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Why Americans Are So Awful to One Another

I agree with Strick that there's only so much time in the day and a David Brooks article isn't my ideal way to spend those precious minutes. I will say as a generality that the hyper-capitalistic society we have put together for ourselves encourages a lot of the behavior that propagates a question such as "Why are Americans so awful to one another?" If the only measure of success and happiness is to have the most money and resources, everyone else be damned, then it only logically follows that Americans will do what it takes to look out for number one.

Also Trump and the Fox News propaganda machine infected the brains of tens of millions of Americans with his "us against them" ideology and we are a long way from recovering from that. But that's a Tunnels issue.
 
I think a main contributor, separate from the the compounding social media aspect, is cell phones themselves. It used to be that you had to interact with people in person to get through daily life. You'd have to run errands, wait in line, and talk to people in person as part of simply living. If you act like a douche in those situations, daily life is frustrating. Now, we can order shit online even while standing in the store and never talk to anyone. "Contactless" is now somehow seen as desirable.

It used to be that the person standing off by themselves looking down and not talking to anyone was the "loser" that nobody wanted to be. Now, anywhere you go in a public setting, 95% of the people are by themselves looking down at their phones, and the perceived weirdos are the 5% actually trying to strike up a conversation.
 
I teach my kids the golden rule and I try my best to live by the golden rule.

The only exception to this is your employer. You should not apply the golden rule to your employer as your employer will never give a fuck about you. Look at the Zalatoris situation: PGA played the moral card and told Zalatoris not to take money from “the bad guys” (LIV) and then turns around and takes it themselves.

Don’t pull a Zalatoris and apply the golden rule to your employer. Maybe there are a few additional exceptions like DonaldRoss, but otherwise, apply the golden rule everywhere else.
 
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myDeaconmyhand said:
I just found a new David Brooks article from the Atlantic titled “How America Got Mean” that really delves deep into the history of moral education in our country, and how as a people we have stopped training ourselves to be good people, and have instead generally just trusted that our human nature as individuals would lead us to become moral adults, but how that has mostly led us to be sad, angry, and self serving. I don’t agree with every point made, but on the whole I think it’s a very worthwhile essay.

For anyone who is immediately disagreeing with the title of the essay, I would like to premise this by saying that America on the whole has always been “mean”, but I think we can all move beyond that general truth to recognize that their has been a definitive structural/philosophical change

apple.news

Why Americans Are So Awful to One Another — The Atlantic

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.
apple.news apple.news
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I feel like the big change was sometime in the mid 90's, where our society essentially began catering to gangsters. So pretty much all of Gen Z has spent their entire lives living in a Gangster's Paradise, and this has had a profound effect on the moral fabric of our country. Most of this generation if asked to list their primary concerns in order would either go with Power and then Money, or Money and then Power. They are consumed by these things every minute or every hour. Come dinner time, they aren't spending time with their families in the kitchen, they're running around in the gig economy driving an Uber or delivering a sandwich and not paying attention or even know what their families are cooking for dinner.

I do think this article is spot on, however it doesn't seem to address who is actually going to be there to teach these morals, and further who is going to teach the teachers? Because if they don't understand it, how can they reach the rest of us? Sadly, I suspect they can't learn what it is they need to learn and thus they won't. Therefore, the rest of society is going to be out of luck.
 
It's sad that ultimately most people can't see that the ones that are being hurt are you and me.
 
like the writers strike

it's really going to delay Season 3 of Strange New Worlds which is super inconvenient
 
First you get the Money. Then you get the Power. After you get the Power, people will Respect you. That’s the key to life. You’ll be eating right. You can sleep at night.
 
dartsndeacs said:
I feel like the big change was sometime in the mid 90's, where our society essentially began catering to gangsters. So pretty much all of Gen Z has spent their entire lives living in a Gangster's Paradise, and this has had a profound effect on the moral fabric of our country. Most of this generation if asked to list their primary concerns in order would either go with Power and then Money, or Money and then Power. They are consumed by these things every minute or every hour. Come dinner time, they aren't spending time with their families in the kitchen, they're running around in the gig economy driving an Uber or delivering a sandwich and not paying attention or even know what their families are cooking for dinner.

I do think this article is spot on, however it doesn't seem to address who is actually going to be there to teach these morals, and further who is going to teach the teachers? Because if they don't understand it, how can they reach the rest of us? Sadly, I suspect they can't learn what it is they need to learn and thus they won't. Therefore, the rest of society is going to be out of luck.
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you are one educated fool
 
In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.
 
PhDeac said:
First you get the Money. Then you get the Power. After you get the Power, people will Respect you. That’s the key to life. You’ll be eating right. You can sleep at night.
Click to expand...
The last time that I checked
First get the money then respect
Then the power, and the hoes come next

But that's just the last time that I checked.
 
dartsndeacs said:
I feel like the big change was sometime in the mid 90's, where our society essentially began catering to gangsters. So pretty much all of Gen Z has spent their entire lives living in a Gangster's Paradise, and this has had a profound effect on the moral fabric of our country. Most of this generation if asked to list their primary concerns in order would either go with Power and then Money, or Money and then Power. They are consumed by these things every minute or every hour. Come dinner time, they aren't spending time with their families in the kitchen, they're running around in the gig economy driving an Uber or delivering a sandwich and not paying attention or even know what their families are cooking for dinner.

I do think this article is spot on, however it doesn't seem to address who is actually going to be there to teach these morals, and further who is going to teach the teachers? Because if they don't understand it, how can they reach the rest of us? Sadly, I suspect they can't learn what it is they need to learn and thus they won't. Therefore, the rest of society is going to be out of luck.
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Our society catered to gangsters prior to the mid 90s
 
Deacfreak07 said:
White America starting with a bunch of weirdo religious cultists and rapacious capitalists probably wasn't a great foundation if we're being honest.
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Learned recently, forgot from where, that America was basically founded on puritanical religious freedom to be super conservative and shitty because the Puritans basically got kicked out of England for being too strict and uptight. So that’s our foundation of religious freedom, a bunch of dickheads who didn’t think the 1700’s Church of England was strict enough.
 
i mean that's one precursor to religious freedom but I don't think that's the only lineage
 
I guess, the idea is that you religious beliefs should be separate/protected from state influence not that the pilgrims' specific virtues are ideal, though.
 
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