Today's society has gotten to be such a "wimpish" existence. I hear all the time on how horrible the Iraqi conflict is. I don't agree with it in the least and I sure don't like seeing Americans dying for nothing, but my point is a few soldiers are killed in a conflict and society has a conniption. In past wars, a few soldiers dying was nothing, compared to the thousands that were killed. I can't imagine how society would react if there was a battle like Gettysburg where tens of thousands were killed in a few days. Another thing I see is how children are being raised. My God, some of the crap parents yell about is pathetic. One instance is where a lot of schools are now banning games such as dodge ball and swings because kids have gotten hurt. Big deal! We got hurt growing up. The wound healed and we went on. It is so pathetic that it is laughable. I'll probably live just past the mid-part of this century and I can't imagine what those generations are going to be like. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Very true. At the rate we are going if we don't directly destroy ourselves, we will through the environment.
Most of the people of the western and developed nations of the world are, indeed, wimps! Those societies even promote wimpiness in advertising and with consumer goods, not to mention cowtowing to the demands of small, but vocal, special-interest groups. One day they're going to wake up and be sorry, but until then.....? Most are just nothing a bunch of pansy-assed wimps ....and many of the members of this very site prove it. Baron Max
LOL! I find it absolutely amusing at the stuff they yell about today. I blame the media the most for this. They pound stories into the public's heads over and over and over which instills more fear. Everyone acts like some of the horrible things that have happened are all new. I am like, WAKE UP! These things are nothing new. Teenage sex, murder, and so on. All have been happening every since the dawn of man, yet most didn't know about such things happening because they never heard about what happened in other parts of the world. Take mall shootings for instance. Yes, they are horrible, but nothing new. What do they think happened in the 19th century with town gun fights? As far as them existing in here, this isn't crap compared to the high iq societies. Those are some of the worst I have seen for the supposed "enlightened, evolved" views. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Thats because schoolyards are paved asphalt instead of grassy parkland. Parents would rather their kids get bruised than dirty.
It's called "civilizing." The essence of civilization is people learning to live harmoniously and cooperatively with strangers, in order to enjoy the surplus that division of labor and economy of scale produce, so that our lives are no longer obsessed with survival and subsistence. As the size of our communities increased steadily over the past 12,000 years since we stopped living as nomadic extended family groups, we've had to learn to make peace with ever-stranger "strangers." Not just people we don't know personally, but people who speak another language, then people who look different, then people who worship different gods, then people who follow different economic and political systems, and ultimately people on the other side of the planet who are mere abstractions to us until their less enlightened leaders force them to emigrate from dysfunctional nations and their children show up in our children's school. The pace of the "transcendence" of our civilizing project accelerated since the invention of fossil-fuel-burning transportation and electronic communication forced a quantum expansion of the size of our communities. Since the end of WWII--the death rattle of the Industrial Era and the birth scream of the Information Age--the number of people killed by warfare and other violent acts by governments and other groups rather than by individuals has been falling steadily. Today we can be outraged by the death toll in Darfur, or even in Iraq, precisely because no battles have approached the scope of Gettysburg or Normandie, no slaugthers have taken place on the scale of Hiroshima or Auschwitz--within the memory of anyone younger than me. More citizens of the Western nations are killed by drunk drivers than by deliberate violence. Our standards have changed; we expect more from each other. China's Mao and Zimbabwe's Mugabe are categorized with Hitler and Stalin--not because they killed huge numbers of people with explosive weapons and other modern technology, but merely because they orchestrated the collapse of civilization in their countries and huge numbers of people died from starvation, disease and other causes that have been under control since the Stone Age. You kids should be grateful that you have the luxury of weeping over a war that kills only a few hundred of your people in a year. And perhaps shed a few more tears over the much greater death toll of their people, which is still three orders of magnitude smaller than that of WWII. If you're looking for something to be outraged about, how about those 20,000 Americans who are killed by drunk drivers every year? We all know who those drivers are, and they're not even required to take their shoes off before boarding their vehicles. Geeze dude, you're way too young to sound like my mother fifty years ago. "What are the schools coming to? They're teaching kids how to 'get along' instead of the skills you'll need when you become a clerk-typist or an assembly-line worker or a switchboard operator." Life has become more precious and people consider no life more precious than that of a child. Kids grow up with virtually zero chance of being killed by polio, tuberculosis, food poisoning, and other causes of massive grief around the time of my birth. We've even made great inroads against drunk driving and other traffic deaths with seat belts and air bags. So parents go a step further. They cocoon their babies in strollers that are miniature Volvos, they put helmets on their heads when they ride their training-wheel bikes, and they hogtie them into the back seats of their cars. Playground injuries and sports deaths have become major concerns due to the attrition of more serious concerns, so they're looking for ways to curtail them. Yes, of course they're overdoing it but it's out of love. Don't be such a crank about it. With our superior intellects and our lofty perspective you and I can see that the results of this overprotection are obese, out-of-shape children who run out and take every risk they can find when they become teenagers. This phenomenon is getting plenty of coverage so it will be corrected within a generation. It's irrational risk analysis. But national leaders who destroyed Iraq because a bunch of Saudi Arabians knocked over one of our buildings do not provide good role models for risk analysis and we're struggling to overcome that handicap. Besides, when a majority of the population refuses to accept basic principles of science like evolution, they have a much more serious defect in their cognitive skills than some fairly subtle errors in risk analysis.
Well, I have been thinking of writting a post called: The great awakenings of the whiny/pussy generation, but I guess this thread will do it. As much as Fraggle is right about being more civilized, being caccooned and not making a child ready for REAL life is just wrong and counterproductive. Real life is not going to be like life at home. The playground will be asphalt and not soft grass. The kids are going to get fired by their bosses, dumped by their loves, hurt by accidents. And most of them won't be able to cope with such things. Hell, today students sue the prof because they didn't get the desired grade!! There is an expression called the quarter-life crisis, when the mid-20s kid finally realizes that life isn't what it looks like on TV and he/she is happy if they can make 30K a year instead of the desired 100K. I don't think the future is very rosy for the middle class so they better get ready for the obstacles coming. The task of childhood is getting ready for adulthood and not having as much fun as possible. Slight difference...
How can you say that we've learned to make peace, when there's more conflicts, more violence, more wars, between diverse peoples now all over the world than ever before in the history of mankind? Baron Max
Well, you have to look at the numbers. Compared that we have 6 billion humans the annual deathrate in warconflicts is pretty low...
That is a vision of a perfect society, but the problem here is that the limbic system still composes part of the human brain causing instincts to surface in everyday life. No matter what we do to try and curb this, short of genetic engineering or evolution, primitive instincts are going to be here. So we try and raise a boy to adulthood with the more "civilized" values. What happens when they encounter alpha males in society? Even in the corporate world, which is what I am in, it is survival of the fittest. I wouldn't be where I am if I had been the "civilized" male and not fought for everything I believe in. It has even been proven that humans still exhibit the same instincts as we did thousands of years ago, just in different manners. For instance, the Discovery Channel had a show on sexual attraction then and now. The same thing takes place today. Men use money and power in today's society to attract a mate. That has replaced the hunter/gatherer, yet it's the same instinct. Talking about schools, a person I used to mountain bike with told me about the most pathetic incident in the school system I have heard about. He was a music teacher and had two eighth grade students that failed his class due to not caring and not trying. He gave them F's. The principle came to him and said to pass them with C's because of the no child left behind crap. He refused because he had tried to help and encourage them with no success. He told the principle no that they did not deserve it. She fired him over this and he was glad to be gone.
Everyone already knows this is a problem and they are doing the best they can at the moment. What do you expect, let people go hogwild and let civilization collapse. Even your example of the failing music students can be seen either way for or against civilization but the principal wanted to pass them is against civilization. Cheating is also evidenced in nature as well. So as the very same instincts that served us before are now hindering and some detrimental because it takes effort to try to overcome them but that doesn't mean we should wallow and indulge where we are. It takes effort to run the distance just as it takes effort to control or redirect your instincts. The more you try, eventually evolution will accomodate.
absolutely agree. in a few years all the kids will be wearing helmets to walk down a street , and then when they go on a main road and get run over by a car the public will say ; "man, see, we should make a law preventing anyone under the age of 15 from walking outside without holding hands" this is called "civilizing"? yes, but it may take a few million or so years. however, going back to common sense is just a quick trip back in time.
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What "common sense?" You have no common sense if you believe the past was somehow better than now because people had less protection. I think banning swings is ridiculous but swings of the past on concrete was just stupid, hence our lack of foresight corrected. Things tend to IMPROVE as you live and learn, that is if that is the direction you are seeking, i guess it would all depend on one's objective. Just as computers were slower in the past then they are now. Do you think society should return to the days when you killed others by drunk driving you got a slap on the wrist? LOL, is this your idea of common sense, people just let it all hang out and do whatever they please. Should everyone stop going into work tomorrow because they want to sleep in till noon and be a couch potato? For many this is "natural." It takes effort and self-control to build a society and to not let your instincts be the constant puppetmaster. I guess if you wallow in them, you wouldn't know the difference anymore than a couch potato would know running three miles would wind the fuk out of him. This is an excuse it would use to say it impossible simply because they don't want to. But its not true, because their are those who try. It's the same type of excuse rapists and perpetrators use always harping back to "instincts" as an excuse for their lack of self-control and instant gratification. Being "wimpy" is a many sided coin.
I don't think one can measure the overall "peace" in the world by just the numbers of dead people! Conflicts all over the world between various peoples, even if it doesn't result in great numbers of deaths, is a very disruptive, and often a very costly, force against this thing we call "civilization". Baron Max
