Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?

[Emil Miller]

This thread is about the decline of western culture of which the pop singers, weapons and drugs that you mention are the result but not the cause; which is rooted in the 19th century but came to fruition in the 20th with the shift in the balance of power from Europe to the USA following WW1. Like many people, you attach too much importance to the aforementioned results, which are the most obvious sings of the decline, because a spurious glamour has been attached to them by certain sections of the media. Being a naughty boy is so much more exciting than being otherwise. However, setting aside such considerations, I doubt that my "limited experience" is any more limited than your own in respect of the original post.

[JCamilo]

My experience is not relevant: I am not using them to justify my conclusions. I never saw someone with a knife in a class (I have), but it is not an envidence to me that all Western civilization is in decline. When I talk about drugs, I talk about Hippies (Which I am not, I wast even born in the 60's) or Punks (I was born, but milk is white, but I do not sniff It) which I never meat. You cann't deny them and they deny your claims only this generation has problems with drugs or bullying or watever.

I also do not claim out of nowhere our sensibility towards others has decreased. It is easily to show that certain classes once excluded, are now considered in every aspect of society. If anything, Political correctness is excessive, not in decline. When I pointed it I did not talked how I threated gays, I remembered how western society did.

As for pop idols, they are no different from Coleridge saying that novels would kill literature, as anyone could write them and read them. Literature didnt die.

Weapons? If anything, we never had a society with so much control of weapon possession. If anything, we do reduced the number of private weapons, it didnt increase.

Drugs? Lets repeat: Drugs have always been a problem. It is not a signal of XIX century. People used them in old europe. People died for alcohol before. There is a reason some religions forbade icertain drugs centuries ago.

What I may know or not about the subject? More than Prince Charles. When he was young he never saw a poor kid in his school. Now he know there is poor people. World has declined.

[Emil Miller]

Having grown up in South London in the Seventies, I can tell you that we had all that. I can even tell you in which schools we had it, if you like. To quote an earlier contributor to this thread, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

I don't doubt it for one moment, the problem really took off in the sixties when the idea that reasoning with recalcitrants rather than punishing them became the norm. Your subjective and anecdotal submission gives further credence to the original post's proposition.

[MarkBastable]

I don't doubt it for one moment, the problem really took of in the sixties when the idea that reasoning with recalcitrants rather than punishing them became the norm. Your subjective and anecdotal submission gives further credence to the original post's proposition.

Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were.

Lovely of you to take part in the discussion, by the way, but don't you fear you've violated the original terms of the thread?

[OrphanPip]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk

[Emil Miller]

Out of interest, I just phoned my dad, who grew up in South London in the Forties and Fifties, and he tells me that drugs weren't that prevalent, but knives certainly were.

Lovely of you to take part in the discussion, by the way, but don't you fear you've violated the original terms of the thread?

There may have been people who had knives during that period but they were not schoolboys.
I have very much enjoyed giving my thoughts on the the subject but I don't know in which way I have violated the terms of the thread.

[AuntShecky]

I'd like to make just a couple of specific replies at the moment.

You know, I'm beginning to move more closely to the opinions expressed in the very first replies to this thread--and the later one ( #30 by Emil Miller) that this apparent "deviance defined down" (to use Daniel Patrick Moynihan's term) began decades ago and thus Toynbee (the younger) and Burnham were on to something, early. But I do think Stanley Crouch's point was timely and beautifully expressed, esp. with the reference to Corinthians. (By the bye, lately the Web is rampant with postings concerning how modern males, especially American ones, are stuck in adolescence. That's a generalization, though.)

I'd like to make just a couple of specific replies at the moment. The first is to #29 by Billl (incidentally, long time no see on the LitNet, Billl): Your points about vulgarity were well-taken. Dwight MacDonald's seminal essay, "Masscult and Midcult" apparently uses that term, but his main point was that in the mid 20th century, "middlebrow" art and literature--the kind of stuff which flatters the middle class and confirms the status quo--had begun to take over the vaunted place once occupied by "high brow" material. (I tried to write a "poem" about this subject in my anti-poetry thread in the "Personal Poetry" forum.)

Finally, whoever reminded us that anecdotal evidence is pretty much worthless is correct. Yours fooly is often guilty of that very flaw. Nevertheless, I maintain that at least part of this vulgarity arises from careless ball-dropping by parents and especially the educational school system. An anecdotal case in point: a few minutes ago I read an online article about an MLB team releasing a certain relief pitcher who had been beset, unfortunately, with performance problems. The article itself was fairly well-written, but the reader comments spoke volumes (pardon the cliché.) One commentator, whose location was listed as a high school, typed "Good riddens." [sic] Well, at least she didn't punctuate her version of "riddance" with apostrophes and five exclamation points. The "real time" of this posting was well within the time frame of a normal school day. So I have to ask: in addition to the horrible spelling mistake, why was this person surfing the 'Net instead of paying attention in class?

[Emil Miller]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk

The first sentence doesn't surprise me at all. The countries mentioned in the second are those that have either been occupied by the USA or have come under the hegemony of the US dollar. This is already changing and in the coming decades, 'pop culture', which is directly connected to American influence, will wain as China replaces the US as the World's dominant economic power and eschews the fag end of Western civilisation while retaining those elements that still have some value.
While today's pop music is all pervasive in the West, on those occasions when I have been in China I haven't noticed that to be the case.
What I have noticed is a very great interest in classical music and you can rest assured that strumming a guitar has little kudos in comparison to playing the piano, violin or virtually any other instrument.
Japan and Korea may take longer in ditching their Americanisation because they have been subject to the aforementioned occupation, but it is inevitable that they will do so as Chinese influence spreads throughout the region.

[JCamilo]

I don't see how pop music is a sign of Western cultural decline. Have you heard Korean, Chinese or Japanese pop music? I think we're winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5QEWdHchk

It is because it is pop, change your name to OrphanPop and you will be declining...

[LitNetIsGreat]

I agree, and am appalled at notices in public hospitals advising that no weapons are allowed inside and that, as a result, there is a security door and guard to check.

Is that a sign of declining culture, or just larger population thence more scumbags? I tend to think the latter, but I also don't think it has a bearing on cultural decline.

Well I was speaking about a social decline specifically, but I suppose you could question what the impact of postmodernism and technology is having on society, it would be an interesting angle I think. Anyway, whether this is a cultural or a social decline, it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today and that is my argument, certainly in the UK, which is fast becoming one of the worst countries in Europe.

[Emil Miller]

... it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today .

No, you are wrong Neely. That's just your perception. Never mind though, soon someone will roll out some statistics to prove that everything in the garden is lovely. It will make you feel so much better.

[Jozanny]

If, Aunt, you might be interested in what perspectives a literary author might have to offer on the issue of cultural disintegration, you might try reading A.S. Byatt's "Raw Material", which is a very subtle critique of contemporary British suburban norms.

American culture has been decadent since the death of Cotton Mather, and our modern urban violence is in part the fault of near absolutist corporate models toward gun manufacture, one that has spread like a cancer.

I'd look for a more precise thesis about what answers you're after.

[Paulclem]

Well I was speaking about a social decline specifically, but I suppose you could question what the impact of postmodernism and technology is having on society, it would be an interesting angle I think. Anyway, whether this is a cultural or a social decline, it seems to me that there is a general lack of respect in society today and that is my argument, certainly in the UK, which is fast becoming one of the worst countries in Europe.

I also grew up in the seventies, and yes my evidence is partly anecdotal, but it is also based on the news. Football hooliganism was much, much worse than it is today. That my well be because the policing of games is much better than it was then, but the impulse to violence by young men was by no means weaker. My Dad - now deceased - used to tell me of fights he had in the 1950's during the Teddy boy era. (He was rough all his life - he had his last fight aged 55).

I'm pretty sure that the midle aged of that era believed that the world was going to pot with the sight of DA bedecked gangly young men in beetecrushers scrapping in the streets. Those same teddy boys probably bewailed the advent of long haired hippies and then - horror of horror - punk.

As Mark has claimed earlier on in the thread - it's an old story - going back to Egypt as St Lukes has pointed out. I think, as a middle aged man who was never in touch much with culture when young, that the challenge is to maintain an uncritical and positive view where I can. How can I maintain an understanding which can couple with the positive aspects they are expressing. Kids are much more in touch about the environment, racism and ay rights. Much more than my generation were.

It is so easy to condemn young people and hardly realise that they are going through much the same internal changes as we as did - albeit in ways we didn't and perhaps more loudly. Just look at our seniors 20 or 30 years older and how difficult it is for them to understand us and us them. We can talk, but our whole terms of reference are different. I find their assumptions are frequently not mine, as mine are not the young of today.

I see the statement that culture is becoming trash as a failure to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Of course the loud and vulgar get airspace -that seems to be what the media thinks we want to read about - perhaps to pander to the view that culture is becoming trash. Yet there are always people who are quietly developing in the background and beginning new movements.

[Emil Miller]

Civil unrest is often a precursor to decline, even if the roots of the decline are due to other factors. Egypt is a good example. Rome is another.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Paul, it’s a good argument and I can certainly see positives today, don’t get me wrong. There are obvious pluses such as the greater tolerance towards minorities and some opportunities for certain things, but I can’t help but come from a pessimistic angle. True, perhaps I am getting old and beginning to see the world in a different way, maybe I’m more attune to things being a father or maybe I’m just under the weight of working in a “challenging” school. However, I can’t help witnessing what I see as a general decline in behaviour and common decency, not just in school but around and about.

As I said before, what sort of society has to remind people not to attack the people who are trying to help them? Quite ridiculous.

It’s impossible to really look at crime statistics over the last 50 years with any degree of certainty. You can find anything between an eighteen to fourfold increase in recorded crime over such a period, but this is recorded crime. The obvious counter-argument is that more crime is recorded due to greater ease of reporting crime and the need for insurance claims, police efficiency, the invent of cyber crime etc, etc. So as ever statistics are somewhat unreliable even if they do suggest a dramatic increase in crime in this period.

What I go on is my day-to-day dealings with people, with teens I suppose. Yes, I take into account the difficult social backgrounds of some, of the issues they may face, but still, common decency seems to be a thing that is not that common. It just seems that what passes for the “norm” in behaviour and general attitude just wouldn’t have stuck ten years or so ago.