Are there more "bad people" today than 30-40-50 years ago? (house, feel)

[Calvert Hall '62]

Just personal observation: The city of Baltimore with 600,000+ people has 200-300 murders a year. In 1960, the city had just under a million population. I don't know what the murder rate was in the city, but the entire State had under 200. One source listed 105 for the State, another 132. So you can't blame it on overcrowding. In 1960, I felt free to walk anywhere in the city; today I wouldn't get near it unless escorted by a platoon of recon US Marines.


I don't recall all these mass shootings that are so common today, even at elementary schools.


In my non-scientific opinion, people are far more rotten today. And I don't know the reason.

[Cantabridgienne]

Older people have been complaining about the decline of mankind since the beginning of time. Nothing new, older people complain a lot.

[cdnirene]

Originally Posted by Cantabridgienne

Older people have been complaining about the decline of mankind since the beginning of time. Nothing new, older people complain a lot.

Very true:

Hesiod, 8th century BC

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.

Plato, 4th Century BC

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 1274

The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.

[karibear]

Change is often painful. I don't think there are more good or bad people now as opposed to then, we are just bombarded with biased news stories. Some laws have been passed that address problems from back when, some laws have been passed that go way too far along the lines of trying to legislate morality. Sometimes people think their opinions should be laws.
Two examples from my own life:
1. I had planned to be a social worker until I volunteered at a halfway house and got to know the social worker there. He came in one day totally bummed. Turned out one of his clients' baby girl - less than 1 year old - was raped by the client's BF. The baby did survive, after a lot of surgery, but the client refused to press charges because 'he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing.' And the way the law was then, the baby was going to be sent right back home from the hospital. I couldn't deal with anything like that. Now there are laws that protect the ones who don't fall through the cracks. Laws regarding child protection are one thing, laws that try to dictate style of parenting are another.
2. While I was living in AZ, a middle aged woman accosted another woman who was waiting in line ahead of her. The accoster said she hadn't wanted to interrupt the phone call, but the other one should know she lived in America now and should learn English. The accosted said she'd been speaking to her grandmother in Navaho, and if hearing English was so important to her, she might want to go back to England.
While English is the most common language in the US, there is no official requirement in the US Constitution. I see a lot of garbage on the web claiming that for anyone born in the US, English is their primary language. From my own time in AK (30+ years), I can guarantee that's not true. A lot of rural, remote villages still spoke their native tongue and a lot of people I knew didn't learn English until they started school.
My own grandmother, who was born in west central Illinois, spoke what she called Low German at home, High German at church, and English at school. She also taught English at the church's Sunday school, for those who wanted to learn it. From what I've learned since, High German is what we know as German, and Low German was a lot closer to being Yiddish.

[silibran]

Originally Posted by Calvert Hall '62

Just personal observation: The city of Baltimore with 600,000+ people has 200-300 murders a year. In 1960, the city had just under a million population. I don't know what the murder rate was in the city, but the entire State had under 200. One source listed 105 for the State, another 132. So you can't blame it on overcrowding. In 1960, I felt free to walk anywhere in the city; today I wouldn't get near it unless escorted by a platoon of recon US Marines.


I don't recall all these mass shootings that are so common today, even at elementary schools.


In my non-scientific opinion, people are far more rotten today. And I don't know the reason.

This is true about mass shootings. But there are more guns than ever before. And there are all the examples of mass shootings, which somehow resonate with unbalanced people and somehow incite them to do same. At least that's my theory.

There has always been violence though. And as we now know, child abuse, and child endangerment. And we haven't learned to treat people with severe mental illness properly.

[Zeurich]

In their time social media was not exist so not everything was popular like today ,and it is possible they live with a criminal next door.

[StAcKhOuSe]

yeah, people are awful...and they have gotten worse since the thread was made in 2007.

more rudeness, more entitlement, more narcissism, more stupid reality shows, more pop music that makes you dumber. everybody is offended over the stupidest **** trying to push their PC agenda on others. and then we have people the other side which wants to be edgy in order to get attention because their overworked parents didn't pay attention to them. 0.3% of the population have a gender crisis and have got the government involved in their transgender exceptionalism regarding using certain bathrooms....smh. speaking of which, bruce jenner is a woman now(lol i think). flip a quarter, which bathroom will he use? yah, that same dude on the wheaties cereal boxes that you remember. and the rest of that family is a bunch of attention seeking harlots that have their own puppet network called MTV. gee, i didnt know being rich was as easy as making a sex tape with a rapper. maybe i should drop a line to lil kim, nikki minaj, or that icky azalea chick. introverts don't want to be judged as stuck up or shy and have an attitude towards the loud mouth type A personalities whining like little babies because they get judged too much. a true introvert doesn't give a rat's furry arse what most others think about them. oh, you think i am stuck up, shy, or whatever because i dont talk to you that much. dont look at me when your brakes in your car suddenly don't work. we also have offended mothers that want to whip out their boobs in public places to breastfeed their babies, yet get all offended when men stare or other women tell them there is a more private place you can do that. and everybody is staring at their phones like possessed automatons. on second thought, public breastfeeders might be safe, nobody will notice anyway in about three years. and then we got the older generation of hypocrites complaining about the younger generation of awful people which THEY were responsible for raising into the apathetic, entitled, inconsiderate chumps that they are because those parents were too busy working or doing drugs to care. we have 300 million people in america, and our options for the next president is a woman who lied about emails(and benghazi), whose husband ex president got caught getting oral sex. that was his only mistake(besides nafta). and then we have trump who has filed for bankruptcy a half dozen times, hates women, and wants to build a wall on the US mexican border. he is dreaming if he thinks mexico will foot the bill for that lol. you would think america learned their lesson from bush, who jacked up the national debt by calling everyone in the middle east and asia the "axis of evil" and subsequently going to war with everyone. and obama, who took that to the next level by doubling it with turning the whole country into a welfare state. now we got healthcare that costs as much as rent because of "obamacare", ironically called the affordable care act(LOL). this is all the result of the poor, less intelligent people reproducing at a higher rate than normal or above average intelligent people. the answer to this is population control, but "god" forbid we should infringe upon those freedoms because it's not "politically correct". *drops mic*

[Aquarius37]

At least it's never been a better time to be a nihilist!

I'm not a breeder, so don't care about the future of our country. Just sitting back for the ride with popcorn.

[Cantabridgienne]

Originally Posted by StAcKhOuSe

yeah, people are awful...and they have gotten worse since the thread was made in 2007.

more rudeness, more entitlement, more narcissism, more stupid reality shows, more pop music that makes you dumber. everybody is offended over the stupidest **** trying to push their PC agenda on others. and then we have people the other side which wants to be edgy in order to get attention because their overworked parents didn't pay attention to them. 0.3% of the population have a gender crisis and have got the government involved in their transgender exceptionalism regarding using certain bathrooms....smh. speaking of which, bruce jenner is a woman now(lol i think). flip a quarter, which bathroom will he use? yah, that same dude on the wheaties cereal boxes that you remember. and the rest of that family is a bunch of attention seeking harlots that have their own puppet network called MTV. gee, i didnt know being rich was as easy as making a sex tape with a rapper. maybe i should drop a line to lil kim, nikki minaj, or that icky azalea chick. introverts don't want to be judged as stuck up or shy and have an attitude towards the loud mouth type A personalities whining like little babies because they get judged too much. a true introvert doesn't give a rat's furry arse what most others think about them. oh, you think i am stuck up, shy, or whatever because i dont talk to you that much. dont look at me when your brakes in your car suddenly don't work. we also have offended mothers that want to whip out their boobs in public places to breastfeed their babies, yet get all offended when men stare or other women tell them there is a more private place you can do that. and everybody is staring at their phones like possessed automatons. on second thought, public breastfeeders might be safe, nobody will notice anyway in about three years. and then we got the older generation of hypocrites complaining about the younger generation of awful people which THEY were responsible for raising into the apathetic, entitled, inconsiderate chumps that they are because those parents were too busy working or doing drugs to care. we have 300 million people in america, and our options for the next president is a woman who lied about emails(and benghazi), whose husband ex president got caught getting oral sex. that was his only mistake(besides nafta). and then we have trump who has filed for bankruptcy a half dozen times, hates women, and wants to build a wall on the US mexican border. he is dreaming if he thinks mexico will foot the bill for that lol. you would think america learned their lesson from bush, who jacked up the national debt by calling everyone in the middle east and asia the "axis of evil" and subsequently going to war with everyone. and obama, who took that to the next level by doubling it with turning the whole country into a welfare state. now we got healthcare that costs as much as rent because of "obamacare", ironically called the affordable care act(LOL). this is all the result of the poor, less intelligent people reproducing at a higher rate than normal or above average intelligent people. the answer to this is population control, but "god" forbid we should infringe upon those freedoms because it's not "politically correct". *drops mic*

So, why are you and your family and your friends so terrible now?

[Aquarius37]

I should edit that to say, I don't really care about the future of Earth... Not America in particular, I don't hate America or anything like that.