Falling Faith - Social decline

[nichomach]

I'd certainly agree on the faith point, as I've said above. We also, when busily golden-ageing, have to take account, as you rightly say of our tendency to "remember with advantage". There's also the tendency to believe headlines over actual experience; ask people whether crime's increased over, say, the last 10 years, and they'll tell you it has, but the British Crime Survey , which is pretty authoritative, shows that year on year crime has either remained stable or decreased. FEAR of crime on the other hand continues to go through the roof.

All that said, we still, I'd argue, have a lot of observable anti-social behaviour; stuff which may be below the "nick the little scrote" threshold of the police (although may still be criminal), but still causes unease and sometimes fear; the kids hassling you outside local shops to buy booze or fags, the casual vandalism of property etc. Whether that's on the increase or not, I think it contributes to a sense that society's standards are declining.

[chicken]

Or we need to be allowed to clip the little scrote around the ear and have them punished by their parents for bad behaviour instead of having to take it all this crap for fear of being sued for abuse or something...

[kalniel]

I like the sound of bringing in ex-forces guys to teach

[Lucio]

I think the recent social decline can be quite simply attributed to a lack of respect for others.

Could it be that perhaps it also stems from a lack of respect for yourself as well? If you don't have much respect for yourself, it becomes hard to respect others in return. I also believe that one charactistic that has become unfashionable to teach your children is the concept of shame, far too many parents don't teach their children to feel ashamed if they get something wrong, whether it's doing badly at school or misbehaving.

[nichomach]

Or we need to be allowed to clip the little scrote around the ear and have them punished by their parents for bad behaviour instead of having to take it all this crap for fear of being sued for abuse or something...

Well, I don't like the sound of the violence-based option, but I do agree that parents need to be much more ready to take on board concerns about their kids' behaviour; to recognize that their little angel may be a monster to someone else. When you have parents threatening teachers because junior gets a bad school report then something's badly wrong with parenting. We need some way to support and perhaps reward parents who take that on board, and to somehow compel those who don't to do so - or at least make it relatively unpleasant or costly to continue to refuse.

[kalniel]

Could it be that perhaps it also stems from a lack of respect for yourself as well? If you don't have much respect for yourself, it becomes hard to respect others in return. I also believe that one charactistic that has become unfashionable to teach your children is the concept of shame, far too many parents don't teach their children to feel ashamed if they get something wrong, whether it's doing badly at school or misbehaving.

I'm not really sure how to think of 'self-respect' - what does respect for yourself mean?

Do you mean a sort of lack of self-worth? And thus assigning low value to other people and hence no respect for their feelings/opinions sort of thing?

If so I'm not sure how society and the individual relate - Aristole would say that self worth of course affects the value you give to the community, but it sometimes seems the opposite in that it's the belief that "I am more right than my elders/authorities" that seems to cause some problems.

[Wh@l3fish]

Could it be that perhaps it also stems from a lack of respect for yourself as well? If you don't have much respect for yourself, it becomes hard to respect others in return. I also believe that one charactistic that has become unfashionable to teach your children is the concept of shame, far too many parents don't teach their children to feel ashamed if they get something wrong, whether it's doing badly at school or misbehaving.

I agree with that statement, although I think it's important to try and focus on more the more positive aspects of life - such as pride in doing something correctly or achievements in your life, although I don't deny that you should feel ashamed if you've done something particularly wrong. I do think it's important to have a sense of personal pride - not arrogance - as it may aid introspection and in turn help you think how your actions may affect others.

[nichomach]

Could it be that perhaps it also stems from a lack of respect for yourself as well? If you don't have much respect for yourself, it becomes hard to respect others in return.

Good point, I think; one might call it "empathic respect", I guess, the recognition of ourselves in other people and the basing of mutual respect on that. If one doesn't have that initial respect for and awareness of oneself there isn't really much of a basis for the required empathic connection. Question then becomes "Why isn't that self-respect there, and how do we inculcate it?".

I also believe that one charactistic that has become unfashionable to teach your children is the concept of shame, far too many parents don't teach their children to feel ashamed if they get something wrong, whether it's doing badly at school or misbehaving.

I'm unsure of exactly where you're going with this; for instance I don't feel that it's appropriate to shame a kid for getting their sums wrong - you should help them see where they got them wrong and then praise them when they get them right. On the other hand, teaching children that bullying or something like that is shameful IS something that I can broadly agree with. I guess I'm just wondering which sort of "wrong" you mean - wrong as in factually mistaken or wrong as in morally opprobrious?

[Bhavv]

I actually believe that if a country was ruled by christian law, they would hang people for being gay like they do in muslim countries. Also back in the middle ages they used to hang scientists that believed and tried to prove that the earth wasnt the centre of the universe.

That basically sums up what I hate about religion. Basically if people dont live by the rules in your holy book, you would either want them to change to follow your rules, or make their lives a misery by condeming them to be sinners and killing them.
All Societies would be better off without religion. Religion was initially created as a means of determining right from wrong, but was made obsolete by the code of law. Its just that millions of people decided to carry on believing that god conjured the universe from a fart or wand of magic missiles or something.