Worried About Our Culture II

There is another trend that is equally disturbing. All the while adults are trying to be teens again, our elemntary school children are being seduced to dress like adults. Thomas the Tank Engine should be safe for a three-year-old unless, as you have observed, someone has seen fit to pervert an innocent joy of childhood. That kind of seduction is happening everywhere.
In fact, I ask myself often, how did young girls learn to think that shopping is a social activity? Where do they get the money? Why doesn't anybody else think this is weird?

Thanks for the comment, and as you are now, welcome to the blog.

Actually, I think the two are quite related. As adults behave more and more like teens, the teens recognize that very little separates them from adults, and become rather excessively mature and jaded. After all, when mom and dad are behaving a lot like your friends, it is hard to believe that adults possess any more wisdom or even experience than you do.

So, yes, I agree with you, that too is a disturbing trend. Not that there is much we can do about it, at least collectively. Obviously each of us can correct it in our own children, but as a society, not much. If a majority of parents continue to behave like children, they are going to have children who behave like little (and ill behaved) adults. Nothing much we can do about others' bad decisions.

I suppose we can try to point out to children that there is still a difference between childhood and maturity, but when they see their parents acting in ways that deny that, I doubt our protests will have much effect.

I suppose we just have to do our best for those close to us and wait for another, more mature, generation to come along.

Andrews: It really is a disturbing trend...I agree.

Qat: Our culture is sinking fast...I hate the way children's clothing is becoming more and more suggestive...

Your name is familiar, but I am not sure if I know you from the comments on articles or this blog, so I will welcome you to the blog, just in case.

It is troubling. I just see so many people who are old enough to know better acting like teenagers. And, as both of you have pointed out, teenagers trying to act like adults.

Of course, teens always tried to act like adults, but, in the past, adults kept them in check to some degree. It seems that is no longer happening.

Of course, adults can't even keep one another form acting like children, so I suppose keeping children in check is too much to expect.

As a moderator and editor of "The Loudest Place On The Web", I have learned that the anonymity inherant on the internet allows this masquerade of the young being old, and vice versa. It is fairly easy to recognize the youngsters though, as they, by default, offer the reasoning (there's no reason to it) "You don't know me or anything about me, so you can't say I'm not what/who I say I am". Also, most don't know how to cite sources, prove a fact, or write an essay.

Most don't know enough to know that they don't know.

The internet reminds me of old western movies and the lawlessness of the frontier. A few decent marshalls in some cities, but basically wide open. Parents MUST beware!

Great post, sir, as usual.
Glenn Flowers

The thing is, I really don't mind the anonymity or lawlessness. I have been involved in heated debates on everything from Italian exploitation cinema to whether Unix is superior to Linux. (And don't get me started on why Java is a miserable excuse for a programming language...) I actually like the anarchy, as it tends to bring out the best and worst.

What disturbs me is how anonymity seems to tempt so many adults to behave like children. That it promotes adult males to behave like pigs, I understand, that is a relatively universal, if unseemly, side of male culture. The stereotypical middle aged man at a convention hitting on everyone he meets. I am male, I understand the way we are shaped by our culture. Our teen years teach us quantity not quality is what counts, and it is hard to remove that early training as we age. It is ugly and unseemly, but I accept it. The sheer volume of pornography on the internet I can understand.

What shocks me is how many adults turn not into pigs, but into giggling children. And not in a good, innocent way, but in the teenage, cliquish, gossipy, insolent, immature, stupid way. It is strange transformation to see.

What makes it all the more odd, is the internet is somewhat akin to the era when the printing press first spread, when men could anonymously broadcast their ideas for the first time. And, admittedly, that era, the early part of the age of reason, did have its immature excesses, but they were balanced out with Diderot and Erasmus and later Voltaire and then Franklin and others.

We get Stallman and Eric Raymond and apple fan boys.

And I have yet to see the slanderous broadsheet from the age of reason as insipid as some forty year old metrosexual's any gender welcome come on myspace page.