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Afaic, as long as such a large number of people continue to believe that things are owed to them, nothing will change. Promiscuity seems to go hand in hand with entitlement.
:amen: to both of those.
Afaic, as long as such a large number of people continue to believe that things are owed to them, nothing will change. Promiscuity seems to go hand in hand with entitlement.
Promiscuity seems to go hand in hand with entitlement.
Yes, John, its all related. People, men in this case, who stay in the family framework, are generally the types, as Lizzie said, to keep noses to the grindstone.
In any case, the trick to life, afaic, is to find that combination of ingredients that keeps everyone within the family unit relatively happy. The fact that the divorce rate in the U.S. is over 65%, with so many other miserable married couple who do not get divirced, is testament to the fact that so few people are able to do this.
I wouldn't say "conservative," because of the political shadings that word carries, but I would say -- and hope -- that "self-discipline" is likely to make a comeback. Lack of that trait, more than anything, is the root of much of what's wrong with modern culture. It's tough to get in trouble when you've got your nose to the grindstone.
Promiscuity seems to go hand in hand with entitlement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html?pagewanted=print&position="Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.
About 60 percent of all marriages that eventually end in divorce do so within the first 10 years, researchers say. If that continues to hold true, the divorce rate for college graduates who married between 1990 and 1994 would end up at only about 25 percent, compared to well over 50 percent for those without a four-year college degree."
One of the biggest factors I've seen over the years contributing to a lot of the discussed behavior has to do with real or perceived "safety nets". If you were raised during times where you'd starve if you didn't work and you knew it was up to you then you tended towards keeping your nose to the grindstone. Same in school. If you knew with a certainty that you'd "be left behind" and success or failure was up to you then you tended to knuckle down and study.
But society here has swung in the direction of the "nanny state" and Nanny will look out for you if you can't be bothered to. Can't or won't do the school work? No problems - you won't be left behind. Won't work? No problems - you can keep living in your bedroom at Mom and Dad's house. The nanny state will even give you an allowance.
Don't feel like doing what the boss says? Just get classified into a "protected" category and file a grievance. Nothing is your fault and you won't be held accountable for the most part.
As long as you feel good about yourself and have high self esteem then it's all good, right? For a while just trying was enough. Whether you succeeded or not. Now you don't even have to try.
The only thing that will reverse all that is a slap in the face from reality that disconnects enough people from their iPods, cell phones, televisions, blogs, video games, dance clubs and their nanny so that they have to deal with basic survival again.
I'm a product of, basically, 1940s working class culture, and very proud of it. Traditional views on work and self-discipline were necessary for survival in that culture -- and I think they're just as necessary today. In modern culture's haste to abandon anything that smacks of "working class", we've thrown out the bathwater without even bothering to think of the baby.
Indeed, I think the politicization of values has been perhaps *the* most destructive phenomenon to wrack American culture in the last fifty years, and unless we get away from it, we'll never see any real improvement.
Part of that is when people come together with a pre-nuptual agreement which usually spells out this is mine, that's yours and these are ours. The focus is on separation instead of togetherness oneness. I have heard it described as laying the ground work for divorce or as the road map for divorce.
One thing that seems to have changed over the last 90 years is the concept that charity was something one did on their own or as a family as a a good thing to do but it was a personal decision and a gift of help.
Now the recipients have moved from being grateful for the help as a gift to expecting it and then demanding it.
What was once a personal decision and a gift is now no longer a choice but institutionalized, coerced under the threat of lawsuits and violence.
Touche!There's a lot I could say about the political aspects, but I have the self-discipline not to.
Touche!