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What is wrong with our culture

What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 08:59:25

I post this topic though this video is thought provoking more in a psychological manner then as a treatise of the environmental degradation. One line stuck with me and that is "Our success if a failure" How creating this high technological civilization has in fact been a monumental failure especially for our planet. Some would argue not so we have had many wonderful advances in the field of medicine, entertainment, transportation, housing and even feeding everyone. Yes their have been advances but at what price. In fact this mindless consumerism as many have stated has not made us happy but in fact suppressed our emotions so that they are released with violent images and spectacles , the synergy of mass crowds does not seem to be positive many times but menacing. Are we in fact more habituated to releasing negative emotions then positive ones? I wonder. Anyway, this video certainly shows the path of suicide this mass consumerism as well as lack of bonding positively has been taking us on. The video records all this with sheer bewilderment.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:04:44

What is Wrong With Our Culture - Alan Watts - YouTube
Video for what is wrong with our culture► 5:07► 5:07

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgqL9n6kZc8

Mar 20, 2014 - Uploaded by Open Eyes Television
Please comment, share, like, and stay safe god bless!
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:12:36

His last sentence, that our culture seems to be aligned not to the survival, but to the destruction of life, has some merit in my eyes.

I've noted elsewhere, that if you look at what we have done, and then deduce our purpose form our actions, what we are is a mechanism to increase entropy, to find energy stores and release them.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Paulo1 » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:25:38

Was there a link for this video topic, Onlooker?

I have been asking myself who/what will be the next galvanizing mover in social/environmental/economic consciousness in the next few years?

I am 59. When I was a kid I remember reading Grapes of Wrath and it forever made me a supporter of Unions, plus made me stop and cringe when I made an ethnic joke or comment. (Remember Okies?) After 2008, and the stories arose of people living in their cars or losing everything due to a medical condition or loss of work, I wondered if a grassroots movement would awaken compassion and social awareness? Clearly, the Occupy Movement was a dud and didn't go anywhere. Yes, there are those who say the 'system' was too powerful that was aligned against it in so many clever and undermining ways, but nowhere near as much as the anti-union head bashers hired by industrialist owners of the past.

And there are the climate change activists flying across country to participate in the NYC march. Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture? The Sandy Hook slaughter couldn't limit the proliferation of assault weapons. And whenever I see the mass 'hands up' marches against police violence I always wonder what all the facts are? Are the police afraid and therefore react too fast? Are they really thugs? Why are people beaten to death for driving in the wrong neighbourhood?

A Tunisian vegetable seller, well educated and poor, was rousted for not having the 'right' permit. He lit himself on fire and lit up Arab Spring. Sure, there are scads of reasons for the simmering unrest, but this (no pun intended) sparked the tidal wave of change whose effects lie in the minds of all who cling to power....including here in the US and Canada.

You asked what is wrong with our culture? I have a short list. First of all, it is fractured due to its heterogeneous nature. We have few common or shared values or aspirations. Those values that are shared have been molded by mass marketing and consumerism. Religious beliefs and their accompanying prescriptive and proscriptive edicts just don't seem to fit anymore. The desert myths are now just allegories, the date of Christmas is bogus, and folks that appear to take the teachings of any holy book as literal truth seem to be real crackpots; sometimes dangerous and wanting to kill you. My friends who 'became' buddhists are wonderful folks, but I always wonder why? They certainly fell off the barbecue and potluck invitation list. I read JMG and wonder about his Druidism? I have now come to accept that my own spirituality has become adrift and is based on the concepts of right and wrong given to me by my parents and the wonder and amazement I occasionally take the time for when I am on walks or sit beside the river. It certainly has nothing to do with mangers, three wise men, or any other mass belief system.

We have no shared past, no shared belief system, and our respective countries and laws seem to not care about us, or rather care more about insider friends. We also live lives divorced from nature and it is hard to take that back.

That's what is wrong with my culture, or rather my place in it.

Over the years I have focused inwards taking simple joy and satisfaction of growing a good garden, cutting my firewood and heating my home with my own efforts. We feed our friends and family with our own produced food. I take satisfaction in living simply and making my own furniture, building my own house, etc. My family; wife, children, one grandchild, brothers and sister are pretty much first and foremost. Friends are important as well as sharing food and time with them. I am trying to spend more time walking and figuring out the behaviour of animals and birds that live here. I would like to know more about plants.

I love to build and fix things...all things: from furniture, houses, engines, and have learned to weld instead of just using wood. I want to learn to sew some time.

I know this is immature, but what I hate most about 'our culture' are so-called smart phones and the behaviour of people addicted to them. I know that when I see people walking, sitting, driving? while texting they are not thinking or 'being'. Their lives are on hold. Along with every other form of mass entertainment there will inherently be an extinguishment of thought, action, and change. They will be too busy and occupied.

I see when I tried to post there is now a link. I will watch it.

That's my list. Take care.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:27:50

haha, dumb , sorry about leaving the link out but Newfie corrected that for me. thanks New
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:41:15

thanks Paulo for that extensive reply and sharing some personal insights. I would like to live more akin to how your living but unfortunately I am still captured by responsibilities to my family in the city who would not perhaps understand the world as it truly is. I too am finding little to hope about however I do hold out hope which my icon should give a hint too. But I am not pessimistic nor depressed. You point out this disconnect between people and that is absolutely correct. But beyond that we somehow lost our way in this empire building and global world. We forgot about nature we forgot about limits, we indulged in fantasies of world domination when in fact the world is not meant to be dominated but lived within harmoniously. World domination both of nature and of each other. War mongering is not an insignificant part of our waylaid path. In summary, any worthwhile belief or ethos that we once held somewhat collectively was discarded for a meaningless and superficial materialism. That is my take at least
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 10:48:49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo
this link for anyone who has not heard speech of Charlie Chaplin, also elaborates on some aspects of what is wrong with our culture.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby sunweb » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 15:10:15

I wrote this some twenty some years ago.
Consider it this way. If humanity is seen as a person who is 100 years old, the first 99 years of her life would have been spent as gatherer and hunter. She would have only one year to adapt to the changes in family structure, living arrangements, child rearing and all the other pressures and stresses that the shift to agriculture brought. This same 100 year old person would have five or six days to adapt to the enormous changes brought about by the industrial revolution. And less than a day to adapt to the mass of information made available by electronics.
Each adaptation moves us further away from the original social and physical environment of our emergence. Is it bad or wrong? This is not the criteria. There is no fault. Each accommodation comes from necessity and is the best we know at the time. At the leading edge of human history is an accumulation that expands and deepens the knowledge of our travels. From: SUPERMAN PLAYS WITH KRYPTONITE DICE http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2010/05/su ... -dice.html
I see attachment at one year of age leading to a sense of belonging so critical to this social animal. If our attachment need and subsequent belonging evolved in a multiple caretaker environment where the social environment was the ongoing living environment, are the changes that have occurred since at least the advent of agriculture detrimental to the human psyche?

In our original evolved setting there were multiple personalities to choose from or multiple traits of personalities to choose from. So I am curious about the disorders that have been defined for "western" personalities. Are they as ethnocentric as the attachment assessment seems to be?

What strikes me along with the child having multiple caretakers is the continuity through life with these connections/attachments. Has the disintegration of the broad involvement with our initial caretakers throughout our evolutionary history created personalities somewhat disconnected from our humanity?
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Scrub Puller » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 16:20:38

Yair . . . Paulo1. Thank you for the moving post dated Dec.20.

Several of your comments hit a chord with me.

In particular your reference to Steinbeck . . . although I must say that the Union system in my country leaves a lot to be desired. The problem is there are enough bad exploitative bastards out there that Unions are necessary.

I think the writings of Steinbeck and the two stroke General Motors diesel are two of the finest things to come out of the USA.

Cheers.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 20:14:10

What is wrong with our culture?

An interesting question.

To a large degree our culture is just a mirror of what we are, in aggregate, on average.

Asking what is wrong with our culture is the same as asking What is wrong with us? What is wrong with me?"

Surely culture changes as population grows. Clearly our culture is also changing due to our electronic gizmos, our toys.

There was a time when we all had meaningful jobs, if hard and tedious. We were all hunter gatherers.

Today most of us have meaningless made up jobs, self included. If we have a job that is. Remember in the 50's and 60's there were predictions that, due to the time saving tools we would all have free time, more time for family, vacation, retirement? Why did that not come to pass?

Because we don't want it. We WANT to feel as though we are useful, contributing members of our group. This rush to keep people busy, working, bred Consumerisim, and is now ruining our world.

It's all just the unintended consequence of wanting to feel needed, valuable.

Ironic.

This not to foreclose other viewpoints, and there are many, not mutually exclusive. This is just one, and a valid one.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 20 Dec 2014, 20:53:46

I think it is tough not to detect throughout history the thread of elite rulers and wealthy who have steered everyone along a path of greed, warfare and power lust and who have been at best contemptuous of the masses utilizing force to retain power and deception and exclusion tactics to perpetuate their elite positions of wealth, influence and power.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 01:34:37

Newfie wrote:Remember in the 50's and 60's there were predictions that, due to the time saving tools we would all have free time, more time for family, vacation, retirement? Why did that not come to pass?
For those who don't remember in the 50's and 60's I googled this:
The Late Great American Promise of Less Work
It's difficult for those of us here in the year 2014 to appreciate just how certain this exceptional future of leisure was. But the 30-hour work week wasn't just some navel-gazing futurist's dream. It was taken as a given by mainstream prognosticators. With the tremendous advances in automation and robotics happening after World War II, how could you see an abundance of leisure time as anything but inevitable? The media echoed this assurance of inevitability.

In 1967 Walter Cronkite told TV-viewers at home that workers need only wait for the year 2000 for their life of leisure to arrive:

Technology is opening a new world of leisure time. One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule.
In 1967, some political scientists thought that the work week could be as short as 16 hours by 2020:78

Those who hunger for time off from work may take heart from the forecast of political scientist Sebastian de Grazia that the average work week, by the year 2000, will average 31 hours, and perhaps as few as 21. Twenty years later, on-the-job hours may have dwindled to 26, or even 16.
And in 1969, 30-hours was seen as the futuristic norm:

"The work week and the work day will be drastically reduced," said Gillis. "The majority of the people will be working less than 30 hours a week." He didn't predict just how the populace will adjust to the increased free time.

9
The biggest problem we would face with our newfound lives of leisure? Suicide. In 1959, Parade magazine speculated that people of the future would be driven to bouts of extreme depression from the lack of meaning in their lives. When there's no more need to work, who wants to go on living? The world may become a "paradise" where robots do all the work and we have a guaranteed income, but at what price? Crippling depression, apparently.10

Again, this shift—from the inevitability of having "too much" leisure time to the ridicule of anyone who wants to legislate paid time off—finds its roots in the politicization of how we talk about leisure and labor. Mainstream America at midcentury saw the rise of unions as a bare minimum safeguard that would ensure we were heading in the right direction. But even if you hated unions, most people saw a shorter work week as a kind of progress, however it was delivered.

In 1950 the Associated Press insisted that the people reading their article about life in the year 2000 would be able to tell their children about a primitive era when Americans worked more than 20 hours a week.

It's a good bet, too, that by the end of the century many government plans now avoided as forms of socialism will be accepted as commonplace. Who in 1900 thought that by mid-century there would be government-regulated pensions and a work week limited to 40 hours? A minimum wage, child labor curbs and unemployment compensation?

So tell your children not to be surprised if the year 2000 finds 35 or even a 20-hour work week fixed by law.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Sixstrings » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 04:24:19

Thanks for posting the Alan Watts video.

Now I'm stuck on listening to Watts on youtube.

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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 09:02:15

We are as tethered to our modern civilization as our domesticated animals are tethered to us.

Packed in our cities with mindless employment we begin to reflect as a culture what we are doing to life around us.

Those chickens in a factory farm packed tight and eating eating eating.......That urban factory dweller in China coming home and eating his meal and watching TV before starting tomorrow like a robot the same task all over again.

We have become a fully domesticated culture.

Next time when you are stuck in morning traffic realize that what separates you from the factory chicken is not much more than the feathers.......
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 09:06:00

What is wrong with our culture?

We have lost the sense of outrage over mediocrity.
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 10:21:55

Thanks Keith for the link, interesting stuff.

One could look at it as a money distribution problem. We have some small group of folks who are immensely talented at making money for the country. And we have many who are not. So we collect money in taxes, and hand it out in various ways to others to keep them busy.

For example the country spends a lot of money for health car, either through taxation, or as related to your employment. That money goes to the Health Care provider through a bewildering array of insurance and disbursement schemes. In the process it floats the entire health disbursement industry including the medical clerks, insurance disbursement agents, government regulatory agencies, and a fair number of lawyers and their minions. It would be far more efficient to simply collect taxes and pay Drs.

The health disbursement industry adds no real value to the society (culture) other than providing jobs. It is stealth welfare for many thousands so that they may receive money in dignity.

Least you think I'm looking down my nose at these folks I, as an engineer in the transit industry, find myself in a similar position. I, and all my colleagues, suck at the government teat. There are far more efficient ways to get things done than what we do, but then we would not be creating jobs.

So if the health reimbursement industry is not adding value to our society or culture beyond creating jobs and dignity, then it's sole value it to create dignity through faux employment.

This is the root of our consumerism, which is much of what is wrong with our culture.

-------------------------

Why am I pressing this point?

Simply because we collectively have the desire to blame..
TPTB
Republicans/Democrats
Communists/ socialists / Christian Right Wing
Bildenbergers/ welfare mothers/ red neck southerners
Etc.

We blame everyone but OURSELVES!

Our culture is made up of ourselves, what else could it be?

If you want to change culture, change yourself.

Yeah, I know, too many won't ever change and it is hopeless, I agree.

But if we can't have hope, can we at least have some HONESTY. Can we not always find some scape goat to blame?
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Re: What is wrong with our culture

Unread postby forbin » Sun 21 Dec 2014, 10:46:01

I think lbon had it

we celibrate mediocrity

but maybe we should also examine the opposite question

What is right with our culture ?

is it most of humanity spell Kulture ?

what is right / wrong with our civilization ?

the British one being going along without coal or oil before the revolution

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