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A question about morality and media

#61
two fingers said:
So, are you saying that there AREN'T things in this world that are just plain old wrong?
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There are things that are wrong, but something's not simply wrong because it's supposably "self-evident." That's as an intellectually easy dodge as taking the stance that everything is "relative," so therefore it doesn't exist.

As far as success, I think today's characterisation of successful people is much different from those of the 60's. Back then it was more about "the man" trying to impose rules and regulations on them, rather than their material wealth in and of itself. They were more concerned about the POWER of those individuals over them, rather than who has how much.
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Do you honestly think those things are not entwined? Most every sociologist working from a conflict theory perspective sees wealth and power as inextricably linked.

As for being melodramatic, answer this. Why in the world would someone want to become what they have been "taught" is evil? The hippies from the 60's who went on to become yuppies mostly wound up not really changing their world view. They still pound out the "I'm OK you're OK" way of thinking, only with a larger platform on which to preach it. Again, in my view, the hippie movement was never about money, other than the fact that it happened to be wealthy people who were imposing harsh rules and regulations on their lifestyles. But it was the rules (and policies such as going to war etc.), not the cash, they were angry at. So those people never really flip-flopped on their views.
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See above statement.

In context, that's a lot different from the view of success being evil altogether that's pounded into their heads at every turn these days.
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Society isn't a homogenous monolith. I can name many people and institutions who argue that success is a good thing. The teachings of the German social theorist with the same name as Groucho is prevalent, but so are the teachings of the Russian novelist who wrote about railroads.
 
#64
Relic said:
Though this seems to be a part of every discussion, I figured that Id throw it out there again - all of this aforementioned stuff yet in spite of it, we still live in the safest era of human history statistically speaking, no?
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I'm going to leave the morality discussion to the threads in the lobby, but I wanted to comment here. It depends a lot on what you mean by "safest era." Life expectancies are certainly higher now, we're a lot less likely to starve to death or die of disease. But the issues at stake in this thread would mean death caused by human agency - violence.

The problem is that it's darn near impossible to get reliable statistics on crime in premodern societies because no one was keeping anything like modern records, and much of the records that were kept have not survived the ravages of time. I teach a course on medieval violence, and actually some studies have been done trying to get usable statistics out of medieval English court records. I don't have the numbers at hand, but the overall conclusion was that you were about as likely to be murdered in medieval England (based on the limited snapshots that are possible) as you are in the modern US (which, if I remember right, is more than in modern England). So by that measure, we actually aren't much less violent than we used to be.

On the other hand, medieval would-be murderers had to rely on swords, knives and poisons, not guns, so the failure rate of attempted murders (which we have no way to measure) was probably higher in the Middle Ages. If that assumption is valid, then there probably was a higher proportion of would-be murderers in the medieval population than there is today. For what it's worth. So I guess, yeah, we probably are somewhat safer from human violence today -but not hugely, off-the-chart safer.
 
#67
4dog said:
Hey now fellas dont be ganging up on me, i can move around a bit just like any cat, no bb's please. 4dog dont like bein yer whippin boy, lol.
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Lol, you might be one of my favorite "new" TBers.

4dog said:
And furthermore, lumping me in with that caldoleelunctious fella , that was just low , low i say!
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No one here would ever do that!
 
#73
honor_societies.png
 
#77
UncleFluffy said:
But then aren't you getting close to saying that nothing is inherently anything? All labels are created by human beings.
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I'll say it. Morality is defined by societies on an ad hoc basis. Morality evolves with the times so that at any given moment, old moralites are being abandoned while new ones take their place.

The foundation for creating and maintaining strong moral value is the practical uses that it has for any given society. Hunter gatherers have different needs than people who live in cities and their respective moral values reflect this.

Western civilization has only recently made violent video games readily available to almost any child who has the capacity to operate the game console. Want to run around and beat up or kill random people on the street with no consequenses? Want to see them suffer and die in bloody, graphic HiDef? Just push "play". Ages 5 and up.

With this new reality, a need for stronger parenting emerges. When children are surrounded by strong role models who teach good character by practicing it, they grow up to emulate this behavior. They are more influenced by the strong role models who take an active interest in the child's development than in the amoral sludge that comes out of their TV or computer. In the absence of influence from strong role modeks, the values from the video games and from other popular entertainment become instilled by default. Sadly, this happens too often because it's so easy to let the boob tube babysit for you.
 
#79
I agree with all the guys that say it's all about parenting. And it's not only about telling them what is right or wrong but teach them to differentiate it by themselves and most importantly lead by example. I have a cool story about this, last weekend we got to babysit a 7 yo kid for a whole weekend. I noticed that whenever he was watching TV in the mornings he would watch Nickelodeon, but at night he would only watch Disney Channel, when I asked abut it he said: "Because at night Nick has "Adult Swing" and I'm not supposed to watch it, that is why it is called "Adult Swing"" - to do the right thing when your parents (or anybody) is watching is good I guess, but to do it when nobody is watching ... that is the tricky part.
 

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