Welcome to Gaia! ::

As I sat at my computer bringing a violent end to the many enemies of mankind in Warhammer 40,000: The Dawn of War, my television was on one of the news channels (I can't remember which. Admittedly, they all look alike to me) after a fruitless endeavor of channel surfing. I hadn't been paying much attention to the talking head of the hour or his guest (too busy smiting aliens and heretics, ya know), but I did catch that the topic of the moment was the current condition of the United States and how things were in a sort of downward spiral. My interest was suddenly piqued when the guest stated that one of the reasons for this was a "Moral Decline" in American society.

Moral Decline.

That was a term I had heard before, but never really knew what it meant. I took to the vast, lawless expanse that is the internet to find out. I learned that a moral decline is characterized as:



Several websites that I looked up afterwards cited things such as the media, the general collapse of the family unit and selfishness among other things as being the causes to society being worse off today than it was mere decades ago.

Do you think the state of our society really is getting worse or is it all hype and overreaction?

As always, non-American members are welcome to comment. If this truly is a problem, I doubt it's one that the US faces alone.

Discuss:
1. Societal norms today versus years past.
2. Who (if anyone) is at fault for a supposed decline in our culture
2a. Is it really a decline, or something progressive?
3. Should we go back to the way things were or should people learn to deal with it and adapt?
4. The Imperium of Man and why it's better than all other factions in the 41st Millennium.

*tries to bite her tongue*
Oil is a finite resource. Finite meaning, once we use it all (and remember we BURN IT) it's gone for good. Trees grow in decades - oil takes millions of years to form. And before you come back with "biofuels" think about the child who dies of starvation each time you fill up your car with petrol.

I don't think that humans are going backwards morally. Look at the ancient Romans and how they used to lock up their women! Look at the World Wars and how they used to conscript young men - send them to war even through they were not old enough to vote!! Slavery is now a crime!

I think morally, as a global society, we're actually better than we were. It doesn't mean that there aren't sickos out there, just that we (in general) are not letting a blind eye any more. It used to be okay for a man to beat his wife and kids, now he'd go to jail for it (well, at least in Western countries cry )

Spelling and gramma, on the other hand...going backwards for sure!!

That's a good point.

I think the standards by which a lot of the articles I read go by are the Christian values the US was founded on way back when and ultimately, thats who this moral decline scare is aimed it.

Some of the stuff I read blamed America turning their back on God's teachings and excluding things like the Pledge of Allegiance (for it's "Under God" line) in public schools for the moral decline.

Without going into a big rant that could potentially offend some folks, I think those claims are ridiculous for a number of reasons.

i don´t think we are better or worse than before. but we are better informed, i mean everytimes something bad happened you know it very fast. look at China and tibed 100 years before noone of us would know that there is a conflict...

about 3 years ago we had a planned suicide here in gremany. a boy went to the school with guns, shot about 10 teachers down and then himself. it was really interesting how they tried to find someone to blame, first they looked at the arents they were normal, so they thaught and find out that just a vew months ago something similar happened in the U.S. so the media told that the boyjust copied the eopl in the U.S. well that soluion wasn´t the best, but wait the boy played some ego shooter games, yay that was the perfect solution. for the next months every crime that was done y a young person was the fault of some violence games... and now they first look at your computer and then check your family and friends xp

i don´t know if we have a moral decline, but i notice that people become easier agressive, exspecially those one who speak "slang".

you know... you may be on to something here.