This seems like a perfect place for SA to come in espousing liberal politics as the leading cause of this trend.
In some aspects he isn’t far off (although I wouldn’t limit it to just liberal policy)
I think that people are becoming generally angrier for a number of reasons but a major one is self interest. I think anger has been used to motivate people for a long time. Remember the Maine was a headline used to mislead people into war. A major difference is that today media is saturating. We can turn on cable news channels and be inflamed all day and night if we want. So anger keeps people watching for the ratings of the news channels and those who fund the tea partiers got people angry to sweep in conservative legislators. But it is a two way street of using. People are being given excuses to be angry about all of those other people and what they are doing instead of looking at themselves. TV shows and movies are both creating and reflecting society. Its vicarious escapism that does make cruelty and anger more acceptable. Even funny and being a chump if you don’t do it.
I think the problem is that people look at the 50s as back when our country was “normal”. You know, back when people trusted the government, they trusted institutions, they trusted their neighbors, they trusted their preachers, they trusted their teachers.
Except that wasn’t normal. Just go back a few years, and people were dropping bombs on Berlin, or napalming bunkers full of Japanese. And a few years before that, and they were driving their Model T’s to Californee, looking for work because their farm dried up and blew away. How much trust did people in the breadlines have for their institutions?
The 50s were a time when typical tensions were smoothed over and swept under the rug, because after 20 years of war and depression we finally had prosperity, because our country hadn’t been bombed into a trashheap. The factories were running at full blast, and all the inventions that had been created in the decades of the 30s and 40s but no one could afford because of the war and the depression suddenly were available. We’d had cars before, but suddenly everyone could buy a car. TV was invented in the 20s, but now it was actually available. People were so rich that it suddenly became a cultural expectation that, get this, a wife wasn’t expected to work outside the home.
We forget that all these expectations were CREATED in the 50s, due to the unique circumstances of the 50s. And yeah, you can still have the wife stay home, it’s just that you have to adjust your expectations to what life was like in the 50s–one car, one phone, one TV, new shoes and clothes once a year, fresh fruits and vegetables only in summer, and so on.
And of course, all the “Back in the 50s things were normal!” whinging ignores the Negro problem. And the Soviets. And all the problems that were ignored in the 50s but exploded in the 60s. And the reason they were ignored in the 50s was because a guy who got back from the Pacific after starving on some crappy farm during the depression, took a good look at his permanent factory job and white picket fence and decided he’d entered paradise.
And then the kids who grew up in that paradise had the nerve to complain, much to the confusion of their parents.
It’s because we all had to quit smoking. Also, nobody has three-martini lunches anymore. Think how happy everybody was in the '60s.
Woah.
I mean, seriously - woah. I’ve never heard it articulated exactly like that before, and my mind is kind of blown. *Thank *you.
Yes, yes - it’s the Internet, stupid! (not you, shiftless :D)
It’s always been out there, they just used to write it on paper:
The Internet is like a big funnel into your consciousness through the computer screen. Interact with people on boards like this and you get a megadose of it in concentrated form in a short period of time - a rudeness warp. I’ve been on dozens of these forums over the years and they are all the same. It takes all kinds. Don’t sweat it.
In our society, I can’t imagine that we are angrier than we’ve ever been. Like, when was the last riot that did not involve college football or drunkeness? Bitching on the internet is no different than bitching at the barber shop or at the water cooler. It’s just now more public (and less articulate).
If anything, I think we should be angrier. And not angry over stupid stuff (ooh, Christina messed up the national anthem. Outrage!), but angry over things that actually affect our quality of life and the life of others. We have evidence that we are living in a carcinogenic environment…toxins spewed from every pipe you can find. But we don’t get angry about that. We don’t get angry about how the country is contributing to the denegration of other nations and peoples through geopolitical motivations and pure capitalism. We don’t get angry about the unfairness built into our justice system, where people with money are allowed to turn themselves into court at their own convenience, only to get a wrist-slap, while people with no money are shown being arrested on prime-time TV, with no hope for parole. It’s not that we get angry that is bad. It’s that we are self-absorbed with our anger.
Anger is good. Without anger, things would never change in this society. I hate violence and rioting, but I have to give it to the Europeans. When they get pissed off, they take to the streets and make their demands known. That’s what I’d like us to do when shit goes down. Not mumble like effetes on the internets, but actually do something that scares the bejeesus the powers that be. I’d love for my generation to be brave like the people who fought during the Civil Rights movement, or the young people in Egypt. But as long as we continue to indulge ourselves with the trappings of a wealthy, comfortable lifestyle, we will never feel angry enough to actually move beyond complaining and sulking. In our minds, we have too much to lose.
It most certainly is the leading cause of this trend. America pre-1968 was not an angry place. Forget the 50’s. Lots of things were better in pre-1968 America, no matter what the decade.
And don’t forget three things:
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The 50’s didn’t invent racism.
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Racism was not ended (to the degree that it has been ended) by hippies or other counter-culture types. Much progress on racism had already been made by 1968 - thanks largely to demonstrations conducted by well-mannered, well-dressed and dignified black people demanding their rights.
What was ended by hippies and other counter-culture types were adult styles of dress, behavior and music; almost nobody on drugs; and the family unit.
- The trade-off hasn’t been close to worth it. Whereas in pre-1968 America black people had to ride in the back of the bus, they now have to deal with an environment rife with drugs and crime and the glamorization of almost every type of negative attitudes, whether they be misogyny, thug life, and anti-education peer pressure. And they have to worry every day of their lives that their kids are going to be drawn into drugs, criminal activity, or be shot in the crossfire. I would absolutely hate being a black parent in American society today.
And where once people were expected to “legitimize their love with a piece of paper” before starting a family - a practice scorned by the counter-culture - now they are free to hop unconcernedly from bed to bed, creating millions of kids who are forced to grow up without adult supervision and
doomed to live their lives spent either in prison or flipping burgers.
Drug-related crime has infested every school and every part of town, and millions of lives have been ruined and/or lost because of it.
Our schools are impotent and fail utterly to educate our kids properly. This is due in part because kids are growing up without discipline at home, without discipline at school, and the federal government has essentially taken over our school systems.
And everybody is pissed off about everything and everybody else, and it gets worse with each passing year. In pre-1968 America most people accepted that - to put it into today’s parlance - “shit happens.” There will always be bad things in life. If you’re going to get into a snit every time you spot one of them (or think you do) and start calling people names because they don’t agree with you about what to do about them, then you’re going to have constant anger flowing from both sides.
I’ll take pre-1968 America over the one we have now any day, and I’d solve the problems of that time in the same way they were dealt with up to that time. Blacks were emancipated and civil rights legislation was passed, and women got the vote, all without fucking up everything that was good about American life at that time. And I have no doubt that civil rights and women’s rights would have continued to progress just like they had up to that time.
The problem I have with liberalism and the reason I blame so many things on it is that it’s essentially an adolescent mindset, and therefore faulty to begin with. Who thinks the “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll” attitude is cool? Who is rebellious and has a problem with authority? Who thinks manners and the need for civil behavior is bullshit? Who favors the blatant expression of sex and vulgarity in the media and in public and ridicules people who disapprove of it? Who wants to have all its needs provided for but not be told what to do? And who is prone to endless fault-finding and thinks they have all the answers?
Each one of these characteristics is typical of adolescence, and each one is typical of liberalism. Certainly you don’t find them much in conservative circles. And just like you’d expect from turning the rudder of society over to a bunch of willful, hedonistic, fault-finding, idealistic, know-it-all adolescents, some things will get marginally better but most will get fucked up beyond all repair. And in my opinion that is exactly what has happened to this country since the days of the counter-culture revolution, and it’s the reason I blame liberals and liberalism for everything that has gone wrong since.
I still say it’s a non-issue. People just notice it more via the Internet. 2010 elections amplified SA’s perception of the liberal angle. I pretty much agree with everything he said, but more as a viewpoint as opposed to a fundamental cause of any societal sea change. Generalized angst will always be stoked by politics in the U.S. They are a factor from a pendulum swing standpoint, but I doubt it to be a leading cause of any long term trends.
Shit has been happening same as always. We’re just more attuned to it because it’s in our face all the time thanks to the media and Internet.
Um…people who don’t suck, dude?
Tbh, I didn’t read the entire thread but I think that if you guys think that anger and rudeness is the casual norm nowadays you’re biased towards the more noticeable attitudes. Like… Maybe you’re not noticing the niceness that you’re taking for granted every day and only noticing the negative.
For example, me being a student at an extremely large university I probably have more person to person interactions than the aver age person on a daily basis. I don’t think I’ve ever not held the door open for someone when they walked in behind me, and I’ve never had the door left to shut in my face, these people would rather wait for4-6 seconds for me to reach the door than to seem rude. If i drop my pencil out of reach I think any given person (male or female) would go out of their way to grab it for me, idk maybe I’m just cute. Ever in line at the grocery store with one or two items and someone lets you go first cuz they have enough food to be stocking up for a hurricane or something? I think you’re taking advantage of how much the average person goes out of their way for you. It could be A LOT worse.
That is cool. Depends on your prespective who is beng angry or rude in that exchange.
I’m a pretty old guy and I’ve been hearing the “the world is going to the dogs” story for my whole life. Those of you who feel this way, can you tell me why it is worse for you personally because of rock and roll, or whatever? I don’t mean why you think the world got worse, the world has change considerable in the last 50 years, but why the changes affect you so much.
When my dad would bitch about MLK screwing up the country or about rock and roll ruining young people, I never understood it as anything other than general bitching, like we all do. His stomach was full and his feet were warm so he bitched about hippies on the other side of the country dragging the country down. Really? I don’t think any hippies ever came over the the house but he did have to hear me playing rock and roll on the old phonograph.
I have a friend who bitches about the rudeness of kids these days. He is retired military, no kids, so I can see how he finds civilian kids he sees on the streets to be less disciplined than he is used too. But he is so wrong and vocal in his generalizations about the average kid as to be offensive. That is willful ignorance.
The Internet allows you to hear from assholes all over the world. Thirty years ago, it was just on TV, and only the ones the network bosses wanted you to hear from. Thirty years before that, you read about it in the paper. Thirty years before that, it was just the people in your town.
There are more of us, and we are crammed more closely together, because we live in cities. Therefore we interact with, and observe, more strangers. We notice the assholery of strangers more than people we have known all our lives, particularly when said assholery is partly or wholly a set of behavioral norms that are different from ours.
More recently, the rise of the 24-hour news cycle feeds the generation of outrage as a way of boosting ratings. Don’t have a good story? Gotcha journalism to the rescue!
Regards,
Shodan