Has progress overshadowed our sensabilities

[kvnchrist]

I remember when I was growing up that things were much more simple. We had one tv that was dad's when he came home from work. We ate together, we knew our neighbors and played outside and actually got dirty. We formed friendships and did a lot of crazy stuff that would kill us today. We had people we didn't like and did things for people we did, just because we knew they needed help. We didn't have much, but what we had we appreciated. Those around us, we appreciated just as much, if not more. We learned how to be people and learned how to treat and not to treat others.

 

Now a days we are talking more of groups than of people. We define ourselves and other groups by the way we feel about issues in their lives. We condemn whole groups of people as they do us. Our lives are mostly lived inside our own little world and we gather pieces of technology together so we can view the rest of the world from the comforts of our own living rooms. Status symbols are now based on the newness of our toys instead of how we are as persons. Our youth is in the midst of an Obesity epidemic because they don't get out and play. They would rather spend 24 hours a day attacking a digital image than exploring the world and the people outside.

 

We have words now that hardly anyone under a certain age knows the true meaning of. Respect, honor, dignity have almost disappeared from our vocabulary. Girls, who the boys used to respect have been reduced to "Holes" and the girls have learned to accept this treatment. The worst thing about this is these kids that think this behavior is normal are teaching their kids that this is the way to live. Husbands that lay around all day and let their girlfriends and wives work are teaching their sons that this is how to be a man and the daughters are being taught that this is how they are to be treated and to have very low expectations in the person they want as a mate.

 

Society as a whole is slowly breaking down as more and more people think that the world owes them something for breathing and that it should provide for them, instead of them providing for themselves.

 

Is this what we wished for, such a long time ago, when we decided to make a life for our selves and start a family that would continue forever. Is this the legacy that we wanted to give to our kids or is it one that will see the end of humanity as we have known it.

[hoshi23]

I guess everyone seen it, but this is a personal view. Doesnt mean its true for everyone.

 

You know what i think what would help is everyone just to get reconnected to whats nature as nature never fails.

Is just the human who kinda... you know.... is learning what this is or fears it. I dont know.

[kvnchrist]

We are a fast food world. We run here and there getting this and that. Some people sleep out in the cold for days on end to get the Newset Ipod, but wouldn't walk 12 feet to help a neighbor lift a heavy box.

[hoshi23]

....thats of course hardcore

[MisterGumby]

Accepting your equation that S(sensabilities)=k/P (k being the constant of proportionality, P being progress)...

 

The caveman who beat a man whose wife he desired to death, then proceeded to seize the wife as his own property has more sensibilities than the modern producer, the man of intellect (as rare as those are, modern society by and large is wrought with collectivized idiocy and irrationality*)

 

The Puritan who burned innocent old women as witches on the fraudulent twitches of his daughter has more sensibility than the scientist.

 

The despotic feudal lord/pharaoh/emperor/king who murdered his political rivals has more respect for others than the captain of industry who gives jobs and material products to those who make transactions with him.

 

This idea that progress lessens sensibilities is built on this vague concept of "sensibility," which seems to allude that our ancestors, who substituted a more communal lifestyle for a lack of technology, possessed greater virtue than those who have been "tainted" by technology. Rather, technology has step-by-step liberated us from the squalor of the past, and has allowed us to independently achieve such greater enjoyments of life (i.e. playing oblivion, fallout, etc.) Eventually our technological innovation will not only provide for the optimal achievement of our values, but it will also reach a point where it becomes completely nature-friendly at modest cost. Those who would advocate a return to the "old way of life" technologically speaking would seek a society ultimately dominated by despair and death.

 

* - I do not believe that the present state of modern society with regards to human behavior is superior to behavior of past decades. It is true that people of prior generations had better work ethic, but it is not technology that contributes to societal degradation. Rather, it is caused by a myriad of factors, most of which involve intellectual abandonment of reason and guiding philosophy.

[Vagrant0]

Rather, it is caused by a myriad of factors, most of which involve intellectual abandonment of reason and guiding philosophy.

You forgot to mention that people have an easier time getting away with things in more recent years. In the past, if a person refused to work, it meant that they went hungry. If a man was cheating on his wife, the whole town probably found out about it within a few days. If a person was a liar, a cheat, or a thief, they were quickly reported and either beaten to death, punished, or banished from the town. Now a days, people are given benefits for being lazy, towns have become so large that few people know much about their neighbors or the habits they keep, con-men can blend into the fabric of the community and travel from town to town freely without fear of repercussion.

 

Technology isn't to blame since, if anything, it could actually be used to keep track of and address these issues. The thing to be blamed is that people have just stopped caring because they're too preoccupied with their own day to day problems, and any time they even consider a larger issue, you instantly have a dozen advocacy groups jumping down your throat or politicians lying to you about how it's either not your business/problem, or telling you that YOU are the problem. Society condones this behavior because they've been conditioned against taking any action for fear of conflict or lawsuit.

[hoshi23]

technology certainly has good sides but we havent entirely learned yet what to do with our new won "freedom".

 

from the standpoint where we are at now everyone on the planet could lead quite happy comfortable lifes.

 

this the battle atm. leveling the playfield for happiness.

 

indeed the lessons from the economics crisis has already been learned. poeple just need to step forward and many are doing it already.

 

be it simple things like i dont know.

[SilverDNA]

These day there is some question that bugging me that is maybe related to this.

 

Have we to many diversions that help us to not see people suffering, or do we want to see people suffering as a diversion, or both?

 

I think that there is some answers to sensibilities in that question. 

 

But I can't answer it fairly (Maybe only for the moment.) and it makes me mad about myself. Not to see clearly a way through the answer.

 

I don't know if it is really worth a threat her. 

 

What I see is that since the caves people hurt each other and nothing has really changed to a that. We have technology, sports,  politics, movies etc. and that all and if a person is hurt we can walk away to that diversions and leave them in their pain. For a lot of people it is that easy and there are other who want to hurt someone who is suffering openly then even more just because the have the might to it and a reason for them to justify it for them selfs.  That's how I come down to the question above. But I know and I fear the the next question and that why I'm bugging myself with all of that.  I'm a person who makes people suffer like that or I'm a person who walks away from a person who is suffering, or worse both?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MisterGumby]

Technology isn't to blame since, if anything, it could actually be used to keep track of and address these issues. The thing to be blamed is that people have just stopped caring because they're too preoccupied with their own day to day problems, and any time they even consider a larger issue, you instantly have a dozen advocacy groups jumping down your throat or politicians lying to you about how it's either not your business/problem, or telling you that YOU are the problem. Society condones this behavior because they've been conditioned against taking any action for fear of conflict or lawsuit.

 

That's very true.

[evilneko]

I think every generation has asked this. Take for example Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, who upon witnessing the first successful nuclear test, famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita thus: "Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." Einstein, too, seemed to question human sensibility, “I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth – rocks!"