Thread: Is This An Example Of Our Country Going Down The Tubes ? Or Was It Always This Way ?

I'm only forty, I remember running all over the place as a kid with my friends. My kids will never leave my sight when playing. Why? I'm not exactly sure I know my grandparents cared and trusted me when I was young just like I trust mine. Is society that different? Or is it the news and the terror that they " report " on for ratings keeping me worried about the same potential for bad as there always was in this world. I have a job where I'm in people's houses everyday , been going that job for almost 18 years now. People haven't changed. The perception of society as the govt and big business want you to see it has. I'm pretty sure both want us to feel powerless and hopeless to turn us into sheeple

i would have to say that people are getting worse. the feeling of entitlement, lack of guidance from parents, lack of morals etc. all contribute to the decline. right now in our little town there's a sexting issue at the high school.(it's a felony to send nude photos of minors even if done by minors) all the kids are from well to do family's. there are people that defend them saying "boys well be boys" Really?

Just a quick disclaimer that I haven't read the study she is using as evidence, but a couple of things strike me about her use of the study. Firstly Iv doxycycline, I'll let you read this and make up your own mind...oral bioavailability is good. Is it necessary to have iv doxy immediately on hand? JAC

Secondly she has steered clear of the prescribers role in this scenario. She briefly alludes to the chief problem regarding drugs like meropenem, which is that they are often used in preference to first line antibiotics, but then discards the theory without further interest in it.

Regarding profit margins, there is a double edged sword. Yes we need production of cheap drugs but equally the reverse is that in current times the demand for rigorous drug testing prior to use in clinic is often prohibitively expensive (animal studies, phases of clinical trials etc), and if one goes bust it's a huge loss to the pharma sector.
Regarding how this reflects on society as a whole, I'm not sure I've formed an opinion

I think the general population is filled with good decent folks who want to do the right things and that hasn't changed over time. The issue are the miscreants. Their numbers have increased and the violence they subscribe to has increased also. Mixed in with that is the media and the constant flogging by news stories that sell which just makes us aware of all the bad stuff going around.

I grew up in NYC and even there folks left their doors open and there were no issues. In those days cops walked a beat and they were big fellas and they knew everyone on their beat and if you didn't belong there you had to explain yourself and if he didn't like what you said you had better keep walking. Justice was dispensed with a nightstick. These days that would not be tolerated besides the bad guys all carry guns.

These days the "in" crime is if you think someone disrespects you or gives you a hard time you just get a gun and take care of business and make sure society in general pays for your distorted perceptions. 30 years ago something like that would make world wide headlines. Now it's common place.

It is a curious phenomenon. I'm in my mid-40s, and like you all, I was gone in the morning and often times didn't come back until supper riding my bike with my buddy all over the country and into town. I don't recall ever having any predator confront us.

I do not watch the news and have not for years; but each time I overhear it or see it at someone else's house, the prevailing message is undeniably fear, fear, fear. Add that to the prevailing fact that most people do not know or talk to their neighbors and you have fear of each other. When my parents grew up in Minneapolis in the 1950s, every neighbor knew every neighbor. They would not even think to lend a hand, watch each other's kids, play cards and stick together. In large part none of that even comes close to existing anymore.

Whether there are the same number of nut jobs today as there were in the past, who knows? However it is also undeniable that never before in history did such people have access via the Internet to an unlimited amount of filth to stoke their criminal proclivities into a frenzy. I certainly don't know the statistics, but my guess is there were nowhere near as many sexual predators several generations ago as there are now.

A lot of this is reversible in my opinion. Make friends with your neighbors. Have a neighborhood barbecue at your house. Force yourself to talk to other people around you. As a rule, it seems like we are all too lazy or too afraid to do that now or too wrapped up in our own lives.

Think about that: a few generations ago a family in a neighborhood that kept to themselves and did not interact with others on the block were looked at as abnormal. We have a 180° shift. What was abnormal is now normal in this regard as well as in other things today. I don't think anyone could argue that this particular reversal is good compared to the way it was.



ChrisL

I agree with the idea that people are basically good. But I also think a few things have changed over time.

One is the media. I guess the media was always about gloom and doom and fear, but now it is in real time: 24/7 news, most of it preaching fear in one form or another in order to both control the population and sell advertising.

Another is that the world is (or feels) faster IMO - information everywhere, from google to wikipedia to Facebook to instagram to twitter to everything else. Technology is narrowing our world, not expanding it. Most people I know feel rushed somehow, as if there's not enough time in the day to get things done. I think it has to do with information bombardment personally. I agree with Sherlock Holmes: our minds are like an attic; once full, putting something in pushes something else out.

James.

Thats why the wife and I got rid of our cell phones,If I want to talk to you,I will call you.

As a 22 year old I hate to agree with the vast majority of you. I started working at eight (mowing lawns and at the local car wash), first hourly wage was at thirteen, worked two jobs (around 65 hours a week) while varsity athlete and honor roll through highschool. When I go back to my parents house in rural Illinois I see kids on bikes, working in the yard, football in the park; all things I did as a kid just like my dad and his dad before him. Here in Columbia (roughly 200,000 population) I rarely see the neighborhood kids work in the yard or even play outside. I deal with clients on a daily basis that either don’t think they should be required to uphold black and white contracts (paying rent while living there, car payments, doctors/attorneys fees), or that they shouldn’t be punished for committing crimes, sometimes very serious ones). While I’ve been lucky enough to meet hard working, honest people of all ages I think there is a growing epidemic in the world as a whole of entitled people only looking for a handout or immunity from consequences of their actions. I can only hope things change course and more people my age come to their senses before it comes time to raise kids of my own.

The numbers tell us that crime, particularly violent crime is down in the US, by half in the case of murder rate since that late 80's. I think that in some way society has slipped, but I think that we also are looking for bad things to happen a lot more. My family moved back from a town right outside of Hartford, Connecticut to what is today the fairly close in southwest section Miami in the summer of 1976 after a 2 year stay in that very friendly part of Yankeeland. My parents had been renting our house to a close friend during that time. We did not own a key to the front door even though this time period saw the start of the coke wars. The house was one block off of a main suburban avenue, but in a neighborhood of large 3/4 acre lots that were not super easy to drive through. We did not change the locks and get a key for the house until after the Mariel Boatlift in 1980 when property crime became a much bigger issue. Move forward to like 1984 and you have the innovation of home invasion and carjacking/smash and grab down there. That was Miami at its WORST which meant the USA at its ABSOLUTE worst at the time and we were still less paranoid than people are today. Admittedly, Miami didn't get a lot better as far as property crime goes, but with that said, there aren't thousands of people looking to snatch your kid off of their bike and leave then dead in the Everglades. Like Jimbo said, part of the problem is that EVERY isolated incident like that gets reported as part of the 24/7 news cycle so we think it happens all the time. the numbers say that it doesn't.

Typical small time criminals are opportunists like a predator in the animal world. If someone starts a "new" crime and others see it's low risk and lucrative to them more will do it and it will continue until they see the risks become too great and then they wait until the next punk thinks of something innovative.

Part of the problem is our digital world where folks think they have a multitude of "friends" but in reality they have "contacts" that can be "deleted" in an instant. When I was growing up your life revolved around your friends with whom you spent all your time. If you had no friends you were really isolated and looked at as something strange. Unfortunately in this age a lot of folks are isolated and I think that contributes to mental illness. These folks then sit around the computer and "stew in their Juices" and begin to act bizarre and do bizarre anti social things.