Amidst the worst social problems in the USA -- shootings and environmental destruction and the abolishment of "safety nets" -- the biggest barrier to solutions tends to be ... STOOPID PEOPLE.
It's SP who think that their right to carry weapons everywhere trumps your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's SP who believe that all the unfortunate amongst us deserve their hardships It's superficial scientific understanding that makes even intelligent people underappreciate the human contribution to climate change, because the history of the earth shows many climatic ups and downs, but it's SP who say that "global warming" isn't real at all. It's SP who make SP famous. It's SP who make it possible to say things like that idiot preacher did -- that if the bible said 2+2=5, he'd believe the bible over the demonstrable fact that it ISN'T.
I'm coming to suspect that the late-20th-century tendency to coddle children's self-importance may be at the bottom of it all.
In the desire to make sure our kids know we love them, and to make sure their self-confidence isn't too impaired to allow them to aspire in life -- to me, important goals -- some parents go WAY too far. Those children learn that they're the center of their parents' world, but are never taught that they're NOT the center of the WHOLE world. When they give an incorrect answer in school, they're not told they're WRONG as often as applauded for saying SOMETHING -- teachers often bend meanings and contexts around, to make an answer seem partially right. Children are given a trophy for participation, regardless of the quality thereof. Why should they study, or practice, or TRY to excel, when they can get the approval they need simply by showing up and going through the motions?
Now that the first generation of this kind of treatment has reached adulthood, we have a society full of people who think that their beliefs and opinions are on equal footing with verifiable facts. We have people who think "faith" is as good as science. We have fucking idiots running for president, who say that you don't have to obey laws if you don't think they're "right."
^^^I'm not kidding you.
We have a problem.
I've read that the 20th century's me-first issues started in the 1920s. The war-to-end-all-wars (hahaha) was over, and women were acknowledged as actual human beings with a right to express themselves, and the world looked like a promising, exciting place -- even common people saw an opportunity to be a bit self-indulgent. Laissez les bon temps roulez! Unfortunately, because of the moronic morality-based ruling known as PROHIBITION, millions of people had to defy the law in order to enjoy a simple, civilized glass of wine with their dinners. We now have organized crime which was perfected during that era -- talk about unintended consequences! I hope Carrie Nation and her cohort are currently roasting in hell!
The generation born in that decade came of age to fight WWII. I believe that was the last time that Americans felt "ownership" of any national action -- home folks grew victory gardens and participated in drives to collect scrap-metal, rubber, ... even cooking fats! If you ask me, THAT was the pinnacle of America being "great" or "exceptional." It's all over now, though, even if some people still claim it. When that war ended, veterans and civilians alike had tough adjustments to make. The former felt rebellious and entitled, and the latter (ESPECIALLY women who kept industry going in the absence of the men) felt disenfranchised. Gotta get out there and grab your share!
Baby-boomers, to whose generation i belong, had it both good and bad -- America enjoyed a great deal of prosperity and the widening of opportunity across many demographics, but all that caused us to have an exalted sense of what "normal" is. One income in the family was enough to thrive on, and television showed us that no matter how complicated a problem was, it could be solved within an hour ... with time out for commercials.
Our schools and infrastructure blossomed during this golden age, but all that is gone to hell now. Moneyed interests have managed to exert their powers with the help of Saint Ronnie. (Trickle-down economics = large corporations and rich people pissing on the rest of us.) Booming post-war business is no longer paying its share of holding things together, nor are the ultra-rich, and our middle-class is buckling under the strain just like our roads and bridges.
Pop-psychology, which really took off in the first half of the century, came to fruition with bad interpretations of Freudianism heavily influencing child-rearing practices. Pop SCIENCE, based not on tried-and-true experience but on academic hypotheses, influenced schooling and home behavior alike. We must not break their little spirits by holding them back, if they don't do adequately in an age-appropriate classroom! We must not make the lowest-performing students feel "different" by shunting them into "special" classes! No, we should advance them with others their age, and hold back the rest of the class, so that the VERY SLOWEST set the pace for everyone, in the steadily-growing class sizes. Teachers must warp the performance of all their students by making allowances for the kids diagnosed with ADHD and autism ... who MUST be allowed to take part with the "normal" kids.
And here we are. We have antisocial behavior ruining everyone's experiences, in schools, restaurants, shopping venues, and outdoor spaces. We have classrooms in which teachers have NO control over the bad behavior of a few, no matter how it impedes the education of everyone else, AND where lessons are dumbed-down so that there is "no child left behind" -- no, no ONE child is left behind, ALL OF THEM ARE, when compared to global standards.
I believe that the answer to the question posed in the title of today's post is YES. America has raised several generations of selfish, immature, stubborn, besotted, and willfully-ignorant swine ... and now the problem has come home to roost. The country is a hotbed of stoopid assholes, and not a one of them know it -- they have the delusion that their failings are actually virtues, and hide behind notions like "faith" and "patriotism" instead of the less-flattering labels the rest of the civilized world would use.
And then what about not teaching desire control and money management?
ReplyDeleteAnd then there is the problem of cities like the City Of Edmonton condemning any housing that does not meet some arbitrary "safety" rules, and having them torn down, creating the housing shortage in the low rent variety. The house were old and often not great, but many were warm. The city thinks that no house is better than a poor house.
There comes a point where traditions being not passed down means that all of society is in the dark. How can a parent teach a child to have qualities they don't have themselves? Two generations of novel thinkers means that cultural wisdom completely disappears. :-(
Deletere: the housing, I remember reading in a book how the "safety first" message caused "all the trains to run late, and the best ones not at all." At best, these rules are a trade-off, and at worst, deliberate manipulation.
Lots of things have diminished and we have all the negatives to reap.
ReplyDeleteNo kidding!!! I just struggle to understand WHY there seem to be so many, in this country, who glory in their ignorance. It's partly that Dunning-Kruger thing, and partly the teachings of those feel-good religious cults, but there's also a faction which is actually PROUD OF BEING DUMB. One of my daughter's childhood friends opened my eyes to this -- i couldn't believe it! Since then i've been on the watch for more, and sure enough.... I think it might connect with the concept of "emotional intelligence" we first heard about a few decades ago -- people maybe told their kids "don't feel bad because you're stupid, honey, cuz who needs brains when you have EMOTION!" :-P
DeleteI don't know how any logical explanation could be given to the idea that raising spoiled brats could be good for your children. I see the nowadays situation differently - parents just don't HAVE to bend their children into a well-round society member(it is a hard job) which would be the case if the children were expected to live any time with heir parents into an adulthood, as it was the case before. It is a modern-day luxury - to treat your brood as live toys, than kick them out at 18, expecting real life to be their first tough teacher.
ReplyDeletei've long opined that it was no favor to the children, raising them as entitled, selfish little monsters....
DeleteI don't think that parents are problematically kind to their children in US. They just can afford not to be tough because life in US is much easier than in most places on earth. Parent here can afford not to look at their children as the most reliable form of social security, they may tolerate annoying teenagers behavior instead of harshly train youngsters in order to make them functional members of their household because they know teens are on the way out of parent's house, they can afford to relax. For example, if a son decides out of blue to move to Alaska in order to live a hermitic life-style off-grid, it will not compromise a well-being of other family members. It is not easy to live while struggling, we all want easy, prosperous life, but we have to admit, softer life doesn't produce a better human material.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly IS much harder to teach a child that, if he lives in a society, he has a duty to be a good citizen. In American (before the 20th century), it seemed that among "decent" people it WAS an ideal. I read a goodly amount of non-fiction written in the 1800s, talking about how life was lived on a daily basis.... As a particular example of my point, one book pointed out that character-development was advanced by marrying and having children, which cultivate a wide range of virtues including unselfishness -- and as you pointed out, today so many people have families as a sort of toy or accessory!
DeleteIt's so much easier to do all the tidying ourselves, rather than teach kids how to do it and then make sure they DO. Even harder is to take a small child -- the epitome of selfishness -- and teach them that it's not right to ONLY think of themselves, and that some of their behaviors strongly impact other people. But these things HAVE to be done, or we end up with ... MOFOs like tRump being popular candidates for the highest job in the land!
To tell the truth, in my native country people were not raised with the idea of being good citizens or being useful for the whole society, but rather being an important member of a family/tight circle of mutually helping friends in a struggle to survive, the culture of mistrusting government was and still is very strong. Here in US we actually don't need other people for our survival, it is nice to be able to achieve an independence, but no one has incentives to motivate you to achieve more. When people live in a respectable, soft environment, they have very little stimulus to exceed. BTW, originally Stimulus is a sharp spur which was used to encourage a cattle to move faster. A good comfortable life spoils people.
DeleteIn Soviet Union Jews experienced a discrimination, for example, it was harder for young Jews to be accepted into a university, unless they were exceptional students. It was very unfair on one hand, on another hand, such practice extremely motivated their children to work hard at school, and parents to push children harder. As a result, majority of Jews in Soviet Russia were very well educated. I remember reading that repatriates from Russia in Israel complain that they have harder time motivating their children there.
We, immigrants in US from other countries, feel torn about the whole issue. It is nice to live in a prosperous, orderly country, but we are upset about the downside. It is acceptable for the people here ignore and disrespect education and science, to act on whatever "guts" feel. Images of scientists in movies are often negative - they are often over-educated idiots, and everything is saved due to actions of some down-to-Earth guy who has great common sense minus education. It is also easy to notice that higher that average intelligence is not a requirement for being a president of US. It may be even better for a president not to be very smart, or his electorate may feel a disconnection and mistrust. Fortunately, economy in US is governed mostly by faceless economic forces, and it provides an excellent addition to the attempt of governing humans to do whatever. US can even afford to have a complitely moronic president - his ruling wouldn't make a big difference. Somebody like Forrest Gump would be the perfect president of US as well. It is , probably, not a bad thing at all for a country to be less dependent on the identity of a ruler.
One of the worst spurs in the dumbing-down of this country is the way the kids were taught over the last few decades. "Holding schools accountable for the quality of their teaching" segued right to "testing is the way to do this," and then teachers were forced to "teach to the test" to keep from losing their jobs. So now we have to make sure kids know "facts" that will show up on their tests, and that takes up all their time. Then having budgets without enough slack to teach music, art, PE, driving, foreign languages, etc ... the result is what you see -- a sad lack of thinking skills. :-(
DeleteI suspect it all is timed well with the end of a cold war. The need in US society for well-educated people and the people with good thinking skills has diminished, and mass education reflects it. There is more emphasis now on following directions than to thinking. Good education became a luxury, like a self-cooked quality food. For better or for worse, a necessity is a agitator for any sort of developments and changes. For example, most of us follow some particular eating regiment because we have to.
DeleteI regularly meet the people who can't do totally simple calculations in their head like how much 25% off a price would be, or what would be a number if you add a zero to it. I guess they are not stupid people, just the people who droped out of a habit to think through their day.
Majority of nation got totally relaxed, especially when they are clock of work. People let their children run wild and play video games all the time, don't check their homework, don't cook, don't clean, don't fix broken things, don't watch over their health, devote their lives when they are off work to hobbies and entertainment activities, all that because they can afford it. It is sad, but good for the economy.
I think no matter whether we are children or adults it is better to have defined lines in all aspects of life. Once these lines become hazy or broken .... life becomes far more difficult for all.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
i think i know what you mean.... Children need structure as they grow up, or as adults they rarely find it. And to live an "effective" life, people need self-discipline and mental orderliness.
DeleteOne of my pet themes is mutual respect in society -- parents who complain about disrespectful children have only themselves to blame. Universal respect AT HOME could solve a lot of problems in society as a whole.