The General Degredation of Society

[TinMan46]

Since this forum seems to be a pretty thoughtful and intelligent forum, I've decided to share with you my views on what I view as "The Degredation of Society" as a whole and how I, personally, believe that this generation of kids is fast becoming the least intelligence in recent history, thanks to the magic of technology such as Video Games and cell phones.

If you look around you today, what do you see? It's an absolute mess. Teenagers these days can't manage looking up from their tiny cell phone screens to pay attention to the environment around them for more than 10 seconds. In the past decade, you can easily see that we've hit a brick wall in the field of technological and medical advancements.What have our youth created lately, that will help further our civilization? Teleportation? Trips to mars? Moon bases? Cures for cancer. No, we have the wonderbra, and new ways to rapidly increase our weight and decrease our life expectancy. Kids are paying less attention to getting a decent education and more attention to how many space marines they've killed, or when the next binge drinking party is. If humanity continues this trend of decreasing intelligence I fear that we may dig ourselves into a rut that will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to get out of!

For example, when cell phones first got text messaging, people thought it was amazing. But the small, difficult way to type messages eventually led to "Textspeak", very grammetically incorrect form of the English language that I am sure you are all familiar with. It's moved from Text messaging to the internet, and within the next few years I believe this trend will be picked up and used by more and more adolescents, eventually overtaking and crippling the English language. It's what I believe to be a very serious problem.

People, if we don't do something soon to radically change the behavior and outlook on our childrens' life, we're going to have a serious decline in general intelligence all over the world. The children are our future, and if we don't do something, we are going to be in deep trouble.

[devonin]

In the past decade, you can easily see that we've hit a brick wall in the field of technological and medical advancements.

People who are still kids today have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether there are advancements in techonology or medicine. People who were kids 30 years ago (Back before widespread use of cellphones and video games) are the ones responsible for any lack of advancement. So even if there -is- lack of advancement, there's no connection at all to use of cellphones or video games.

What have our youth created lately

Our youth are supposed to create anything? They're still being educated.

Teleportation? Trips to mars? Moon bases? Cures for cancer.

So just because a few specific advancements you think would be cool (We don't need trips to mars [ though we've made several with devices ] and bases on the moon are perfectly doable with current technology just not worth it) doesn't mean no advancements have happened.

No, we have the wonderbra, and new ways to rapidly increase our weight and decrease our life expectancy.

Wonderbra is like 40 years old dude. And in addition to the creation of various consumer products that if used like a moron can cause you to gain weight, we've also developed all kinds of great ways for people to get exercise and lose weight.

For example, when cell phones first got text messaging, people thought it was amazing. But the small, difficult way to type messages eventually led to "Textspeak", very grammetically incorrect form of the English language that I am sure you are all familiar with. It's moved from Text messaging to the internet, and within the next few years I believe this trend will be picked up and used by more and more adolescents, eventually overtaking and crippling the English language. It's what I believe to be a very serious problem.

Because the english language has existed unchanged and sacrosanct for thousands of years right? English is only 1600 years old, and 'modern english' is only about 500 years old. The language is developing, and if some of us (myself included) don't like the 'textspeak' method of adapting the language, if it gains enough widespread use, it will -become- let's call it 'postmodern' english. We won't like it, but it isn't automatically "bad" just because we don't.

People, if we don't do something soon to radically change the behavior and outlook on our childrens' life

That's on the parents, yes? And the educators? Not a forum full of teenagers.

[foilman8805]

devonin already hit on what I was going to say. Considering that most youth (which, for the sake of this argument, I will include myself) are still in school, how the hell do you expect me to create anything? I'm still learning. I guess I don't fit into your vision of society either since I'm pursuing a degree in aerospace engineering huh...

And can we just step out of the debate here and focus on what you think is important for a second: teleportation and trips to Mars? Cures for cancer? How about we just work on getting everyone on this planet food and water first. One step at a time, Christ.

Last, rather than focusing on the adaptation of the English language to 160 character limit text messages, why don't you consider the advancement in the nano-technology that allows your cellphone to even do that **** to begin with! I have a phone that is less than 4 inches in length and half an inch thick with a full keyboard, email access, internet access, a 2 megapixel camera for photos and video, a microSD slot that allows me to put a 2GB memory card smaller than a dime into my phone for extra memory, mp3 music playback...the list goes on. I find that incredible, and I appreciate the advancements in the technology that have allowed me to even own this device.

One more thing...how is a human being's intelligence in anyway related text messaging? Isn't that something that is generally a product of genetics?

[Sullyman2007]

In the past decade, you can easily see that we've hit a brick wall in the field of technological and medical advancements

That's just silly. I'm sorry OP but think about what you just said. What's that statistic you always hear? It's something like "we've advanced more in the past 50 years than we have is the past 200". Something like that, right? Even so, how can you blame the pace of advancement, or 'degradation', as you put it, on a generation who has only existed two or three decades.

You are asking a forum of primarily 16-21 year olds why they haven't been 'paying attention to their environment' or 'looking up from their cell phones'. I can't speak for this entire community, but I just started college. I plan on pursuing Radiology, and who knows, maybe one day I might help develop a cure for cancer.

[Reach]

Last, rather than focusing on the adaptation of the English language to 160 character limit text messages, why don't you consider the advancement in the nano-technology that allows your cellphone to even do that **** to begin with! I have a phone that is less than 4 inches in length and half an inch thick with a full keyboard, email access, internet access, a 2 megapixel camera for photos and video, a microSD slot that allows me to put a 2GB memory card smaller than a dime into my phone for extra memory, mp3 music playback...the list goes on. I find that incredible, and I appreciate the advancements in the technology that have allowed me to even own this device.

Ditto. Seriously, nobody I know really appreciates how advances in computer science and quantum physics effect our everyday lives. So many things we take for granted on a daily basis wouldn't be possible without the extraordinary leaps and bounds we've made in technology over the past few decades. I suppose you don't really *need* to understand or appreciate something like quantum physics to build cool stuff, but I think it's something important to note.


With that said though, society could be in for trouble in the future, just not for the reasons specified by the OP.

Statistically speaking, we're probably talking about the most intelligent generation on record. University attendances are up and test scores are through the roof - competition at the highest level of academia is more intense than it has ever been before. Academia is a feeding frenzy. Sure, more people are using technology and some of those people are doing it in not so intelligent ways - I wouldn't necessarily call that a decline in general intelligence though. That has happened throughout every generation.

It's more of a cultural shift of the zeitgeist. For example, kids vocabulary sizes aren't getting smaller - they're just filling that vocabulary with different words than their parents did. IQ scores are certainly not going down (Well, I'll get to that), and they're probably the biggest predictor of academic success and ability to contribute to society in useful ways.


However, we are saddling our future generations with some of our mistakes. If you want to talk about declines in general intelligence, that could be possible. This highly competitive society gives little reason or incentive for intelligent people to have large amounts of children, but ample reason for...'others' that are most definitely less intelligent to have copious amounts of children. IQ scores have generally been on the rise for the past century, though this so called 'Flynn effect' died out completely about 10-20 years ago in most developed countries.

It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that this trend could reverse and general intelligence could decline, but that has more to do with reasons outside of the hands of scientists and people making leading breakthroughs in technology.


We're also saddling future generations with the lack of response on the issue of global warming, but that's another topic entirely.


People need to be educated more and more as this world gets increasingly complex - there are constantly more and more complex issues on the rise that generate the need for intelligent people. And in many respects, we lack those people. There are often people in charge that are making decisions that don't know what they're doing. However, I wouldn't take that and then jump to the conclusion that society itself is degrading. Rather, it's more of a matter of getting a little ahead of ourselves on issues we might not be capable of dealing with yet.

[rajdaddy]

Im pretty positive you stole this from somewhere in a attempt to be intelligent, but you failed miserably.


but i agree man, this world is full of idiotic people, you being one of them.

We're also saddling future generations with the lack of response on the issue of global warming, but that's another topic entirely.

Global Warming is a hoax, John Kerry is using it to sell you his carbon tax idiot.
You are obviously one of the idiotic people i mentioned above

I plan on pursuing Radiology, and who knows, maybe one day I might help develop a cure for cancer.

The cure for cancer has already been found in the form of Hemp Oil.

Let the insults and flaming begin, I could care less, i don't plan on coming back to this page.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by rajdaddy

Global Warming is a hoax, John Kerry is using it to sell you his carbon tax idiot.
You are obviously one of the idiotic people i mentioned above

Please provide even a single iota of scientific evidence that has been replicated on some level and published in a respectable scientific journal that does not support the notion of anthropogenic global warming.


I don't like calling names, but I am calling you out here, because you have no idea what you're talking about and are incredibly rude.

Post something respectful and intellectual or leave, please.

Im pretty positive you stole this from somewhere

I'm interested to see what information I posted has been stolen. Please, by all means, give me a link or reference.

Let the insults and flaming begin, I could care less, i don't plan on coming back to this page.

Well, in that case I've wasted my time, but I guess we can ban him. Blatant trolling.


Trolling or not, the problem with idiots is they perceive themselves to be as smart or smarter than the intelligent people, and therein lies their stupidity.

I guess that's where Devonin comes in.

[devonin]

Let the insults and flaming begin, I could care less, i don't plan on coming back to this page.

YOu could care less, which means you do care. Luckily, I don't. Go away, never come back.

[TinMan46]

Sorry guys, but you're all wrong. I guess you just don't have the mental capacity to understand my views on this.

[foilman8805]

Originally Posted by TinMan46

Sorry guys, but you're all wrong. I guess you just don't have the mental capacity to understand my views on this.

lmao oh

[Wineandbread]

Actually, I recently read "Empire Falls" by Niall Ferguson recently for my World History class. It placed a pretty large emphasis on cultural degradation of Western civilization as evidence of the decline of the West. But I don't agree with a lot of what he says.

I agree largely with what Reach has to say. Technological advances seems to scale with the need for intelligent people to operate and further development for new technology. Sure, it also simplifies daily life and makes us use less effort to accomplish otherwise difficult or tedious tasks, but I don't see how that could be ruled cultural degradation.

We're still trying to put moon bases and cure cancer too. It's just a slow process. There's a lot of inventions that happen by accident, and perhaps that accident just hasn't occurred yet.

[Ice wolf]

Originally Posted by Wineandbread

I agree largely with what Reach has to say. Technological advances seems to scale with the need for intelligent people to operate and further development for new technology. Sure, it also simplifies daily life and makes us use less effort to accomplish otherwise difficult or tedious tasks, but I don't see how that could be ruled cultural degradation.

To add on to what you said:

Even though these technological advances may simplify our lives to a point where some consider our culture in decline, they could allow us to make even further advances because we will have cleared ourselves a path through which we can more easily attain technological advances that were once out of our reach, be it a cure for cancer or landing humans on Mars.

[qqwref]

Originally Posted by TinMan46

Teleportation? Trips to mars? Moon bases? Cures for cancer.

If you want to look at how technology is advancing, the best way to do it isn't to look at random stuff you think ought to be invented in The Future. Teleportation is (as far as we know) impossible without a massive energy input (it takes a surprising amount of energy to teleport even a single particle); space exploration is far too costly and doesn't have nearly enough benefits for humanity to keep attempting it; and many people are working on cancer cures but, as it seems to be an extremely difficult problem, there is no success so far. Same for curing AIDS.

There HAS been a lot of advancing technology recently, though. As foilman8805 pointed out, computers and electronic devices have improved drastically in all respects in the last decade - we have better computing power, better graphics, more memory, and smaller devices, and all of these things have advanced to the point where an electronic device from 10 years ago is basically unusable. The amount of nanotechnology and information technology that has gone into these developments is amazing, but since it's so physically tiny I think it's difficult for many people to notice how much we have advanced. Our understanding of DNA and cell mechanisms has gotten much more advanced too, to the point where we are beginning to be able to make vaccines that work at a molecular level to identify and kill infected or cancerous cells. It may look like there have been no important advances, but more scientific papers are being written now than ever before.


As for the degradation of society, I don't think it is as simple as just saying "look, we are spending all of our time txt msging and can't pay attention to anything". Teenagers and young adults today are part of essentially the first generation to be brought up with the internet. Nowadays, you can post something on youtube or twitter and hundreds of people from around the world can see it within a few minutes. A lot of the things that people used to think of as important are now irrelevant because of the internet - for instance, there's no point in memorizing speeches or poems (or geographical features, or equations, or historical events) if you can look them up on Google in seconds, but if those are the standards you are judging people by, you can't expect teenagers to have as much knowledge in those areas as people who are 30 years older.

Since we're the first generation to be so involved in this kind of stuff, we're having a lot of trouble trying to figure out where our place is in the new globally interlinked world. I think that the reason young people today seem so unconcerned with the real world is that the real world has started to become, in some ways, obsolete. Now that it's possible to essentially live your entire life on your computer - order food, pay bills, go shopping, hang out with friends, do almost any type of work, write and publish articles - you could argue that it is instead the older generations who are not paying attention to the world. You have the right to criticize teenagers for not paying as much attention to reality as they should, but you should realize that your criterion for success is biased, because it comes from a world where the technology that is ubiquitous today hadn't even been conceived of.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by TinMan46

Sorry guys, but you're all wrong. I guess you just don't have the mental capacity to understand my views on this.

Go away and come back when you aren't 12.

Let me rephrase more clearly: You post in this forum again before you've learned how to respect the other users of this forum, and I will ban you.

[TC_Halogen]

This is an amazing topic. Too bad the person who posted it has a really bad attitude.

Let me start by saying that I, along with probably everybody else who has posted--will disagree with the theory of technology not making advancements. Look right in front of you! You're using a decently small object that holds at least fifty keys to communicate your thoughts to others via boxes that can somehow register your exact buttons each and every time (assuming they do not break down). And that's just the simple job of a keyboard.

Originally Posted by foilman8805

why don't you consider the advancement in the nano-technology that allows your cellphone to even do that **** to begin with! I have a phone that is less than 4 inches in length and half an inch thick with a full keyboard, email access, internet access, a 2 megapixel camera for photos and video, a microSD slot that allows me to put a 2GB memory card smaller than a dime into my phone for extra memory, mp3 music playback...the list goes on. I find that incredible, and I appreciate the advancements in the technology that have allowed me to even own this device.

Exactly this--nano-technology is absolutely amazing in the capabilities that it has. You can use an object the size of the palm of your hand, powered by a battery as thick as only a single finger, to talk with someone on the other side of the globe.

Degradation of society: I'm going to speak for myself, as far as this goes:

If you look around you today, what do you see? It's an absolute mess. Teenagers these days can't manage looking up from their tiny cell phone screens to pay attention to the environment around them for more than 10 seconds.

Don't simply attribute this to teenagers only--adults are guilty for this as well. Take the city of Chicago as a good example. A while ago, there were not any laws telling people that they could not talk on their cellular phones while driving. Yes--it's a given, people should not be doing it in the first place, but it shows that adults are also willing to prioritize their new technology over the safety of their driving.

What have our youth created lately, that will help further our civilization? Teleportation? Trips to mars? Moon bases? Cures for cancer.

The youth should not be responsible for creating new advancements until that specific generation has been taught through proper schooling on how to do some of these things. With that said--there has been medical advancements on smaller operations. Let's take eye surgery. Now, you can repair vision problems through laser surgery, something that wasn't available say, 10 years ago.

People, if we don't do something soon to radically change the behavior and outlook on our childrens' life, we're going to have a serious decline in general intelligence all over the world. The children are our future, and if we don't do something, we are going to be in deep trouble.

I wouldn't say there would be a serious decline in general intelligence; you do have to proper school your children regardless of technology. However, I do believe that reliance on technology will increase; things that people were able to do on their own with hard labor, say, fixing cars, may be a bit easier if technology advances itself more. This is just one example.

Overall, I wouldn't say society hasn't degraded, but I will say that people do rely on technology much more than they did five to ten years ago, and it's probably guaranteed that reliance on these technologies will get exponentially higher.

Which brings me to a thought of my own: what happens if all forms technology suddenly stops working, like a future Y2K? Sure, it may sound like a dumb thing to think about, but imagine it. No television, no cellular phones, no computers, no forms of communication, etc. Would the reliance on technology that is likely to build be more problematic than it would be now?

That's all of my thoughts for now. (Man: I really need to post here more, this is only my third time O.o)

[Solid Dreams]

Not even that.

Scientists figured out a way to put an image in PARTICLES. And then pull it back out.

Can you imagine that happening even 10 years ago?

Just because we don't live like the Jetsons isn't an excuse to think that we all suck and fail.

(I thought Al Gore was the pusher for Global Warming.)

I'd like to put it out there that a lot of advancements that we've had have actually come from teenagers. From stretching as far back as the Apollo 13 mission where a bunch of people devo and I's age basically brought back people from the moon without computers, to now, where a freakin 8 year old invented a way to cook bacon healthier AND faster, and yet "our generation" isn't accelerating to meet your needs.

If you think that we should be going further faster harder, then I suggest you go out and do it yourself. Crying that cell phones and video games (what?) ruined children is sort of silly.

Teleportation?

Not our job. Leave that to Star Trek.

Trips to mars?

Not our job.

Moon bases?

Not our job, either.

Cures for cancer.

Last I checked, youth (high schoolers, I guess?) weren't being issued lab equipment. In fact, I would assume that there's a cure for cancer already out. But there's no profit in cures, now is there?
Now that we have stem cell research, I would say that we will have cures for cancer, parkinsons, and a lot of other diseases that we've been struggling with, not to mention small things like paralysis...if the older generation doesn't hide them away.

new ways to rapidly increase our weight and decrease our life expectancy.

You can actually thank the baby boomers for that.

Kids are paying less attention to getting a decent education and more attention to how many space marines they've killed, or when the next binge drinking party is.

Before video games it was football/soccer/baseball/tennis/rugby games. Physical activity=mental acuity?

If humanity continues this trend of decreasing intelligence I fear that we may dig ourselves into a rut that will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to get out of!

Haha. No, that's the government's fault, going on what Reach said. Promoting laziness doesn't seem to be the best of things, but then, that's not our youth, that's the generation before us.

I think it's sorta amazing that you latched onto cell phones and video games. Saying that those two make people stupid is about as valid as saying that if you play Doom 3 you will become a mass murderer.

In fact, I would argue that even in a non-scholastic way we're smarter, because of the technology we have. We have google and wikipedia, from which you can learn basically anything you've ever been interested in. It's not all lolcatz and dde i ttly gt drnk lst nite and halo warz.


But we're all dumb, I guess, so how would we know? :/

[Vendetta21]

I think talking about the decadence of society is generally a myopic look at the old paradigm for civilization c. BC400-AD1930 and thinking it applies to the new. It does not. Society's cultural, economic, and ethical decadence is not related to the phase of its technology. And in the new paradigm technological advance tends to trump the previous three. It has been 17 years since the advent of the internet and Mosaic, and we still haven't developed a solid model for how to interact with the technology and make the best use of it. I know 17 years seems like a long time to someone who is very young like yourself, but to be honest in Sumarian culture they lived the same exact way for thousands of years, and their culture was constantly on the rise in a relative outlook. I have no idea what your reference point is for growth, or the sample you are using as a microcosm to interpret the world.

Also, when talking about society what we are often talking about is a sample size of the people we meet in our general area and the things we read in pop culture information sources. Neither of these have a strong correlation for anything about society and its values in general. How a group responds to one isolated incident halfway across a continent is not a great determinant of how their society works. To truly understand anything you must immerse yourself in it in one way or another.

What I'm saying is that I don't feel you have even a nominally sober view of the world.

[Vendetta21]

Originally Posted by Vendetta21

Also, when talking about society what we are often talking about is a sample size of the people we meet in our general area and the things we read in pop culture information sources.

You also have to remember something about the past, if you are using it as a reference point for now and the future: the great people of history are the smallest minority of the groups of history. The past of the world is filled in majoram with people who did mindless and repetitive manual labor. History only remembers the highest echelon of those that shined in any given culture, in any given era.

If you are choosing to use the things pop culture inundates you with as your reference point for the current state of your culture, you are talking about the lowest echelon of culture. The people currently moving the world are probably not reading PEOPLE magazine or are obsessed with reality TV, they are probably not wrecked with fiscal irresponsibility and massively overweight out a simple inability to either exercise or eat healthier.

If your problem with humanity is that its laypeople are dumb and irresponsible then you have a problem which has unceasingly existed since the dawn of recorded history. I think the code of Hammurabi exemplifies that. If one can get past the fact that the stele seems magical with its reliquary etchings and actually read through the laws it proclaimed, you would realize that the need to proclaim laws so simple indicates something about the culture c. 1790 BC. In gauging the span of 4 millennia, it seems clear that there is some thread in the commoners as a group that has always existed: their stupidity.

Changing that is something that people have been trying to do for hundreds of years, and with some slow but apparent successes. People today are a hell of a lot smarter on average then people hundreds of years ago. In fact, studies have shown students c. 2007 to be significantly smarter in general academic subjects than students c. 1986. That is a span of ONLY 21 years.

I know that as a student still in primary schooling you probably find yourself to be more intelligent then your counterparts and that some of your frustration arises out of the fact that some things that you seem to think are simple and intuitive are not grasped by others. Also, I'm making an inductive leap, but based on your general method of arguing you probably have arguments based on what are generally effective intuitions but are not very good at articulating those intuitions. You probably expect people to have the presence of mind to understand things you feel are simple with ease, and that when people shortfall your expectations you feel that society has an issue with stupidity.

There is no issue. Stupid as we are, society only need survive, and we have the muster to do that in many circumstances with a hell of a lot less intelligence then we have now. The only issue is that you expect to be understood without effort on your part.

Solamente,
V

[dsliscoo]

lol, Vendetta you are cool.

Now everything has been covered..

nah uhm lol
There is a book I have been reading recently. "Everything Bad is Good For You" by Steven Johnson. Pretty much completely arguing the OP. Everything from television to the internet he argues is creating a more adaptable society. Theres statistics comparing complexity of modern shows to past shows. The difference is phenomenal. He also goes to show that although the extremes of society, the extremely smart and the mentally handicapped may not be getting any smarter but the bulk in american society is becoming smarter. Anyways its a good read for anyone is interested in this topic at all.

To the OP's comments about telecommunications I think it is probably one of the greatest advances since written word. For a leap, unitarian(particularly Transcendental Unitarian, mouth full..) beliefs were that by isolating yourself you could listen to the Greater spirit. Which is essentially everyone being connected together and talking to eachother. The great writers of this transcendental movement said this thing that your intuition is the way it talked to you for the most part anyways. Some of them believed they had dreams and things of the such, but their sanity is not what I want to bring up right now. With communication the way it is( and hopefully will spread and become) you will actually be able to know what the greater good is and determine if thats even what you want to do with a logical mind that doesn't speak in whispers or dreams. Things like the internet, phones, and even books allow a connection and unity in society that is real. Even connecting the past to the future is accompished through this. Humanity will probably find its global identity one day even if it is just some crazy armageddon and nuclear holocaust.

and as for global warming, yeah pretty sure its getting hotter.. but its hard to tell with the cycles of the world averaging out over time to see if we are actually pushing a point of no return.

[Solid Dreams]

Also, I'm making an inductive leap, but based on your general method of arguing you probably have arguments based on what are generally effective intuitions but are not very good at articulating those intuitions. You probably expect people to have the presence of mind to understand things you feel are simple with ease, and that when people shortfall your expectations you feel that society has an issue with stupidity.

I wouldn't even say that, it's more along the lines of a toddler being told that he can't do something and he lashes out in a temper tantrum. While we may have proven him wrong, he doesn't seem to be capable of going "Okay, you're right, I'm sorry" or further arguing his points.


Which, ironically, pushes his "society is decomposing theory."