Hopefully not at the same time.
Yeah, except that Marley23 can spell Gandhi right.
Where is the evidence that Oswald Spengler was a “proto-Nazi”? Did he have any connection with Nazism, or was his writing used to support Nazism?
It started 06-13-2003 10:25 AM.
Well done godzillatemple! 
Let’s take a local and specific case in point, one near to me. At Berkeley in the '60s, students fought long and hard for the right of free speech–something established in the Bill of Rights and taken for granted outside of the university environment. All the students wanted was the right to distribute literature that was contrary to the point of view of the university administration–something so simple and basic now, that it’s hard to believe it was so controversial 40 years ago. I think we can all agree that this was a major step forward.
Fast forward 40 years, at the same location: at the annual Big Game (football game between Berkeley and Stanford) a very popular t-shirt worn by the students says, simply, “Fuck Stanford”. In a public place, with hundreds of young children present.
Does the freedom to wear an obscenity make our society better? Does achieving the freedoms in the first example inevitably lead to the second?
On the other hand…(arguing against my own premise)…perhaps we’re moving toward a day when the f-word is so common that it’s no longer obscene–when there are no dirty words. Maybe that’s a good thing, I dunno (shrug). But we’re not there yet, and we’re at the stage when things can be commonplace yet still be offensive to many. And that’s what leads to debates like this.
Another date nomination:
January 20, 1981.
Again, I contend that the f-word is only considered obscenity because it is symbolic of one aspect of our animal nature. Some people are even afraid to say the word “sex” in public; some are even afraid to say “make love.” The number of euphemisms we have for intercourse and excretory activities astounds me, and yet it is obscene to use a particular phrase for it? We even have euphemisms for the place where excretion takes place in Western society!
Considering that it’s something everybody does multiple times per day, why is so obscene to discuss bathroom activities in the Western world? I’m not sure that a perception of the collapse of Western Civilization should hinge on calling something what it is, or acknowledging something about ourselves that we can’t change.
But this is more a debate, I think, on why such things are considered obscene.
FISH
Of course the “nostalgic” movies are just like the contemporary ones in that respect. Audiences, by and large, don’t want to see movies about ordinary folks who live in exurban houses and commute 90 minutes each way to work, or inner city residents ekeing out a tough existence. They’d rather see prosperous and happy people living in beautiful homes, either in the best part of a city, or on a vast piece of land that the family owns. So that’s the way movies get made.
Come to think of it, though, A River Runs Through It did attempt to deal with mistreatment of Native Americans.
Well let me rephrase that. People don’t necessarily want movie characters to be unrelentingly happy, but they don’t want any drama or unhappiness caused by financial stress.
Most western countries have de-colonized in the last 50 years, and domestically made a transition to liberal welfare states. Great advances in communications, medicine, transportation, engineering, genetics, etc. have been invented. More info has been discovered in the last 50 years than in all of human history up until 50 years ago.
A few minor slights like finding out how petty people are when they watch reality TV isn’t so bad, and a small price to pay.
But are people happier, more fulfilled, helpful? Millions of Americans are suffering from untreated depression. (cite 1, cite 2). That’s a pretty big price to pay.
And everybody was happy in the 1930’s? The people suffering today from depression (small “d”) never suffered from The Depression (capital D).
Read Steinbeck-the Grapes of Wrath.
When your belly hurts from hunger, when you are weak and light-headed due to a lifetime of malnutrion–you don’t complain about “feeling depressed”.
Nowadays,people don’t have problems satisfying physical needs,so they complain about psychological needs.
I think people are happier, and i doubt they were happy 50 years ago as much as their unhappiness was ignored.
Freud: The end of a successful analysis enables the patient to convert neurotic suffering into an acceptance of everyday common misery.
Thoreau: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
Its not like depression was invented 30 years ago (although treatments for it were. prozac is barely 15 years old), people were still depressed they probably just kept it to themselves out of stigma. The fact that millions suffer from depression is a medical issue now is a major thing to me, it wouldn’t have been 40 years ago.
Calc: Agree. Even now there is a stigma attached to depression, etc. On these very boards there are sometimes people who espouse the “Just get over it” point of view. Fifty years ago it was simply not spoken of. Countless people simply suffered in silence, or took to alcohol or other substances for what they thought would be relief. The “good old days” is a myth based on wishful thinking and selective amnesia.
I am amazed that nobody has cited any sources concerning the decline of our culture (western). The following is a quote from the best selling book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler 1970
The book was about these changes and how to adapt to them.
In his book he mentions an occurence which will do as well as any other to mark the end of “western civilization”.
Remember, Dr. Toffler, wrote these words over thirty years ago.
I have a couple of other writers to quote, but I’d like to hear what you think of “furture shock” and if there are some other cites besides mine.
Heh. Anybody see Garfield today?
Barry
The recent apparent rise in mental illness (assuming such an increase exists) might be contrasted with the huge falls in cholera, typhoid, TB, measles, polio, influenza, and sundry other major diseases. Human beings have little experience in living in affluence, and some teething problems are inevitable.
As far as I can tell, civilization has been in decline ever since it began. At least this is what the “experts” of every era like to claim.
So, you are discounting West Nile Virus, AIDS, SARS, Lime Disease, ebola and sundry other new major diseases? Those should keep us teething for awhile, until some others crop up.