February 12, 2006

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The World Today

Someone posted a myspace bulletin that included text from this story. The bulletin also said,

"Just wanted to share this story......Sometimes I cant fathom how anyone could hurt another person let alone a child, their own child. What kind of sick world do we live in now?"

While the story is certainly tragic, I'm often dumbfounded by people's urge to implicate Modern Times in what they see as the moral corruption of society. "What kind of a sick world do we live in now?" Well... the same kind of sick world we've always lived in. People see things that are reprehensible, and they apparently have an impulse to blame some gradual degradation of civilization, with the underlying claim that these things didn't used to happen. This is a very short-sighted viewpoint. It's a viewpoint that doesn't contemplate anything like real historical fact, and instead clings to some fairytale version of how things were forty years ago.

Adults are guilty of this particular brand of ignorance a lot more often than kids. And so it was with great anxiety that I read my friend's bulletin, and realized that, yes, I am now at an age where my peers may start talking about "kids today." Granted, the story my friend was citing had nothing to do with "kids today," but it's part of the same impulse. Every generation drinks, smokes, has sex, gets pregnant, has abortions, gets into fights, gets into serious fights, commits crimes, and lacks ambition. And then, eventually, they grow up, most of them. And then, once they're grown up, they look down and observe how bad the kids are, and forget that they were the same way.

People have been having abortions for thousands of years. People have been smoking for thousands of years. People have been drinking for thousands of years. People have been committing crimes for thousands of years. It's nothing new.

If there is one difference, it's that there is now much greater access to media. That fosters greater creative freedom, and greater honesty. And so now we actually see the underbelly of society, where as before it was always, well, hiding under our belly. One of the quotes in rotation for the right column is the following, which is quite apt:

"In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." - Paul Harvey

Posted at February 12, 2006 5:26 AM | Comments (2)

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