The General Degredation of Society

[Flaming_Dingleberry]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

I think cell phones are going to destroy humanity, that's my opinion. On another serious note (I'm serious about that first one), our non-renewable resources are going down the crapper, no one's recycling, our ocean is filling up with ****, a meteor is going to rip California a new one, animals are going extinct and no one cares because they don't understand the importance biodiversity, and if a random person read this, he or she wouldn't change anything. Wasting water and electricity is our new job at this point. Global warming is about as serious as H1N1 (swine flu), and from my experience it seems that people who play video games are more likely to be intellectual on these types of subjects. If they're not intellectuals, they're gangsters or wannabe gangsters. If they're something else, it's rare. Currently, cell phones and MTV shows seem to be at the source of most of my problems.

[andy-o24]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

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

Not to be a total dick but considering your last 2 posts have been about almost nothing but Global Warming, we can consider the fact that this thread has moved on to that topic.

In seriousness to the topic (not Global Warming) I noticed no one mentioned the advancements in weaponry and other military-based tactics. Those have improved during -our- generation. Maybe not by ourselves but still during our lifetime. Those involve computers which have also improved exponentially. We are now opperating our computers with data chips almost on the microscopic level. Our technological advancements from the first ideas for both the cellular phone and the personal computer have shrunk beyond belief and perform even more functions.

Video games aren't the ruination of modern society as a whole. If anything they improve the hand-eye coordination of children and some adults by some bit. And now with the Wii, an active gaming system, you aren't just sitting around blowing stuff up with laser beams and scoring points, you can stand up and play interactive sports against computer AI's or people around the world.

Trying to tell anyone that society is on a decline is going to spark a debate of some sort, especially if you try to tell them that we have declined in technology just because teleportation and Mars trips and Moon bases haven't been accomplished yet. Society is advancing at an alarming rate and saying that the school kids of this generation are the ones failing is a complete contradiction. We are still learning and will always have more to learn. But until we've at least finished basic schooling, you can't really expect us to develop something amazing. We leave that to professionals and experts in a certain field.

As for your 'txtspk' hatred, well...you can't control everyone can you? If you don't like it, don't use it. It is as simple as that. It doesn't mean we've declined at all or that we've abandoned the English language, it just means we're innovators in finding new ways to express ourselves in a shorter fasion. It's surprisingly simple the more you know.

-o24

[devonin]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

Considering that an ice age - a perfectly natural and periodic quirk of Earth's weather - can affect temperatures by something like 9 degrees Celsius, I would have to say that any species that dies out because of a tenth of this is just really bad at adapting to new environments.

We just came out of something called "The Little Ice Age" rather recently, and that lasted about 400-600 years, and had a temperature variance of less than 1 degree. That was enough to classify it as an Ice Age of sorts even if not a full-on Ice Age like earlier in history. So we're looking at 500 years and under 1 degree being enough to qualify significantly, and now wwe've had a 0.5 degree change in -40- years? That sounds pretty significant in terms of severity and speed of change.

The issue isn't whether the species can or cannot adapt to changes, the little ice age fluctuated down and up over 500 years changing less than 1 degree, and we're looking at a linear progression of about 6 degrees over the same timespan. The issue is that the process may be being accelerated by human interactions with the environment, and that things are being sped up -ahead- of the rate at which natural evolution could adapt.

[Sephiroth28]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

The real truth about society is that there are more smart people than dumb people but because of the society we are in the dumb ones get the attension so we focus more on them rather than the people who deserve it. So when things in a general standpoint go bad the younger people in the society are blamed they supposedly haven't lived long enough to be intelligent or experienced enough to know right for wrong.

[devonin]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

The real truth about society is that there are more smart people than dumb people

I respectfully disagree. From my experiences in school, elementary, secondary and post-secondary, as well as working in multiple fields of employment including factory work, retail, and as a teaching assistant, there are MANY MANY more dumb people in the world than there are smart people.

[Flaming_Dingleberry]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

The issue isn't whether the species can or cannot adapt to changes, the little ice age fluctuated down and up over 500 years changing less than 1 degree, and we're looking at a linear progression of about 6 degrees over the same timespan. The issue is that the process may be being accelerated by human interactions with the environment, and that things are being sped up -ahead- of the rate at which natural evolution could adapt.

Nature doesn't care, that's the only point that should be hitting everyone here. The only problem the earth is having is it's being infested with humans. Our problem is we care too much about humans and not enough about everything else. When we commit crimes we get locked up, when we get sick we have medicine, and since we have religion, thank God for pro-life, just more humans polluting the planet. Everything we do with technology helps humans become less and less likely to die off naturally, and of course all these advancements aren't helping the earth, only the humans. The worst thing that can happen is that humans will die, and the rest of the planet lives; it's actually quite a small sacrifice for nature.

From my experiences in school, elementary, secondary and post-secondary, as well as working in multiple fields of employment including factory work, retail, and as a teaching assistant, there are MANY MANY more dumb people in the world than there are smart people.

I agree with this.

[Afrobean]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

should the average citizen be concerned about every single specie going extinct?

This is the question here.

Personally, as long as humanity can survive, I don't much care about anything else. Species go extinct all of the time, and while I would be against directly killing them off, indirectly causing their species to be unable to survive doesn't matter to me at all.

our non-renewable resources are going down the crapper,

Our non-renewable resources are just fine and you and I and our children and their children won't have any problems for sure.

no one's recycling,

Recycling is largely a scam. Reasons for recycling are almost completely bunk, and Penn & Teller tells me that aluminum is the only material which is functionally worth recycling. Recycling paper doesn't save trees, trees which are harvested for paper are regrown when they're cut down, so wasting lots paper will actually cause trees to be planted more often 8)

our ocean is filling up with ****,

Not at all true.

a meteor is going to rip California a new one,

Bull****. Prove it.

animals are going extinct and no one cares because they don't understand the importance biodiversity

Biodiversity doesn't mean **** in the world we live in. The ecosystem can fail completely and we'll be fine. Any animals which we need, we can keep alive with technology, everything else doesn't matter.

The issue is that the process may be being accelerated by human interactions with the environment, and that things are being sped up -ahead- of the rate at which natural evolution could adapt.

No matter how slowly a temperature change happens, evolution has no chance of affecting it. Natural selection chooses which species survive and which don't. Natural selection chooses which specific ones of a species survives and which don't. A species doesn't have to evolve to get through a 1 degree temperature shift, just the less adaptable of the species won't make the cut.

Also, I think you said something about the little ice age being a temperature variance of 1 degree. That's not right at all. I can't be assed to find it now, but I think one of the charts I was looking at before said something like 8 degrees average lower during that period than over the average of the rest of recorded history. And 8 degrees still ain't ****. If animals want to die from it being 78 degrees instead of 70 degrees, **** 'em. They deserve to die.

I respectfully disagree. From my experiences in school, elementary, secondary and post-secondary, as well as working in multiple fields of employment including factory work, retail, and as a teaching assistant, there are MANY MANY more dumb people in the world than there are smart people.

Depends on your definition of "dumb". By definition, the "average" person has an IQ of 100. I personally would think that someone with an IQ of 100 is probably dumb. I guess you would too. That would account for roughly half of all people.

And working with someone, even knowing them intimately, you may not be aware of how intelligent they may or may not be. Social interaction is a whole other thing from intelligence and it might just simply never show. For example, I know that I'm at least a little above average, but I don't expect any of my coworkers would realize this.

But that's just it. People of decent intelligence often never show it or it is squandered. For example, I am here posting, throwing words around on a message board, but do I apply my brain to anything useful? Hell no.

ps hi reach i see dat post there but after work i feel ****ty and cannot care enough to even try to actually read it, let alone make a super long, half-serious reply where i throw more words at you.

[Cavernio]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

Afro: Don't get into discussions about IQ with Reach. IQ has a nice history to it, and it boils down it being standardized poorly. I sincerely doubt average IQ is 100 now. It's likely much higher, and I don't think they've re-standardized it so that new average is 100 again.

I guess I'll be devil's advocate here, because the OP has been shot down so utterly and completely, and I suppose I do see something he may be getting at in a more general sense. As a society and culture, I think he feels like we're reaching a point where we've got 'enough', and this means that people aren't trying as much. We're reaching a point where we're entertaining ourselves enough. Kinda like our generation (and the one before it I suppose) is spending time and effort creating technological 'soma' instead of actually going out there and living. As a few people have said, as society, we're not actively trying to get to mars or the moon, or do more space exploration. And their excuse is exactly what I think tinman may be getting at: why bother? This is the attitude and culture that's bothering him. (Although I will say that I strongly believe that population and potential drastic global changes are a very, very good reason why we should seriously be considering expanding our horizons into space.)
In order to understand what I *think* his main concern is, pretend that instead of having video games and cell phones, we manufactured pills which make us all feel different, positive emotions, like satisfaction and fulfillment. On the one hand, yeah, that'd be pretty awesome. We could sit here and take pills all day. On the other hand, as a culture, we'd be in total decline. We'd stop trying for goals and desires we used to once have if we could get satisfaction from pills so easily. I think that most people would think that having pills which did that be a very bad thing for our society. He's just seeing cell phones and video games as we'd see pills.
You have to remember though tinman, that 1) people work tirelessly making cell-phones and video games. 2) The funnest video games are socially interactive, and if they're not, I think most people like playing them with friends around, and telling them about how cool something was in it. Instead of creating pills, we've created an alternate, virtual or semi-virtual society, and all the same rules which apply to our actions, emotions, and struggles in them are the same ones which apply as in the 'real world'. They are not pills.

Also, I can't play devil's advocate about you calling people unintelligent. Intelligence has nothing to do with this, if I have indeed caught onto something you were trying to get at. If I have not caught onto it, then you're not doing your job in defining what it is you're upset about. You've simply answered all the posts with 'you don't understand, **** it'. If we do not understand, it is not us who's at fault. You should be trying to get us to understand. You don't have to argue what everyone says personally, especially if they're missing the point.

[operationstrawbarry]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

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

There is no right or wrong answer dude. Its like discussing which is a better religion. No one is always going to agree with you. So stating this means that you basically failed because not everyone will share you're point of view. Also to add, you're the one that brought this topic to begin with and to announce this BS and then blatantly calling everyone wrong and BS is just pure retarded.

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 wish people would stop calling global warming a hoax like rajdaddy (at least come with evidence). Whether you think its a hoax or not, the fact is, global warming is affecting us. Check the stats and the climate system of the world in the last 10 or so years and then come back and say its a hoax. If you think global warming is a hoax, you must be in some retarded dimension that no one has ever heard of.

lmao did you really need to say "anthropogenic" when you could just as easily have used a word any one could understand

the internet is there for a reason. Look the word up. Here, Ill help you.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anthropogenic

Has the world really come to this? I just used the internet to search a word. People can't be this lazy to use technology if its so fondly praised in this community.

But that said, yeah, bias. I care if it affects me directly and I don't think it'll be happening any time soon.

But it is affecting you. Not just you, but everyone. Look up climate change stats and you will find that temperture and avrage tempertures have been rising. There have been more catastrophic natural disasters because of the influence of climate change whether hotter or colder. You really need to look at some of the matarial out there before you go blatently making statments without knowing anything about is. Human factors play a huge roll in why we have global warming, but to say that it doesn't affect anyone is purely not right when it really is. As a geography major, I urge you to reconsider that this green BS that you claim is properganda because what will you say when Global Warming really starts taking its toll. Its no longer properganda is it? It's ur life. There are islands in the Pacific oceans right now that will dissappear because of global sea level rises. You can't tell me that that's bull**** or a hoax?

1 half celcius is a lot considering life on this planet. take the position of the Earth at its current state. Its the only planet that we know of in the entire universe that has life. Planets such as Venus (Venus might not be a great example for this, but whatever) and mars don't have life because they are either to far or to close to the sun. Imagine if we were venus or Mars. We wouldn't be alive. i think ths same thinking can apply to the 1 half celcius which you apparently think is a joke. Imagine it going higher. What will you say then when we all incinerate. I might be exagerating here, but I dont think the possibility of sky rocketing tempertures because of global warming is an exaggeration escpecially since theres evidence pointing that global conditions have risen to a more concerned height.

Contributing doesn't necessarily mean causing.

Although Chinese is my first language and english being my second, Im pretty sure that I have enough grasp of the english language to dispute this.

If you are contributing, then it means you are part of it, which means in this context what we are talking about, you are cauing the problem. What happened in the 1800s like you said may be something that we had nothing to do with as well as can't do anything about it, but what we can do right now is worry and do what we can now to prevent the current situation from going haywire. In the end, no matter what spectrum of the argument you agree or disagree with, lets just get one thing straight: we are all contribiuting to the global warming problem.

Not to be a total dick but considering your last 2 posts have been about almost nothing but Global Warming, we can consider the fact that this thread has moved on to that topic.

Advancement in technology and global warming should connect with one another. Its factories and industries around the world thats pumping green house gasses in the air which is the reason for global warming. But at the same time, its those industries that create those technologies. Of course its a vicious cycle of reproduction, but both topics connect with one another. The challenge of course is how to reduce carbon emissions from industries that make these so called technologies. Balance is always a tricky thing, but one that must be considered.

Nature doesn't care, that's the only point that should be hitting everyone here. The only problem the earth is having is it's being infested with humans. Our problem is we care too much about humans and not enough about everything else. When we commit crimes we get locked up, when we get sick we have medicine, and since we have religion, thank God for pro-life, just more humans polluting the planet. Everything we do with technology helps humans become less and less likely to die off naturally, and of course all these advancements aren't helping the earth, only the humans. The worst thing that can happen is that humans will die, and the rest of the planet lives; it's actually quite a small sacrifice for nature.

I have the same view as you do which is the reason why spieces, plants etc.... evolve and adapt to the environment. Everything on this planet is expendible and basically we are all extras. Earth couldn't care loss if a giant meteor hits it, annhilated everything on the planet to the point of origin 4.5 billion years ago. The key to survival is to adapt and possibly evolve to compensate with change. If Speices can't do that, they become extinct. This of course wasn't the case for the dinosaurs considering no one could of seen a giant rock hit Earth at that time, but if it didn't dinosaurs would probably still rule the world and humanity would be extinct because of dinosaurs. You can't mess with survival of the fittest.

But ya... seriously, back to the OP (whatever that means). I can concure with this. I have girl friends that are always on their phones. Whats even funnier is that they are texting their friends who they are walking right beside of them. That to me is funny as hell. Instead of reading books, we play video games. Those who rather not play video games, read books. Its basically the same thing when conveying emotions, storylines and entertainment. Its just what we rather do with our time. I for one rather play video games than read books, but that doesn't really make me feel any dumber. The fact is on the wonderbra situation, its easer to create the wonderbra than to create a teleprtation device. For one thing, our society hasn't reached the point where we can understand or even know how to make a teleporting device. We are still at the basics. Even the idea of fusion energy is reletivly new idea. To me, you may be reading to many science fiction books to assume that we are in a stage that we can teleport anywhere we want. Id have to admit, its a cool idea, but in reality, we just haven't gotten to that point.

When it comes to texting, the faster you can text is usually better. Usually when people text, they are outside and on the move. By doing that, you simplify words and make them shorter or text only keywords, but when you put them together, although they might be grammatically incorrect, it still conveys the same message as if it was grammatically correct. Its communications. Basically, even if its incorrect in the formal terms, if someone else can understand whats being said, its mission accomplished. Of course the hope is that people wont use "text" language in school. If thats the case, then we have a serious problem.

Youth is a mess right now, but a hope is that they will evolve into manageble serious people that can handle future problems of the world. We can't guarantee this, but we can sure hope. To be honest though, its not as bad as everyone seems to think it is.

[kommisar[os]]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

dodo birds went extinct. why didn't humans? truth is, not all life is essential for another's survival. maybe if say, cows went extinct. that would probably create a much larger issue. instead, people are making a huge deal out of some random species of bird/lizard/whatever going extinct that nobody's even heard of, and if they're going extinct it's probably because nobody cared enough.

now as far as society goes, I wouldn't exactly say it's degrading socially. technology doubles every year and the sci-fi novels' imaginations are coming true more and more. sure there's a dumpload of retards out there but in most cases that would be due to laziness and society's inventions vegetating youth making them think everything will constantly be given to them (and in some cases this is true).

global warming wasn't the main topic back in the 70's; back then it was nuclear winter. now it seems nobody's ever contributing enough to the matter and that we're killing the earth every second. sure there are countless possibilities and disasters that could happen, but the truth is nobody really knows what will happen. people are still gathering data and as long as they still are, we're never really sure how close this disaster is from happening nor the intensity of it. still, people shouldn't bitch and whine about the ozone layer being torn to **** and pollution "killing" mother earth; you're still contributing thus it's still your fault.

[devonin]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

dodo birds went extinct. why didn't humans? truth is, not all life is essential for another's survival. maybe if say, cows went extinct. that would probably create a much larger issue. instead, people are making a huge deal out of some random species of bird/lizard/whatever going extinct that nobody's even heard of, and if they're going extinct it's probably because nobody cared enough.

I think it's more about the issue of the fact that even though we as humans can -live- without any really high quality of biodiversity, there's at least some feeling from some people some of the time that maybe we ought to actually care about more than -just- the survival of humans, and that maybe the environment and all the various species living in it might be at least worth thinking about.

The whole concept of environmental ethics and the degree to which we should consider the consequences of our actions on non-humans is a comparatively new branch of thought (Or at least, theories that say we -should- give a damn are relatively new, historically speaking) Go read some Peter Singer for some of the more Cogent arguments.

[bubblechamber]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

maybe if say, cows went extinct. that would probably create a much larger issue. instead, people are making a huge deal out of some random species of bird/lizard/whatever going extinct that nobody's even heard of, and if they're going extinct it's probably because nobody cared enough.

To an extent, this is true; not every species is necessary to the survival of humans. We're probably not going to die out any time soon if the last few marbled murrelets bite it. However, even if you're not one for the "we should care" brand of ethics, there are some serious survival-related problems with the "if it doesn't affect us, let it die" mentality. The most dangerous (to humans) thing about species dying out isn't that there won't be any more cute cuddly animals, or awesome large predators, or even cows for eating. We could survive the direct affect of any one of these dying out. The issue is that the ecosystem is intricately connected; the extinction of one species will lead to extinctions or changes in others, and, in the long run, will affect us in some way.

For example, this article proposes a theory about what happens when mammal and bird species go extinct: a possible effect is that their parasites (which tend to be more resilient) will switch to us as alternative hosts. Although many parasites are specialized for one species of host, researchers have noticed far fewer co-extinctions of host-parasite pairs than expected. In other words, when mammal and bird species go extinct, their parasites are surviving, and moving to other species (possibly including humans). The article then notes that areas where the most new human diseases are emerging coincide with areas with the highest number of endangered mammal and bird species. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but it certainly does strengthen the theory, and hints toward the need for caution and more research.

This is only one way in which extinctions of "some random species of bird/lizard/whatever going extinct that nobody's even heard of" can affect humans. Even if nobody cares that the dodo bird is gone, we might be getting sick just a little more often because they are. If that effect is magnified, the consequences could be serious. This doesn't even go into the effects of random insect/bacteria extinctions that could reduce certain plant populations, which could have and even more dire effects. It's true that these thing happen slowly, but if we let things progress without taking action, it might be too late to stop some of the changes later on.

(...first post in Critical Thinking. Hope I didn't make a complete fool of myself).

[bubblechamber]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

Also, in response to the OP:

We haven't found a cure for cancer because there are thousands of different types of cancer, caused by thousands of different things, all progressing in different ways. Almost all of them used to be fatal, but nowadays, some of the most common types (e.g. non-melanoma skin cancer) have an over 90% five year survival rate thanks to medical advances. Cancers still are one of the most common causes of death, but it doesn't mean we haven't gotten anywhere with them.

I agree with everyone else who's saying that we have made significant technological advances in the last few decades. TC_Halogen brought up an interesting question about what would happen if all our technology stopped working, though. Maybe that's another way of looking at the OP's proposition about the degradation of society - that we've become so dependent on technology we can't survive without it. I've wondered about that a lot, too. Any ideas?

[Wineandbread]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

I don't think it's so much that we can't survive without technology. I would guess that if somehow all technology was ripped from our society, we would revert back to primitive ways and start over again, although in very different conditions. Things certainly wouldn't be the same, but I highly doubt that it would bring about the end of the human race.

I like it how the OP stopped posting.

[LordTyriel]

Re: The General Degredation of Society

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.

The world is what it is. It grows up from a shell of nothingness to something huge. This is how the world works my friend although not all people believe in the environment around them and not all people believe in a world with peace. I see your points that yes we are getting pretty stupid not just as a society but as a whole world with the growing technological advancements you'd think we would be smarter by now with chips in our heads telling us where to go and what to do and how much faster you can be etc but no, we are warmangers my friend, we fiend for power! And we want it so badly that we lose sight on what exactly we are looking for and what we are doing. The world itself is discrimitory it tells you it will help then the next it spews you out because your not what it wants. Thats how this world works and our society will only get worse with the people we have in this world. Including people like myself I really shouldin't be here but these are my thoughts for your thoughts. Deep down I hope you get the right answers.

All Hail Britannia!
-Lord Tyriel-