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I take the view that western society has regressed and become worse than in the past, and that people have become more selfish than they use to be.
Whenever I say this, it's a rule of thumb that somebody shows up and says "your just old and are saying the same thing people said in this past. This is nothing new".
But I don't ever hear any actual arguments for this view, just generic claims that I am old and that people use to say this in the past. There is, however, plenty of actual research showing real negative trends:
" The Narcissistic Personality Inventory consists of 40 items. On each item the respondent chooses whether they agree with one statement or another: one of those statements is narcissistic and the other is not. So, for example, 'If I ruled the world it would be a better place' is the narcissistic statement, and then the non-narcissistic one is, 'Ruling the world scares the hell out of me'.
Professor Twenge and Campbell analysed data from 15,000 American college students who responded to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory before 2006. They found that there was a relationship between the birth year of the people filling out the scale and their narcissism score, and those narcissism scores were significantly higher in the 2000s than they were in the 1980s and 1990s.
To make sure that the results weren’t due to other factors, they used subjects who were all about the same age, ethnicity and gender over that time period."
"
In the area of vanity, for example, they observe that plastic surgery rates in the US have gone through the roof since the late 1990s. Even invasive procedures such as breast augmentation or liposuction have increased two or three times over this time period."
But it's all merely in my head cus I'm old right?
The funny thing is, I am not even that old. I recently turned 24 years old. That isn't very old, is it? Even as a young man I can tell that people are considerably worse now even compared to just 10 or so years ago. By far one of the biggest blights of modern society is social media and how people don't even seem to care for talking to each other face to face anymore because it's "too time consuming".
So, for those of you who feel that modern western culture isn't devolving into a piece of crap, perhaps you care to give some actual arguments instead of just calling me old?
The idea of some golden age where everyone was noble, unselfish and fair is a fairytale. That world never existed.
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Originally Posted by camaro69
Without a doubt society has turned into me, me and me.
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Originally Posted by desertdetroiter
Nonsense. Offer proof.
DD i am sure you are about the same age as i am, and an remember when society wasnt about just me. back in the day drivers were more courteous for example. people would let other people into traffic. today when someone sees a turn signal, instead of letting someone in to change lanes, they speed up and prevent that lane change.
and how about things like letting someone who has a couple of items cut in line at the cashier. to day you dont see that happening.
back in our day people mostly stood up to what they said. if they made a deal the honored it. that doesnt happen as much today.
these days people are less polite than they were thirty years ago.
to an extent though you are right, this is nothing new, as these changes have happened over several generations, but it seems the current generation could use some proper socializing.
The idea of some golden age where everyone was noble, unselfish and fair is a fairytale. That world never existed.
And I never said the old world was perfect. I said it has gotten worse.
Sure, there may not be as many wars anymore, but the ONLY reason for that is nukes make it kind of not possible to do anymore. Have you seen much that suggests current world politicians are less willing to use force when needed?
Most of the old problems that have gone have been problems that relate to technology. Decease and poverty has decreased because of advances in industry and technology, but things relating to human morality has gotten worse in a great deal of ways if you compare it to what it was even just a few decades ago.
Even if things like selfish and arrogant people still existed in the past, it's very difficult to argue that things like social media, modern super-materialism, and general lack of social discipline haven't contributed to a decline in western morality.
The way I see it there are 2 things that can be largely blamed on western decline: Increased standards of living which translates into more material prosperity which in return translates into increased glorification of materialism, and overly liberal social views making just do what they want without regard for others.
You can like to yourself and tell yourself that nothing has changed, but you would be wrong.
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