HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN - in a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. (1 Viewer)

[cpwill]

So yeah, I'm not buying it. Yes, some things are worse than in the past -- but others are better. The reality is that:
• Human beings take improvements for granted very quickly (hedonic treadmill)
• They pay more attention to, and put more weight on, negatives than positives (negativity bias)
• They see the past as better than the present (nostalgia / "rosy retrospection" bias)

This article seems like just another example of those cognitive errors.

I will be reporting this post for saying everything I wanted to say in response, and stealing my ideas from me before I had them.

 

[The Mark]

This is really an indepth article discussing sociology, technology, demography, and the economy

I read the entire article (it is pretty long) and recommend it to you all no matter what your political ideology is.

HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN​

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.

By David Brooks
Illustrations by Ricardo Tomás

AUGUST 14, 2023, 6 AM ET

Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Much more at link

How America Got Mean

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.

www.theatlantic.com

They been squeezing us for decades and the lie that it's the only way is unraveling.

 

[Surrealistik]

This is really an indepth article discussing sociology, technology, demography, and the economy

I read the entire article (it is pretty long) and recommend it to you all no matter what your political ideology is.

HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN​

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.

By David Brooks
Illustrations by Ricardo Tomás

AUGUST 14, 2023, 6 AM ET

Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Much more at link

How America Got Mean

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.

www.theatlantic.com

With respect to some of these metrics that are more relevant and telling, ~40 years of sustained median real wage stagnation (or decline depending on your measure, or category of spending; real wages have unambiguously declined substantially RE: such important things as healthcare, higher education, rent and housing) as our politicos are increasingly captured by monied interests and do little about this is a hell of a drug.

See Trump getting elected; twice.

 

[multivita-man]

If David Brooks wrote it, you can probably find the same shit written over and over again by the likes of Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman, or anyone at the Bulwark. Longing for the days when conservatives were erudite and when the right wing would screw over the working class politely.

 

[j brown's body]

Pick your reason:

a. 24/7 news cycle.
b. Social Media replacing real socializing.
c. Glorification of violence in entertainment.
d. Erosion of respect for order and authority.
e. All of the above.

Violence has pretty much always glorified violence. Now our government is glorifying it.

You think respect for order and authority brings happiness?

 

[eohrnberger]

"HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN "
How Progressive, left leaning have American and Americans become?
Seems there might be a correlation there.

 

[j brown's body]

Brooks bemoans the loss of moral education and as such, I suggest this decline in happiness and empathy can be traced to education becoming first, a tool for gaining a job, and not for becoming a fully realized person. This is seen in the decline in the study of humanities, which contain a moral dimension, and an increase in the sciences and business, which do not.

If college is too expensive for most people they are deprived of an opportunity for greater happiness. That many no longer feel college is important is a reflection of a society that has given up on the pursuit of happiness.

 

[j brown's body]

"HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN "
How Progressive, left leaning have American and Americans become?
Seems there might be a correlation there.

Policing women's bodies, policing trans' whereabouts, policing the movement of minorities and the disabled in employment and education, policing students' speech and shackling harmless undocumented immigrants and banning books from libraries is the path to happiness?

 

[eohrnberger]

Policing women's bodies, policing trans' whereabouts, policing the movement of minorities and the disabled in employment and education, policing students' speech and shackling harmless undocumented immigrants and banning books from libraries is the path to happiness?

Your representations of these issues are largely falsely and mischaracterized, each issue having far more context surrounding them than your one liner, and each issue having threads here in these forums which far more fully in context and far more expansive.

Academic studies have shown that liberals are more miserable compared to others.

Why are conservatives happier than liberals? - PubMed

In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Seems that liberals have taken it on themselves to try and make everyone else equally miserable.

 

[j brown's body]

Your representations of these issues are largely falsely and mischaracterized, each issue having far more context surrounding them than your one liner, and each issue having threads here in these forums which far more fully in context and far more expansive.

Academic studies have shown that liberals are more miserable compared to others.

Why are conservatives happier than liberals? - PubMed

In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Seems that liberals have taken it on themselves to try and make everyone else equally miserable.

Of course they have more context around them, but the solution is always the same: more repression.

Liberals don't like repression.

 

[BabaVoss]

The right has long held a world view I characterized as “I got mine. Screw you.”
Under Trump, MAGA has embraced are more direct version. “Screw you.”

 

[ElChupacabra]

Are you familiar with Robert Putnam's book "Bowling Alone". It's not in the same vein, but it shows how we are becoming more isolated and that has a demonstrably negative effect on communities.

I agree with this idea, and it's become very apparent with the rise of social media. The isolation that brings is going to have a detrimental effect on how we interact socially, which we already see in the younger generation who's grown up with it. The other aspect of this is our past forms of mass communication still maintained the moral fabric our society espoused, but the social media and internet world is organized chaos that is absent of that. People are exposed to all sorts of terrible, desensitizing content featuring violence and people behaving badly. It's hard not to see how the isolation people feel combined with what I described, not affecting our society negatively.

 

[ElChupacabra]

"HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN "
How Progressive, left leaning have American and Americans become?
Seems there might be a correlation there.

Good grief.

 

[eohrnberger]

Of course they have more context around them, but the solution is always the same: more repression.

Liberals don't like repression.

LOL.
Its more like 'liberals don't like it when people disagree with them, don't toe their ideological lines' and 'liberals don't like it when they don't get their way'.

This demanding that everyone else toe their ideological lines is repression, authoritarian, totalitarian.

 

[noonereal]

The guy divorced his wife of 20-some years to marry his much younger assistant.

Well, to be fair, you wants an old fat wrinkled women on their arm ?

The guy is a jerk but not for this reason. He is not insightful.

 

[ConWolf]

I agree with this idea, and it's become very apparent with the rise of social media. The isolation that brings is going to have a detrimental effect on how we interact socially, which we already see in the younger generation who's grown up with it. The other aspect of this is our past forms of mass communication still maintained the moral fabric our society espoused, but the social media and internet world is organized chaos that is absent of that. People are exposed to all sorts of terrible, desensitizing content featuring violence and people behaving badly. It's hard not to see how the isolation people feel combined with what I described, not affecting our society negatively.

We agree. Lots to discuss, but one of the solutions is simply to start reaching out to those around you to connect. We have had street parties for many years and sometimes we introduce people who have lived a house apart for years. I can't think of one instance where people didn't find value in such activities.

Don't talk politics though.......at least not at first.