OT 01/09/04 The world is going to pot

[Calpitor]

The other day I went into a local Blockbusters retail outlet. In the car I parked next to were 3 passengers, the driver had presumably the same intentions as me in and out and on my way. I got the DVD I was after and got back to my in less than five minutes. (Pretty good service for Blockbusters) I was so quick I beat the driver of the neighbouring car back. To my surprise I found that some pinhead had backed in to the rear end of both of our cars breaking my right rear tail light and my neghbour's rear left tail light as well as some damage to the fenders and bumpers of both cars then simply drove away. When I asked the 3 teenagers what they saw left me dumbfounded.

Yeah man it was a black or blue or green SUV, station wagon or mini van depending on which teenager you asked. They all agreed on one thing the driver got out checked the damage looked around, laughed got back in his car and left. I, or I should say we asked because not long after my arrival the other driver appeared, what the guy looked like or for the liscence plate number they agreed on something else. Not my car man don't get me involved!

Maybe I'm getting old but the way I was brought up you stand up and hold yourself accountable when you screw up and even higher on the scale when a freind or his property is wronged you pound the cr@p out the creep doing so.

OK rant over. Or on another note how about this poser who claimed to have lost a winning ticket to a super lottery? While this mini drama fianlly unfolds in the end will she end up with anything more than the ridicule of being exposed as the fraud she is? Maybe a small fine probably nothing more.

[frebo]

i think she withdrew her claim for it today

[Calpitor]

Yeah yesterday she came clean and admitted she was a fraud but is that the end if the story? She tried to defraud both the winner and the lottery and most likely she just slide back into anonymity.

This isn't what the post was supposed to be about BTW. There is a bigger question here? Where have our morals gone or where are they going to?

[Ridgerunr]

Morals? What morals? As long as people sit back and let their kids get away with what they want,because the parents can't be bothered. And,,the 'people' keep letting the media get away with the cr*p they do,including the violent and sexually oriented video games,movies,Television programs,etc. and the bottom line for this being the G*d almighty dollar. Morals will be headed directly to h*ll in a hand basket!!! Did I hear someone say 'apathy'?

[jmtjet]

I'm getting old now, but when I was a young lad your elders were people you looked up to. Now days the teenagers and older young people show nothing but disrespect for the older people.They steal, rob, swindle, mug and murder old people for money or just for fun. Not all kids mind you, just a minority, but enough to give all a bad name. When was the last time you saw a tennager hold a door for an elderly lady trying to get into the mall? Most likely they knocked her down getting out.

My two cents.

[Train]

Morales.
Why is the Dept of Labor telling employers how to get around the minimum wage thing?

Why are employers exporting jobs?

Simple, they want fully trained employees who will work at or below minimum wage.

Being a forklift operator pays more than most networking jobs now.

[DuaneB]

Forklift Operator - now there's a job that can't be exported. I think I'll look into it.

[DELTREE]

All of you folks are right on the mark, but too many are getting away from GOD and doing their own thing.I hope you find that creep that hit your car?
Take Care
May God bless America.

[DoneWithMacs]

Well...I won't steal your thunder by diverting everyone to MY thread but I hear ya...it used to be that in business you agreed with a handshake and honored verbal agreements~ not anymore. I gave 6 months of my time for free to a group I thought of as "good honest community minded folk" and boy oh boy did I get boned! My technical skills were used, abused and discarded without so much as a...parting handshake or verbal "goodbye".

Don't get cynical though...you have a duty to yourself to chalk it up to someone else's puerility or lack of ethics and moral conduct. It doesn't reflect badly on YOU that some dork hit your car and made the decision to "try and get away with it".

I've noticed that people can really cause you a lot of grief and pain in the short run, but years later, THEY are the ones who have ulcers, back taxes, prison sentences, alimony...not you.

Take care my friend, and chin up There IS justice in life, its just not always instantantaneous

DWM

[K G G]

As long as the Bad-Guys/Gals can get away with ridiculous lawsuits (see Darwin Awards) or generally are allowed to deny their responsibility for their own actions...
As long as the Good-Guys/Gals can get canned for trying to do good...
... there's little room for Morale development IMO.

Yet, I agree with DoneWithMacs statement:

...There IS justice in life, its just not always instantaneous

Living with a clear conscience and being happy IS rewarding.

[user595212]

Calpitor, in some ways I agree with you. People can be real creeps. Very entitled, explosive and without the most basic sort of manners or class that I was raised to show and to expect. People are crude, rude and lewd. (Ha, didn't mean to rhyme that -- sure came out nice though.) Many times I think the incidence of antisocial personality disorder (what most criminals have and unfortunately, a fair proportion of the population out there [dishearteningly prevalent) and how really it is incurable -- so far anyway. For most people who have it.

As I remember telling a couple of clients, as little as they could believe it at the time I am sure, it was way better for them to have a "mood disorder" (such as depression) rather than a personality disorder. With mood disorders, you have days or hours when you are not depressed. Enough to remember good times. And when you feel good, you are OK. For someone with a personality disorder, it is almost as if there is no part of their personality that is not disordered and dysfunctional. There is nothing but dysfunction! They are a shell of a self, if they ever had one. I found it scary. Most therapists wring their hands over personality-disordered or "Axis II" patients, because they are the most difficult, intransigent and unmotivated ones, especially if the disorder is severe (I've seen some that were pretty bad; luckily, or unluckily, several were not my patients but one or both parents!!! Aaaggggh).

But I digress. It seems to me that personality disorders have become more entrenched and more rampant. Hence your encounter at Blockbuster. Someone without a soul or a conscience. Perhaps evil through and through. That is someone who already may be condemned to h***.

On the other hand -- similar sorts of things have been written about people throughout history!! I seem to recall a quotation from someone in ancient Greece or Rome -- wish I could remember where. Something to the effect of how bad young people were in particular -- lawless, disobedient, drunken, etc.

And then too, I can tell you that from my social policy and theory courses, conditions in America and elsewhere were at points in our histories way worse than they are today, despite all the bad. Things like roaming packs of criminals. Widespread drunkenness. Severe unemployment. Remember the Elizabethan poor laws? So much of our social policy has echoes of that. That being, of course, of drawing a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. Following on that, the idea that somehow, poor people were to blame for it. It was their dissolute lives that made them poor. With no attention to the fact that often it is the economic policies and structures of a society that excluded the many and privileged the few.

Health care was way worse. No vaccines, no realization that infection could kill (my great-grandmother died in childbirth because there was little realization until relatively recently that it was critical to keep conditions sterile. Doctors brought the germs of every other patient into the process of helping women give birth, and countless women died from infection as a result. Needlessly.). And numerous other advances that couldn't be listed quickly. As for access to health care, I honestly think that despite the problems we have, it is still much better than it has been in some eras. For instance, today a pregnant woman without funds or insurance need merely register at a prenatal clinic attached to a hospital, and the hospital is obligated by federal law to treat her and let her deliver there. They try and qualify the woman for medical assistance (Medicaid) while she is their patient, but this almost invariably is achieved and there is no requirement that she have the insurance before she comes. They just want her to come.

So this is a good-news, bad-news situation. It seems to us who have been in the world for a short time (compared to all those through history), and it takes the perspective of probably 50 more years for us to become reconciled to it.

It is very disheartening, though, to see and experience how nasty people can be.

And at the same time, people are good. And when they're good, they've above and beyond . . . For instance (and I could certainly think of others but it's 5:20 in the morning!), recently a colleague of mine donated one of her kidneys to her sister-in-law!! I was floored. I thought it was so wonderful and generous and brave and top-notch of her. I've known Julie for years but never really had the opportunity to see this side of her (though she's a nice person). I guess she must be very close to her sister-in-law, but my God! How many people do you know who would take the chance of always having the one healthy kidney to give away one she had?

Cheers
Wendy

[OilPatch197]

getting old now, but when I was a young lad your elders were people you looked up to. Now days the teenagers and older young people show nothing but disrespect for the older people.They steal, rob, swindle, mug and murder old people for money or just for fun. Not all kids mind you, just a minority, but enough to give all a bad name. When was the last time you saw a tennager hold a door for an elderly lady trying to get into the mall? Most likely they knocked her down getting out.

I would have to blame the creation of Rock n' Roll, why? Well Rock n' Roll was the FIRST kind of music that the old folks didn't like, and it put a division between youth and elders, and rock n' roll evolved to Rock, Pop, etc.

[Calpitor]

Originally posted by OilPatch197
I would have to blame the creation of Rock n' Roll, why? Well Rock n' Roll was the FIRST kind of music that the old folks didn't like, and it put a division between youth and elders, and rock n' roll evolved to Rock, Pop, etc.

I fondly remember Timothy Leary's advice "Never trust anyone anyone older than 30." Simply put it meant to question the establishment and its values but there were always intrinsic truths eveyone stood by. The difference between right and wrong and to speak out loudly against wrongs. We just disagreed over some of things we found to be wrong.

[SuperSparks]

I blame the appalling lowering of education standards. I watched an interesting experiment on TV recently, where thay sent some of today's very brightest pupils to a school for a few weeks where they were subjected to the 1950's education curriculum. Nearly all of these 16 year-olds - all A students - couldn't pass the same 11+ exam that I passed in 1966 at age 11. Some failed dismally. We now have the situation that university entrants are illiterate and innumerate, at least by my standards, and I only went to technical college for my further education. Employers are constantly complaining - after all it's not unreasonable for a university graduate to be able to write a grammatical sentence.

So if these are the people at the very top of today's society, it's probably no wonder that the people at the bottom behave as they do. And it gets worse, because they're incapable of bringing up their children properly, who in turn can't bring up their own offspring. If I had my way I'd make people pass an exam before they're allowed to have any kids.

And it doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be any deterrent to any act of misbehaviour these days - at least on this side of the pond. Judges seem to still know how to sentence people appropriately in the States, like that 1350 year sentence for that child pornographer. Over here he'd probably have got 4 years if he got a really strict judge.

You're dead right Calpitor, the world is going to pot.

[OilPatch197]

So if these are the people at the very top of today's society, it's probably no wonder that the people at the bottom behave as they do. And it gets worse, because they're incapable of bringing up their children properly, who in turn can't bring up their own offspring. If I had my way I'd make people pass an exam before they're allowed to have any kids.

They don't have to bring up their own offspring, they let the GOVERMENT do it! now we know why the brightest kids in America is HOME SCHOOLED not GOVERMENT SCREWED.

I fondly remember Timothy Leary's advice "Never trust anyone anyone older than 30." Simply put it meant to question the establishment and its values but there were always intrinsic truths eveyone stood by. The difference between right and wrong and to speak out loudly against wrongs. We just disagreed over some of things we found to be wrong.

Could it Be as each gereration is passing the youth is STILL questioning people over 30, and those question their elders, perhaps we have questioned to the Point of no Return? Clearly the Questioning is still going, and nowdays you can't set the kid right by nipping them in the bud, that's "abuse" as you can see the questioning dun gone into goverment, and that will be a bear to remove.