Yep, the Socrates quote is the one I recall. Thanks!
FairyChatMom, I was also thinking of the Socrates quote when I read the OP. I suspect someone has said essentially the same thing every generation since.
Yes, but that’s not the entire definition. Some of the rest of the definition from dictionary.com is:
“Willingness to show consideration or appreciation.
**Polite expressions of consideration ** or deference: pay one’s respects.”
(bolding mine)
I’m of the opposite opinion: everyone is given my respect until they have proved they do not deserve it.
Not long ago, while listening to my grandfather talk about his youth, I realized that kids today - particularly those under driving age - don’t have many work opportunities. Now, many kids today don’t really need a job to survive, but then again, many could indeed benefit themselves and their families if they did.
How many types of jobs are available to a 12-year-old today. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is paperboy. (How old does someone have to be to work at McDonald’s? :shudder: ) My grandfather, at 13, worked in a sawmill. :eek: I definitely understand why that would be considered too dangerous a place for a kid to work today, but it did prepare my grandfather for the future - i.e. a future as a working adult.
IMO, kids today don’t have many possibilities when it comes to being prepared for working life as an adult. Too many people, by the time they graduate from high-school or even college, really don’t know how to actually “work”.
Another example comes from my sister’s experience in nursing. Her graduating class in college was the last class in which it only took two years to get your diploma. After that, it became a four-year course. The big difference, however, was that my sister, almost right from the beginning, had hands on experience in hospitals as a student. (Granted, most of the work had to do with cleaning bedpans and the like.) The students in the new four-year program, however, might not even step into a hospital until their third year.
It’s the same thing as apprenticeships. In the past, an engineer might teach his son everything he knows. His son may end up being just as good an engineer as his dad - maybe even better. But, even if such a situation occured today, the son may have trouble getting a job, or even being allowed to open his own business, if he doesn’t have “the papers” to prove that he knows what he’s doing. He may have to waste years of his life getting those papers, and have to settle for some grunt-work job to pay the bills until he gets them.
Anyhoo…
But then, are you telling me you’d want to dress like that every day in, say, a Southern California climae? Or for that matter, NYC or Chicago, in the summer? I’m telling ya, last time I was in Chi Town it was all I could do to keep any stitch on at all. A major scene on Michigan Avenue was narrowly averted. 
I suspect that a lot of things that seem to have been great in the old days, weren’t. For instance, the fast food chains have chased out a lot of the cool looking diners. Everyone misses those, and the intentionally retro modern ones are very popular. These sorts of places look good in old movies, especially the part where someone pulls a quarter or half-dollar out of a vest pocket to pay for a whole meal. (I ranted earlier that it would take nearly 50 quarters to buy two people a cheap meal today). Anyway, I suspect that a lot of the old fashioned diners probably weren’t that great; the term “greasy spoon” must have arisen for a valid reason. When McDonalds and similar places, with their antiseptic approach to cleanliness, arrived on the scene, they probably did appeal to many who had had bad experiences from eating diner food.
Of course, that’s not to say that I wouldn’t prefer a clean well run traditional cafe, or maybe even a slightly scuzzy one, to a McD’s.
Has anyone ever read “Does It Matter” by Alan Watts…?
While I can agree with most points given about nostalgia (trap?) and the liklihood of “things the way they were” (yeah right), I was reminded of a great book of essays all the while I’ve been reading this thread, called “DOES IT MATTER” by Alan Watts, and if you haven’t yet checked it out, please do…and heck maybe we can get another thread goin’ on that…the book, I mean…
anyhoo…
itcouldletgowecouldfly
I’m not a Thumper but Solomon was a wise man. I refer to Ecclesiastes 1:9 That which has been, shall be. That which has been done, shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun.
It isn’t true. Admittedly as a 28 year old white male I don’t typically come into contact with elderly blacks. Last year at school there were more then a few retired eldery black men in my small engine class and I can tell you from personal experience they did talk about the good old days of the 50’s and 60’s.
Marc
I think the nostalgia for the good old days comes in part from the massive increase in people. The more people you have, the more problems you see and in greater variety. Similar social problems have always been around, you just notice it more now that there are 6 billion people on the planet and we all can communicate easily.
There’s also a problem of mental “filtering.”
We tend to notice ill-behaved children-- they stick out in our minds, but the well-behaved children we may not notice. Thus, it seems like kids are running wild 'these days."
We can have a dozen polite interractions with people in a day, but the one rude jerk is who we remember and talk about.
First of all, thank you MaxTheVool for your compliments. They are much appreciated.
As far as the national self-loathing I referred to, I wasn’t thinking so much of the media itself, but more of those who enjoy the benefits of our citizenship, and yet march in the streets declaring the United States to be the new paragon of evil and oppression. I’m thinking of the young people who emerge from our educational system thinking that our history has been nothing but a struggle between the greedy white “haves” and the poor, oppressed, minority “have-nots.” The kids for whom the idea of honoring the flag or singing the national anthem is little more than an arcane ritual performed only at sporting events. I’m thinking of the people who seem to believe that anyone flying Old Glory outside of their house must be some kind of right-wing nutjob. I do think that the media fuels a lot this, but that’s another issue entirely.
I’ll give you an example. My brother recently finished his bachelor’s degree. Talking to him and his friends about their educational experiences was nothing short of terrifying. Their American History classes were often reduced to politically correct indoctrination sessions in which every conceivable injustice and atrocity committed by the government or by white settlers was spelled out in gory detail. The settlement of the West was nothing but the slaughter of Native Americans. The Industrial Revolution was nothing but the rape of the natural world and the enslavement of minorities. Any noble or courageous deed committed in the name of a cause other than minority rights was actually carried out for the most selfish of reasons. As this propaganda would have it, there is nothing in the American heritage worth cherishing. Nothing to be proud of. Just one shame after another. I heard one of these kids declare that “this country sucks” and express a desire to expatriate at the first opportunity, while his friends nodded sagely. As a history major, I’m all for confronting the evils of the past, but I’m not an advocate of wallowing in collective guilt. Overcome the evils of the past, I say. Learn from them. Become a better person, a better nation. Purge the disease that afflicts the body – but don’t turn around and reject the body for having fallen victim to the disease in the first place.
I’m also for keeping things in perspective, and feel that a twenty year-old kid who has lived his whole life in a peaceful, prosperous nation, who has never had to deal with pogroms, secret police, ethnic cleansing, the purging of the intelligentsia, the murder of political figures or the suppression of the free press has no business calling this country a tyrant state. And yet this is exactly the kind of jargon being spouted at some of the so-called peace rallies that have gotten so much media coverage in the past year. I’ve listened to the interviews, I’ve read the posters and the t-shirts, and they make me sick. I think that any such comparison is an insult to those who actually have undergone the horrors of oppression. If you want to protest against the war, by all means, do so. You’re entitled to it. Our ancestors bled and died to give you that right. To a certain degree I’ll even support you. But once you start invoking the jargon of the revolutionary and speak of our country as a evil entity – you have lost my respect, and I will cordially invite you to move to another country more in tune with your political ideals.
This applies to both sides of the political spectrum, by the way. As much as I scorn the America-bashers found within our own population, I despise with equal intensity those who use patriotism as a political weapon. Opposition to the war and to the president’s policies does not make one “un-American.” Though my personal beliefs are rooted in conservative soil, I loath figures like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, whose anti-intellectual hate mongering passes for patriotism in some circles. As far as Michael Moore goes, I have not seen his movies because as an historian I have no respect for his methods. Regardless of his ideology, I see him as a shameless attention whore who uses half truths and innuendos to paint a distorted picture and then refers to his propaganda as a “documentary”. I will not support his efforts with my money, just as I will not support Ann Coulter by buying her books.
In reflection, the unquestioned patriotism I experienced as an Army brat is probably a lot like the untainted religious beliefs of a person who has never been exposed to ideas from outside his faith. As an apolitical entity (and thank all that’s holy for that!) the military is not supposed to cast judgment on the mistakes of politicians. Soldiers take pride from a job well done, not from public opinion of that job’s worthiness. It’s not so much a matter of “my country right or wrong”, but more of “I am here because my country IS right.” In such an environment, there was much more of sense that we were all in it together. We all understood, for example, that most families would only remain in one place for a short time, and we compensated for this by being much more accepting of one another and learning to make friends more quickly. We knew that being a soldier was a dangerous vocation, and that our fathers might one day be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country – and so we revered those who had gone before and took pride in a tradition of service, rather than calling for the blood of the politicians whose blunders had taken our loved ones away. We were prepared to accept that our side in any war would take casualties, but that the victor was the one who prevailed in the end, and not necessarily in the first days of fighting. One might make the argument that we had allowed ourselves to become unthinking pawns of the system. That we gave up our right to think for ourselves in exchange for peace of mind. That ignorance is bliss. Perhaps they’re right. But comparing that environment with the one that my daughter calls home – I know which I’d prefer. Guess I should’ve joined the Army.
I’ll conclude my rant by swinging this back on topic (at last). Seeing the past through rose-colored glasses is always an exercise in mental myopia. As any historian can tell you, there’s no such thing as 20/20 hindsight. We are not raised inside a total perspective vortex, and are forced to frame our concepts of right, wrong, tradition, authority, faith, and family on our own little corners of the world. We are what we know. It is only to be expected that we should look back longingly upon the people, places and events that made us who we are, and to see them in an idealized fashion. As other posters have pointed out, complaints about the decline of morals and the impudence of children are as old as language itself. But the world stubbornly keeps spinning.
Whoa, that’s some mighty selective quoting there.
Bolding from dictionary.com. “Paying respects” is a little different creature in typical usage than “That young’un should show me some respect!” I do not show deferential regard for anyone unless they show me some reason they deserve it, and do not expect others to respect me unless I deserve it. I do expect and give politeness, but not deference.
Perhaps I sound too callous and whiney. Ah well. It’s already typed. It’s nice for society that you are more generous towards strangers.
My childhood is about 10 years before yours, but I have never grasped the concept of “honoring the flag.” It seems like idol worship. I honor and love our country, but the flag is just a piece of cloth originally intended to distinguish troops in battle.
But the settlement of the West WAS mostly the story of killing and displacing Native Americans. Say a man breaks into your house, kills your daughter, donates your car to charity, and burns down your house. Should the story concentrate on the charitable donation, or the majority of the actions? Popular culture gives you your heroes from the ages, schools teach the things less talked about.
So back to the OP, I’d say that this kind of an education is preferable to showing a false picture of a pristine America. It is an improvement in kids instead of something bad. Sure, some overdo it, but for the most part, they come away with a better picture of how we got our luxurious life.
There were some wonderful things that I will treasure about growing up in the 1940’s and 1950’s. And there were a lot of hidden unpleasant things too.
I always felt safe. There were no guns at school that we knew of. Our idea of a “rough guy” was someone with a D.A. haircut, a motorcycle, and a habit of smoking at the coal shed behind the school.
It was a rural Southern town of 2,000. And while we knew our neighbors, we also knew their business. If a child was born out of wedlock, he was snubbed – no matter how bright or likeable he was. The children would be friendly to him, but the parents would build social walls.
If a girl got pregnant, she was trash…unless she was from a good family. In that case, a secret marriage that had taken place months earlier was announced. Or there were lots of premature babies born about seven months after the wedding.
Businesses passed from father to son, but not from father to daughter or mother to daughter.
Crime statistics were lower, certainly. Domestic violence and child abuse went unreported. And rape often went unreported too because she would certainly be blamed and ruined.
College women were literally locked inside their dorms at night. Men were free to wander.
Women didn’t work…unless you counted the sunrise to bedtime chores at home. They didn’t get credit for social security then either. Women aged quickly then.
The Black kids in town lived a few blocks from the high school but had to take a bus seven miles to a separate school. I did not know the name of a single black teenager in my town, even though I knew adults.
I don’t have my youth anymore. The streets are crowded. There are twice as many Americans now as when I was born. But I have it so much easier than my parents did. Part of that has been the choice not to be trapped by the rules and roles of society.
I look forward to a time when people don’t have to worry about how they will pay for medication and health care. There’s always room for improvement.
BTW, I carry a cell phone for emergencies. Nobody told me that I had to turn it on for people to call me. It works just fine like that.
By Zoe: “BTW, I carry a cell phone for emergencies. Nobody told me that I had to turn it on for people to call me. It works just fine like that.”
Old fogey. Or is it fogy? Or could it be fogie? Help me with my spelling, Teach! 
I grew up in the Sixties & Seventies - the majority of students were no more “mobilized” then than now.
I simply can’t agree with you here, BoringDad. I won’t deny or whitewash the atrocities committed in the name of “progress” and so-called Manifest Destiny, but you are making an invalid generalization. I make no claims to being an expert on American history (I concentrated on Ancient Greece and Rome), but I think I can at least say with great confidence that your casual dismissal of 100 years of history as little more than a program of genocide is somewhat on the shallow end, and just as narrow-minded as that of the jingoistic flag waver who refuses to acknowledge the more shameful aspects of the Western experience.
I think it all comes down to the fact that you and I don’t seem to agree on what constitutes “overdoing it”. In my way of thinking you CAN instill in your children a sense of pride for what their people and their nation have achieved, without glossing over or wallowing in the gory details. How about a little balance here?