Degeneration of Society
 

A common complaint/woe that is thrown about these days is the degeneration of society. People see that money or things mean too much to us and that we care nothing for the greater things in life. They see crime and sin on the rise and the world growing more chaotic. Othes see this as no different than the last ten thousand years of our history.

I pose this question to you: Is society disintegrating?(Faster than usual) Or are the numbers lying to us or just being misreperesented by ne'er-do-wells who want to scare us, and society is in the exact(Or close enough) same place aqs it was a thousand years ago?

Ahh... well, that's a difficult question. I'd say that society isn't degenerating so much as it is becoming more open and technology driven. I don't see crime on the rise so much as just more people living in closer quarters, which has ALWAYS lead to higher crime rates... and as for sin, who defines sin? Now, anyone whose religious will say god does... and anyone who isn't religious can't have an answer. They're simply morals that any person may hold differently than any other person. So I ask anyone who points to 'sin' as degeneration of society what right they, as a falliable mortal, have to designate one life style as more 'sinful' than another. Is it better to be sexually open and a whore, or sexually repressed and redirecting your sexual energy into other things which modern psychology has discovered are usually violent things. I hate it when people say that society is degenerating because we're more sexually open... sex is infinitely better than violence, just ask any hippie. We glorify violence in our society with action movies and video games (neither of which I want to put a stop to) yet the second someone says they enjoy porn our society is degrading? Hypocritical bastards.

Grr... I always end up going on tangents about the evils of sexual repression whenever someone mentions sin or society degrading or anything along those lines. Sorry.

Anyway... as for the money/material things issue... of course they're more important than they were a thousand years ago. A thousand years ago the richest people demonstrated this by buying platemail from a smith. This is basically a metal suit. Now most people have fully operating computers, the technology and complexity of which are far beyond the wildest dreams of medieval people. Now, look at the rich of one thousand years ago and how they treated the poor. I'd say that, considering our average person isn't much more poor than they are, and our richest people are far richer than them, we're actually a lot better now about caring about people more than material wealth. I don't think rich nobles of the ten hundreds gave a whole lot to charity.

What society? There is no such thing as society. It is an illusion, brought about by people thinking in broader terms than their minds could handle.

Society isn't degenerating. It's just not improving fast enough.

<We glorify violence in our society with action movies and video games (neither of which I want to put a stop to) yet the second someone says they enjoy porn our society is degrading? Hypocritical bastards.>

Uhh... we glorify sex as much as violence. We treat sex and violence in the EXACT same manner. We censor both, and we are 'against' both, but we also will always have both.

ANYWAY, to the question at hand. Is society degenerating? What? Are you kidding me? Society now is better than possibly ever before. Only in recent history would the War on Iraq been so vigorously protested. Only in recent history would things like Patriot Act gone ill-taken due it' mob-rule behavior. That's what society is all about.

<Society isn't degenerating. It's just not improving fast enough.>

Yep!

Iggy hit it. Its just not improving fast enough, at least compared to "our' ideal.

The fact is, we've seen racism routed in the past 50 years, and in our childrens lifetimes it will be eradicated entirely in developed countries. Sure, sex and violence have saturated pretty much all forms of media, but considering the fact that all urbanized societies have had that same problem.... well, you see where I'm going. Technology has given us more avenues for the poisons, but people do not have to go downs those avenues...

Although, I have to say that people DO seem to be getting stupider. Maybe its just what happens to people who can get away with being lazy...

Have you ever read "The Book of the Law"? Interesting stuff.

Not quite... something has graphic sex and it's rated X, if it's got graphic violence it's rated R, slight sex... it's rated R or X, depending, it has slight violence it's anywhere from PG to PG-13. We don't censor violence as much as we censor sex. Sex is far more unacceptable than violence in our media and even in our society itself. (Two kids have a french kiss before junior high and it's disgusting, they beat the shit out of each other and it's just being kids).

well one of the reasons crime is on the rise is because we keep adding laws that outlaw stupid things, with very few of them ever repealed. i heard it's actually illegal to name our kids "nemo" now, and wether or not that's true there are laws that are just as ridiculus. like the public intoxication law. so when we classify more things as "crime" then natrually "crime" increases by default. and of course population increase also relates to more "crime" happenings

oh and also it bothers me when i see the anti-sex croud having kids, can you say hypocrit?

anarchy... this is a serious forum. Please try not to act like an idiot.


Krylo: violence is censored, albeit in an odd way. Movies are allowed to "depict" violence, even graphic violence... but I have seen only a handful of movies where severe violence was potrayed accurately. When people die, it is NOT pretty. Hollywood does not depict death realistically. Of course, thats probably a good thing. Dramatic death scenes are far less disturbing than the real deal.

The issue with sex is that it helps create a normal 12 year old girl into a skank, and a normal 12 year old boy into a sex-obsessed moron. I think any of us can see the problem with that. The truth is, porn isn't the real problem... its pop stars and the glamorization of high school/college promiscuity.