I wanted something more from the time I was a small child. I never, ever wanted to be a stay-at-home wife and I never wanted to be a mother. I am so grateful I live in a time when I don't have to be either. Are these times so bad when I have the freedom to decide and then choose what I want? Or are these times only bad for the people who don't like me having any choice with what I want in my life?
This also makes me wonder if the two-parent families of yesterday were really as happy as everyone thinks. It has occurred to me that maybe the only people that want those old days back are white men, not women, and not people of color. White men were dominant in those days and today they have to adjust to other people sharing their limelight. Maybe that's why they always wish they were back in the decades before the 60s and happy while everyone else was silently miserable.
When it comes to religion, I think people don't need it to have morality. During the times when people had "faith" and went to church, we still saw world wars, discrimination, violence, child abuse, etc. Most of these things were done in the name of God and by people of faith. Their religion didn't keep them from doing bad things then and it won't keep anyone from doing bad things now.
As for porn consumption, really? To read this, you'd think young men had never seen porn or visited a prostitute before 2024.
We're going through a major change in what we believe and rely on today. It's a societal change, like how we finally all believe that drinking and driving is dangerous. We're slowly coming to realize that we have to set our own morality, our own boundaries. We can't say we aren't allowed to do anything with those easiest of excuses, God and religion, anymore. We have to say that WE think certain things are wrong and why. The responsibility rests on us now. We have to think for ourselves.
Likewise, we can no longer use God and religion for excuses of what we should do, either. I read once that: Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you're told and religion is doing what you're told, regardless of what is right. I believe that is so true.
This is our society at the moment. We have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday. Naturally there's going to be unrest and unhappy people. And there's going to be people who abuse their responsibility with choosing to view porn, or do drugs or to murder. But I do believe that when we finally get away from religion, however long it takes us, we'll be a much freer and happier society.
I agree with a lot of this, but one thing I would point to... As for porn consumption, really? To read this, you'd think young men had never seen porn or visited a prostitute before 2024.
Right, but if an individual spent a great deal of time and money either consuming porn or visiting prostitutes in the pre-internet days, to a point where it interfered with their relationships and took on the role of a whole hobby in their lives, we would say that they had a problem. The thing about internet porn is that it's made this pastime so accessible and acceptable that I do think that a lot of people overdo it. I've now known several men who struggled with normal sexual function in their 30s and 40s because they spent years programming mind and body to respond to specific self-stimulation with porn. It's not that I think it's good or evil in and of itself, but people fail to moderate themselves and it does them harm. Not to mention the tragic reality of human trafficking and exploitation to cater to extreme/illegal tastes in it. I am conflicted on the subject. On the one hand I support individual liberty, including that of consenting adults to make and enjoy such content. On the other, I acknowledge that there are problems...
But that's the big picture issue in a sense. As I've told my very troublesome young adult son, with freedom comes responsibility. If you are free to do as you wish, you have to be responsible for your choices. While that means that you can enjoy the results of the good ones, it also means dealing with the consequences of the bad ones. A society that values freedom and individual liberty in general does have to ask and answer the question...how bad do we let something get, before we begin to restrict someone's freedom to do as they please? A more authoritarian mindset will tend to assume that individuals, given too much freedom, will do badly with it. Ruin their lives and the lives of others. And sometimes, they're not wrong about that. But I think that severely restricting everyone's freedoms (forcing all people, by social demand or by law, to live outwardly "wholesome" lives) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
But I think that severely restricting everyone's freedoms (forcing all people, by social demand or by law, to live outwardly "wholesome" lives) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This is not possible. How can one force this on you? We don't talk about this here. Straw man argument.
There are laws in society. And there is also free choice. And responsibility and consequences.
One is "free" to abuse his own body/ senses until he's blue in the face. It doesn't make it good for him but he's "free" to do it and "enjoy" it.
This is not possible. How can one force this on you? We don't talk about this here. Straw man argument.
There are laws in society. And there is also free choice. And responsibility and consequences.
One is "free" to abuse his own body/ senses until he's blue in the face. It doesn't make it good for him but he's "free" to do it and "enjoy" it.
'To Thine Own Self Be True'...
Tell that to every young gay man who was beaten to death in some wholesome little rural town somewhere.
There are people who want to change the laws to restrict more of people's freedoms. There are whole organizations that want to make porn of all kinds illegal. There are states where certain formats, or production of porn or adult stores are already illegal. Here in AZ decades ago there was a lawmaker who tried to pass a law restricting how many adult toys a person could legally own.
There are always those people (often very religious, moralistic, authoritarian types) who do not just believe that there's a best way to live and each of us should choose it, but that people can't be trusted to choose it and should be forced to.
And to some extent the whole point of laws and a justice system is to acknowledge that sometimes people will not make the right choices, and society will have to do something about that. It's just a question of how strict different people believe that society in the form of The State (or vigilantes, if not) should be, what should be enforced and how harshly.
It isn't a straw man argument, it's a philosophical point. America broke from the old ways of Europe where the church and state were intractably bonded and to break the morals of the church was to break the laws of the State, and the punishment was often death. And when you bond a lot of this morality stuff in with your politics, as I think most people do... The question quite often does arise, if people can't be trusted to moderate their own behavior, should society exercise force upon them? A more liberty-focused mentality would say, "not if they aren't harming anybody else"...but a more authoritarian view is to point to social harm, and control the individual for the good of society. Should a young woman be allowed to have recreational, not procreational sex? The former liberty-oriented view says that yes, she should be allowed to manage her own risk, be permitted the medical technology to do so, and let her do what she wants. The authoritarian position would say that society needs more babies, more families, less STIs, and that these natural facts are proof of what God wants, so this behavior should be prevented and/or punished.
What is the point of all the "this country is going to hell in a handbasket" talk that generation upon generation has moaned and complained since time out of mind, if it isn't to suggest that somebody should do something about the obvious collapse of all things good at the hands of all these young degenerates?
Mind you. I am being very sarcastic because I am liberty minded, but I've been around enough of the other sort to be very familiar with the flavor of their sentiment.
The question quite often does arise, if people can't be trusted to moderate their own behavior, should society exercise force upon them?
If they attack others, if they kill, rape, abuse others - yes. They should be put in jail. But if they are peaceful, doing it to themselves, abusing their own body. No. They are free to do whatever according to their mind. You can't force people to be/do good or to be/do bad. Both situations.
You can't force moral laws or behavior on people. Look at the prohibition law, it was tried and it failed. There is a flow of evolution in society. It goes up slowly, with the change of every person. It goes down also, and up again. It's not linear. Gradually, not by force a society evolves.
A more liberty-focused mentality would say, "not if they aren't harming anybody else"...but a more authoritarian view is to point to social harm, and control the individual for the good of society. Should a young woman be allowed to have recreational, not procreational sex? The former liberty-oriented view says that yes, she should be allowed to manage her own risk, be permitted the medical technology to do so, and let her do what she wants. The authoritarian position would say that society needs more babies, more families, less STIs, and that these natural facts are proof of what God wants, so this behavior should be prevented and/or punished.
The woman in your example can do the hell she wants. As I said, you can't force the restraint of instinct on people. I disagree with an authoritarian position from your example.
What is the point of all the "this country is going to hell in a handbasket" talk that generation upon generation has moaned and complained since time out of mind, if it isn't to suggest that somebody should do something about the obvious collapse of all things good at the hands of all these young degenerates? It's a natural wish for improving. You compare and contrast, some things were better in the past, other things are better now. Some are really crazy now, some were really crazy in the past. Normal people want the future to get better.
Mind you. I am being very sarcastic because I am liberty minded, but I've been around enough of the other sort to be very familiar with the flavor of their sentiment.
There are many shades, many nuances. The other sort as you say...they are not all the same. Each thinks differently. You can't choose the most authoritarian position of some of them - and then assume that the rest all think in the same way. It's not fair.
I've never had a great answer to this. On the one hand we can point to so many problems we see in society around us. On the other, I don't actually believe in some rosy before-time when society didn't have serious problems. Problems that I consider to be just as bad, or perhaps even worse.
Families break up and kids have to deal with divorce and so on. But in the past, and I know from my own family including multiple branches, a lot of families that stayed together had alcoholism, drug addiction, mental health struggles, sexual abuse, domestic violence...and it was all just swept under the rug. They were in hell, with no way out. Those who were harming their family members did not and still don't admit that their behavior is a problem, they claim to be the real victims. So people think that divorce is some frivolous nonsense, when in most cases I see, someone put up with awful treatment for a long time before they finally got out. In most instances, few people know how bad it was. In a lot of cases, including my own parents, it's a relief to the kids when the parents divorce. I often wish I'd divorced my first husband a lot sooner than I did.
Crime and despair and poverty in the cities? Well, what was NYC like in the 70s and 80s? What was LA like back in the middle of the 20th century? In most cities there were vermin infested, run down holes that the poor could live in for cheap in the rotted out core of the urban centers...now it's all been gentrified and those places rent for thousands a month, so the poor are outside. Stats show that violent crime has been trending down for decades. Believe it or don't, but I don't think that we ever had cities with no problems.
Once upon a time, everybody beat up on kids, from the parents to the teachers...we had sweatshops, factories, mines, and fields worked by child labor in dangerous conditions. We put a stop to all of that, and then we had teens (some, at least) getting up to petty crime, getting pregnant, drinking and doing drugs. Now we have zombie youth staring at screens and having panic attacks at the very thought of having to interact with another human being face to face or even on the phone. When was it good?
We used to put our mentally unwell into institutions where they were tortured and experimented on. And people got committed who weren't even mentally ill at all...if a man wanted his wife out of the way so he could have an affair, he could claim that her poor female brain was broken and have her locked up, they'd dope her up with drugs until no one could tell if she was sane or not. Powerful drugs were handed out like candy or formulated into everyday products. Mothers and their "little helpers." So we closed all of the nightmare mental institutions and now we let our mentally ill wander around, getting perhaps a grippy sock weekend of daycare with no shoelaces if they openly admit that they are a danger to themselves or others to a mandatory reporter. Then they get tossed out long before anyone has a chance to even get their feet on a path to getting better. Schizophrenics are allowed to refuse treatment, which they tend to not believe they need. We struggle to find the balance between respecting freedom and autonomy, and helping people who need it whether they want it or not.
Sure seems to me like at any given point, things could have been so much better.
But hey, where's the money in that?
I understand you are using examples in your post to prove a point, and that a certain amount of twisting fact is part and parcel to that, but the bolded paragraph conflates a lot of myth, misinformation, and gets timelines wrong. I know, because I worked in a state hospital. I don't know of a single incidence of a patient being tortured. Not one. Any experimentation I ever saw was in an attempt to help or cure the patient. Medications in particular had to be adjusted over time in a stable environment.
Mothers little helpers were OUTSIDE of the institutions, and a cultural issue more than mental health issue.
In debate, when a debate point is supported with "facts" that are untrue, points are deducted.
On a meta-level, this thread is less about the mental health of individuals, but the mental health of the culture as a whole. In discussing that, a lot of the conversation seems extremely narrow, because there are no comparisons being made to other cultures around the world or in different times.
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