The Decline of Western Civilization – When did It Start?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, let me start by saying that I realize that every generation is firmly convinced that the next generation is going to hell in a hand basket (“Those darn kids with their long hair and their Rock & Roll music!”)

Let me also admit that yes, I am a bit of a prude as a result of a strict religious upbringing (I’m no longer religious, but I still happen to believe in the values I was taught even if I don’t accept the religious underpinnings for them). However, I did not grow up in a particularly “sheltered” environment, having grown up in a suburb of a major metropolis.

Having said that, I can’t help wondering when did everything start going wrong? And by “everything,” I suppose I really mean public displays of behavior that was previously considered “wrong” or “inappropriate” or just plain “taboo.” When did it become acceptable to walk on the streets with profanity written on your t-shirt or baseball hat? When did it become acceptable to use profanity on network TV (even words like “ass” and “bitch” were considered major taboos back when I was growing up in the 70s)? When did we start celebrating everything that is base and pathetic about the human condition, a la The Jerry Springer show and the current crop of “reality” TV shows? For that matter, when did it become acceptable to mention a competitor’s product by name in a commercial instead of simply referring to “brand X” or “another leading brand”?

I don’t think there was ever a time when the world was perfect, and I’m sure the modern world has a lot more to offer than the one in which I grew up. But I just don’t understand how and when things started to get so… crude. Not to mention rude. Just about every TV show these days has to revolve around sex it seems. Pop music is laced with profanity. “Fashion” has become borderline pornography.

I have heard numerous theories over the years, and have come up with a few myself. One theory I have heard is that it all started with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal (or, perhaps, a few years previously with the Vietnam War and LBJ). This theory states that before that period, people were generally happy to accept that the government was looking out for their best interests. After that period, however, people realized that the government was run by corrupt individuals who would and could lie to the American public to further their own interests. This realization, in turn, led to a general abandonment of many of the “public virtues” that were previously seen as necessary for citizens to live together in harmony.

Another theory states that it all began with the invention of the “pill” and the subsequent Sexual Revolution. Once women could have sex as often as they wanted with no consequences, the theory goes, there was no need for them to act “ladylike” any longer. At the same time, as sex entered the area of public discourse, advertisers began to grow more and more bold with regard to using sex to sell products. This, in turn, created a whole new generation of people who expected to see graphic sexual imagery all around them.

My own personal theory is that the 70’s and 80’s were a time when large portions of our society who were previously oppressed finally started to have some real personal freedoms. Women began to have equal rights (not just because of the pill, but also because of better education and job opportunities). Similarly, many of the minorities here in the U.S. (Black, Hispanic, etc.) finally started getting some respect and personal opportunities. This was partially the result of “Affirmative Action” programs, but also I think there was simply a growing realization that everybody deserved a chance to succeed regardless of their background or ethnicity. All these new freedoms are, of course, a wonderful thing, and I’m not trying to suggest that women or blacks or other minorities are responsible for the decline of Western Civilizations (just in case you thought I was going there). But I do think that the 70’s and 80’s were a time of heightened awareness of the whole concept of “personal freedom” and, while this meant that previously oppressed people could have new opportunities, it also meant that people were reluctant to be seen as restricting anybody’s freedom to do or say anything. If a woman should be able to work the same job as a man and earn the same money, or if a black person would be able to go to the same school as a white person and get the same education, all in the name of “personal freedom,” then how can I tell somebody they shouldn’t be allowed to wear whatever they want on a t-shirt or say whatever they want on TV?

I don’t know – maybe we’ve just traded one set of problems (oppression of women and minorities) for another set (promiscuity, public displays of rudeness and immorality, etc.), and maybe things really are better for everybody now than they were 30 years ago. It just doesn’t seem that way to me, however. Of course, maybe that’s because I’m a white male who was never oppressed back when the world seemed like such a pleasant place in which to live.

Any thoughts?

Regards,

Barry

2

The only reason you see promiscuity and public displays of rudeness and immorality as a problem is that you were brought up to see these things as wrong. You said it yourself. Each generation is beginning to realize that they are free, more free than earlier generations. All the boundries and vices that the last few generations carried are being broken and reshaped.

I think our civilization is on an incline.

(I could say it better if i had more time right now, but someone else will come and explain it better.

3

None of these things “became acceptable” at some date. Values, like everything else, evolve. They always have and always will. Some people dislike this, and they cause a lot of trouble. A lot of people want us to live in the 1950s. Others think the 1300s were really neat.

I think this one is a matter of being able to scientifically prove your claim. The “leading brand” thing still crops up, but they always use coloring and make it clear who ‘the leading brand’ being slammed is. I imagine it was always that way.

You realize it was always like this, right? Sex is everywhere, sure, but it always was - just in different ways. Otherwise, Freud would’ve gone out of business on Day One. :wink:

Every change brings about new problems, that’s why it keeps happening. But you don’t REALLY think public rudeness is as bad a problem as the oppression of women and gays, do you? Not that either has ended. And you know, people have ALWAYS cheated on each other and gotten busy sexually. You may’ve heard about it less, but I don’t know how much more common it’s gotten.

Not that the theories you throw out are invalid, because the events you mention DID lead to important social changes. But I think this is really the answer. I dare you to find anybody who is gay, a minority (ethnically, religiously, politically), or a woman, and ask them “haven’t things been getting way worse for you over the last half century?”

I think macabresoul has nailed it. And furthermore, to be honest with you, I think most of the complaints you bring up are highly trivial. Western civilization is declining because pop music has cursing, TV sucks, and midriffs are bare? Puh-lease. At the risk of rudeness, I must ask: are these your idea of REAL problems?!
What about WAR? There’s a biggie, and it’s been around since time immemorial. Hatred (of different races, sexes, religions, orientations, ideas, beliefs, cultures)? Just as old. Disease? Poverty? Oppression? Hunger? We’ve improved markedly on all of those, I think, but there is more than enough ground to cover. Let’s work on those.

Fuck people’s ideas about aesthetics. Sorry, but it IS “those damn kids” syndrome, and it does nothing except detract people from actual problems. Can you imagine how much better off the world would be if Tipper Gore, Bill Bennett, and the rest of the people leading their legions on a crusade to save civilization from sex, drugs, rudeness and music were doing something HELPFUL?

None of this is directed at you personally, godzillatemple. I just find this stuff very frustrating.

4

Um, I guess I view the sixties through the eighties as wacky, but since the 90’s things are getting better again. People are learning from past mistakes. We need bad examples so that they can be improved on, LOL!!

I was born in 1973, so I did see a large part of the seventies and all of the eighties. My parents are whack, and I look to the sixties for that as a part of it, not all of it though.

Our world is bigger now, and the education is and knowledge we have now is pointing to a better future…

As far as public displays of affection, that is so a matter of personal opinion that I almost don’t care to comment,

but as long as a couple isn’t actually doing the nasty, then I don’t care! I have friends who had contests about having sex in public places, but I haven’t done it…too personal for me!!

That’s just how I see it.

Does anyone see only doom and gloom in the future?

5

I think part of the problem is that you are taking the social mores of the 50s and early 60s as “typical”, when of course they were extremely atypical. The idea that women shouldn’t work is the product of a particular time and place. Women who worked on farms, or women who worked in factories during the industrial revolution would have thought it odd.

The idea that people should be respectful of their leaders is another one. The 40s and 50s were a time of unprecedented respect for leadership. America had gone through the depression and WWII, and when we came out we were rich and happy, and no one wanted to rock the boat. People were happy with the conformity of the 50s because compared to the 30s and 40s it was a paradise. Families could suddenly afford to live on one salary, people could move off the farms, buy their own houses, send their kids to school, own their own car, work 40 hours a week. And there was the belief that the society that gave them this prosperity was good, and that people who challenged society were challenging prosperity itself. In the 30s we had radical unions, talk of revolution, poverty and starvation, war on the horizon, and hatred and distrust of government. The 50s completely changed things.

But the 50s weren’t typical. Americans have always been cynical and crude, they just managed to hide it for 20 or 30 years.

6

Errrr… I don’t recall saying anything about public displays of affection in my original post. Personally, I’m all for PDA (as long as it doesn’t progress to the “get a room!” stage).

I was speaking out against public displays of rudeness and immorality (speaking primarily of profanity-laced clothing and discourse).

Barry

7

I don’t think Western Civilization is on the decline:

  1. Canada still has its stuff together, if the US falls, I think I’ll just move there.

  2. Mexico seems to be improving some, maybe if the US crumbles they will be in good enough shape to uphold Western Civiliation.

  3. There is always Brazil and Chile, they’re pretty good.

Nahtanoj

8

There is a great book by Stephanie Coontz called The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap which deals with some of these topics, especially the items that Lemur866 has mentioned.

I seem to recall that my parents bemoaned the horrible music, clothes and general lack of respect in my generation. It’s my understanding that parents in the 1920s bemoaned the blatantly immoral short fringed dresses and bobbed hair of young ladies then. Before that, oldsters threw up their hands in shock at “the naughty waltz.” And of course there are the flower children who grew up, had children and turned into stockbrokers. Or who had children who turned into Republicans. Where will all the madness end?

Of course, in my mother’s time, as she told me, there would have been no way she could have gone to college and become a doctor. Today there would be no reason she could not.

Who would have believed 50 or 60 years ago that someone like Condoleeza Rice would be in a position of power and authority, not to mention Colin Powell? It was a pipe dream then.

Do not look at the past through rose-colored glasses.

9

I blame FOX.

10

Personally, I blame Lorena Bobbit. Before she came along, you NEVER heard the word “penis” mentioned on T.V.

:wink:

Barry

11

[aside]
Based on the OP, I thought you were in your fifties. I was very surprised to learn your relative youth in another thread, godzilla.
[/aside]

12

I think it was the “Underwear Party” I went to in 1971. No one was allowed in in street clothes. Undies only.

13

June 17th, 1959 at, err… 8:53 pm GMT

14

Nothing personal, but I really hope I’m not making rants like this in 20-30 years.

“Back in my day, we believed in a thing called monogamy! And there was a time when churches and dance clubs were separate buildings! We may have eliminated hunger, disease, and prejudice, but by golly, people walk around on the streets naked! Western Civilization is doomed!”

15

Isn’t it great how people always romanticize the past? I especially love those movies like Baggar Vance, A River Runs Trhough it or Legend of the Falls that depicts people in the 1920s-30s as so polite in their three-piece suits. Somehow scenes of people dieing of polio, families starving during the Great Depression or the local lads dragging a negro around town by his hair never make it to the final cut.

Sorry that Western Civilization hasn’t created a Utopia yet but which set of the problems you mentioned do you think is worse? A society where women and minorities are basically property or where you have to endue seeing someone with an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt?

I guess I am concerned with how much our society has embraced the idiot - Springer, anything with FOX in the title, all the reality shows. People can’t seem to get enough of watching each other act like selfish morons. Truly, we are living in a golden age for the semi-educated loser!

And kids these days with their music! Whatever happened to the angst-ridden rock and ironic skepticism of the 90s? Now all the kids care about is the “bling-bling”.

16

I’m gonna stick up for the OP. Yes, on the whole, things are better than they were 30 years ago. But there’s no reason why that has to be a quid pro quo. We can have equal rights and opportunities for all members of society without Girls Gone Wild and Jerry Springer. The world has changed (as it always has) and not always for the better.

17

When was the TV dinner invented?

18

Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but I think the OP disagrees with you. I think he’s saying that, on the whole, things are worse. Hence the entire “Decline of Western Civilization” thing.

19

Well, again, we’re characterizing those things as wrong. I dislike both quite a bit, but it’s not my job to decide what everybody should do and approve of. Anyway, I’d say this is just the way society functions: new freedoms and things are developed, perhaps things go too far, and eventually a medium is reached. You know, thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Fortunately, the bitching never ends. :smiley:

20

The war in Vietnam. It drained the economy, created a lot of psychologically damaged veterans, turned the citizenry against the government, and engendered permanent cynicism.

But for a civilization to decline, its military and economic base must erode as well. I propose that the decline can be marked by the year that US demand for oil from foreign sources exceeded available domestic sources. From that point forward the US has been in a precarious game of maintaining global control and stability, which is not easy to do.

Each year it costs more to maintain civilization based on foreign resources. Without some kind of major innovation, it is a losing game in the long run. The recent wars are a consequence of Western vulnerability to disruptions of access to global resources.

The 1950’s were a quiet oasis in a longer history of crudity and vulgarity (especially if you ignore the McCarthy era, the rise of lobotomies, total ignorance about sexuality, rampant sexism and racism. Other than that stuff, it was a more genteel time).