" i am an old f*rt "
Yes you are... and that's a large part of the problem. (I am too BTW).

The fact is every generation says the same thing as the torch is handed down. I remember my father scoffing at the idea of a lazy world without slide rulers, as calculators slowly crept into focus. The Tv was going to rot our brains as our local channel packages slowly expanded form 3 to well over 250 now.

In my time alone there have been HUGE changes in our way of life. Things that don't even cross one's mind. I was explaining older cars to a young one the other day and I mentioned having to pump the gas pedal twice before turning the key and he was stunned at that idea. Why would you ever have to do such a thing???

Our Canadian Postal service will be downsizing over the next five years. No more door to door delivery. Why? Email, electronic bills and banking, electronic cards... etc. We're just not using it enough to fully support it anymore.

The all important land line for so many decades. We just disconnected ours in fact because it's not "all important" anymore. We all have our cell phones.

Now, is all of this a bad thing? Well, just as you had to ask so many years ago, you really have to ask first now... are you a young one inquiring... or an "old f*rt"?

Children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers.

These are not my words - they are attributed to Socrates nearly two and a half thousand years ago. It's definitely a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re modern devices, a tourist in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago was so involved in her smart phone that she walked off a pier into the bay and had to be rescued by the water police - she was still holding on to her smart phone when rescued.

I am in two minds on this and have a question for those who say "as much as youth change they stay the same".

From an objective standpoint how would anyone be able to identify if human behavior was actually regressing and who sets those standards?

10 Years A Slave was a forceful reminder of the developments in our own society in a historically short period of time. A quick look back into the 20th century reminds me of the blinkered attitudes toward women also. Bigoted attitudes toward LGBT are the current battles.

But it's naive to believe that the enormous changes in information technology are not having profound effects in behavior and society.

Without some kind of metric wouldn't we all just shrug our shoulders as civilization goes to pot and say "now as in Socrates day".

"Children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households"

Wow! I think you have changed.... not children.

As for now loving luxury, I think the idea of "luxury" has changed as well. What you see as luxury others see as a standard.

Rest assured, your grandparents said nearly the same thing about their progeny; mine did.

When I was a child, there was a large gap between adults and children. Particularly when we had visitors, we were told that children should be seen but not heard. My parents were very kind but they never tried to interact with me at my level, nor did I expect them to, because that's the way my friends' parents also acted (except for one friend whose mother played cricket in the backyard with him. We thought that she was a bit strange.)

Then when my brothers had children, they played with their kids when they were little and did things with them when they were older, up to early teens at any rate.

Now we have heard how the world has gone to pot.

My generation was the best!

i think what got me really wound up was....

it was a glorious day, not too hot / humid, nice breeze, and yet everyone was sitting around inside with some sort of 'device'.- these are generally portable, and we have some very comfortable outdoor furniture....

my wife and i went out and started playing football, frisbee, ball throwing for the dogs, etc., but no amount of persuasion would induce either our children, nor their children out to enjoy the day.

i distinctly remember growing up outdoors, playing till all hours and being 'forced' indoors. ok, there was nothing really to 'amuse' us indoors, but my kids had tv, and even some primitive electronics later on (ping-pong, intellevision, etc.,), but they still seemed to enjoy the 'outdoors'.

my grandchild will pat the dogs a couple of times, maybe throw the ball once or twice, then complain it's too hot/cold/whatever and make their way back to whatever electronic device has their attention for the next ten minutes.

or i'm tripping over cars / planes (courtesy disney), thomas and his cohorts, or yet another wrapper from some frivolous piece of ephemeral junk.....

BAH, HUMBUG

My grandma hated cars, because "they smell worse than horses and make more noise."

Their farmhouse got 24/7 electricity and an indoor toidy when I was about eight or nine.

;?0

Sorry gentlemen, but....
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/15/article-2218263-00C3FFBE00000578-865_634x384.jpg

"i distinctly remember growing up outdoors, playing till all hours and being 'forced' indoors. ok, there was nothing really to 'amuse' us indoors, but my kids had tv, and even some primitive electronics later on (ping-pong, intellevision, etc.,), but they still seemed to enjoy the 'outdoors'."

Then maybe you also remember when children were being taught segregation? Maybe you remember an earth that was much less damaged and much greener than the one we're going to pass on?

I don't think previous generations have any right to stand more proud than the next and lay judgement... especially when we are partially to blame for what you see today.

"Sorry gentlemen" MY HEROS!!! LOL

I guess we all have our little stories. 2 from me.

Doing some guest interviews at a wedding earlier this year, one little precious ran backwards and forwards past the camera screaming that high pitched scream that only THEEE most spoilt of kids can reach. Mum & Dad? Just screamed at him - so easy to see where he got it from. But....I realised that all hope is now gone when I head his GRANDMA Saying "Matty....pleeeeeeease come back to the room. I'll give you a pound (£1) if you do. The kid was 2 at the most.

At my brother's 50th birthday bash. Just shocked how many people of ALL ages had their faces bathed in the deathly glow of a 'device' all night instead of dancing, having a laugh with friends etc.

We're going to hell in a handcart. :-(

That's H*E*L*L :-)

So here I sit, indoors on a spectacularly beautiful California day, interacting with this wonderful forum on my wonderful iPad, and agreeing with the laments about "kids these days." And reflecting a little about the living contradiction I have become. And soon I'll go to my backyard studio - indoors again - and do some video editing.
And I AM elderly enough to have heaps of fond, nostalgic memories of playing outside with my neighborhood friends until after sundown...

I have had similar feelings lately also. A friend reminded me that every generation will eventually find a new balance of technology and life, and will probably do it quicker with less push-back from us "old fahrts."

I also remember that the horror comics I read as a child didn't turn me into a serial killer like my parents warned. The TV didn't make me go blind (nor did other teenage male activities), and the transistor radio I strapped to my bike to listen to rock and roll didn't corrupt my morals. If my parents were alive to know I make a living sitting in front of a computer all day they would be aghast.

My parents said to me in the 50's-60's of rock n' roll, "That's not music"!

Maybe you remember an earth that was much less damaged and much greener than the one we're going to pass on?

He might. He will also remember a world where twice as many people starved to death with a population half of what it is now. He probably remembers a world where four times as many people lived in abject poverty despite a much smaller population in the world. He possibly also remembers a world where half as many people were literate compared to today.

Perhaps he remembers a world where there was significant deforestation, there is none today. He might also remember a world with twice as many wars as today and more than four times as many people killed in those wars than today. He might remember a world where women had significantly less education than their male peers, today the world-wide difference in education level between men and women is less than six months. On average, men with about eight years on average and women with with a little over seven and a half.

Perhaps he remembers a world where crime was significanly higher in the world than it is today. Maybe he remembers a world with far more tyrants and far less democracy.

Generally, the world is getting better and better and it has been since we climbed down from the trees and moved into the caves.

I'll chime in here...

truth is, every generation complaining about the next is correct, and they are right. Things ARE sliding down with upward advancement. But the shiny/pretty blinds us to this truth.

There are plenty of mix and match upsides and downsides to everything: more video gaming in home means less street violence, better medicine makes longer life span, but there is ALWAYS the ugly downside of all this STUFF taking us further from who and what we are as humans.

The one single count of this downside is the PERCENTAGE of depression that creeps into modern day society.
IF we were truly doing better, there should be less and less depression, but instead, there is more and more. Why? Because of how we are advancing wrongly: previous generations see it, new ones don't... until they are older... and each new generation accepts its place without question because this evolution is too slow for a generation to catch, and it is ONLY seen as old guys flaming about change.

Bottom line is, things ARE changing for the worse. But we are too engrossed with the new stuff to care or even think about it.


...this all began with the industrial revolution, but no one wants to go back now....

things ARE changing for the worse.

Nonsense rubbish balderdash claptrap blarney blather hogwash baloney drivel gobbledegook bull bunk poppycock phooey hooey dribble codswallop bunkum and so on...

There is almost not a single item you can measure today where humans are worse off then they were in the past. We are better fed, healthier because we eat and live healthier than ever before, even with the obesity epidemic health in general is improving, poverty is on the way down REALLY fast, starvation and abject poverty will be solved as a systemic problem in the world within our life time, the size worlds population will crest in our life time and then go down a little bit.

There is a single problem today where we may be worse off in the future than before and that is the potential of future damage due to climate change. This is under two assumptions that may not hold at all, namely that future climate change is overall a negative (it may actually not be) and that we will not be able to deal with it. Neither is a guarantee.

Interesting tidbit: In the third (poor, you know) world today, the obesity epidemic affects FAR more people than under-nourishment and starvation. That is a "luxury" problem. Your health suffers far LESS if you are obese than it does if you starve.

Stating the human race is worse oft today than before is simply not in accordance with reality.

So, why do people always think it is. Simple. The past was better for YOU than the present is once you reach the "grumpy old man" age (I am there in years but chose to turn the grumpy into angry, there are only angry YOUNG men). Once you reach the spare-part age and the knees start to whine too much about the size of your gut, the back complains that all that sitting is bad for you, the prostate is about to help the back by making it difficult for you to sit etc, then the past WAS better. For YOU. For everybody else (on average) th present and the future is FAR better though.

You can prove me wrong by listing all the measurements that show us we are worse off.

"There is a single problem today where we may be worse off in the future than before and that is the potential of future damage due to climate change"

And I'm not even sure I believe that.

Well, I started with the first hidden issue: Depression. I'm no doctor, but I could post links to info on this. Or google it. Depression is higher in "developed" places than the undeveloped.
Sure, they don't have XBOX or even TV, but would you trade that for a depressionless life?

2. overpopulation. find any chart on population growth and it has sextupled over the last 200 years - BECAUSE our medices and stuff got better - that is the upside. How will me manage the downside? Soylent Green?

3. relationships and isolation: more toys makes more disconnection. we'd rather TEXT than TALK face to face? really? Upside: fun cool tech factor, downside: communication skills, relationship disconnections, loneliness.... .... depression ;) see how I worked that back in?

4. polution: ever think about where the rubber from your tires goes as it slowly shreds on the roadways? we use chemicals to clean the checmicals our of our water. chocking smog cover cities.... upside: I don't know... "Profit" in business?

5. we eat genetically modified foods (to keep up with population growth, and keep profits higher) yet suffer more strange issues that are food related: alergies to corn, peanuts, gluten, etc

6. instead of eating naturally - the stuff our bodies are desiged to deal with, we eat 5 times the sugar we should, not to mention many other chemicals that probably give us cancers in future generations. Upside: PROFITS YESSS! downside: obesity

7. Life: "Purpose" "satisfaction" "Quality" now measured by ever moving finishing line, and competition with Jones... not REALLY our happiest state since we avoid the peace of "contentment". Contentment means lower profits. Upside: we have enough cool toys to distract us all the way until the point where we shoot our family and then ourselves (seems to happen every few days in the news)

When I was a kid, there were no known school shootings. Now there is one a month in my country. Psychiatrists were rare, over priced, unneeded .... now it is a status symbol to be going to "Therapy". REALLY???

Most don't see things getting worse because they grow up with their place as normal. But some history look ups will show things getting worse.... while things get better. :)

I'd rather everyone get tons of exercise growing their own food, be happy, fulfilled, content, and have prupose, than go to work, get paid a lot to buy a bunch of stuff then feel depressed, and discontented the next week, but that is just me.

If you can't SEE the downsides, then The Matrix has you with its rose colored glasses . ;)

EDIT: BTW related this back to the ORIGINAL POST, his issue there is a direct result of the direction we are going... and that pretty much says it all.

Edit edit: BTW I love discussions about this, so don't read this like I'm some pissed off tree hugger or something. I play Nintendo and Xbox, buy lots of toys, going 4K etc, just like the jones. Actually, they keep up with me, so I am part of the problem. :)

as op i'm very interested where this thread has been / gone / going. thanks everyone - most entertaining and illuminating.

There is a single problem today where we may be worse off in the future than before and that is

water - by the time we've finished fracking / wasting / and otherwise polluting / misusing, we'll be in for one h*ll of a shortage. and that isn't going to be too far away.

Doesn't bother me one iota, I have been on tank water for 20 years. Don't have gas either. My only supplied vice is the Internet. And if I could afford, I would generate enough electricity to serve me.

But to go back to the original topic, we have one son who was well educated and now teaches. He has a similar view of the current crop of kids as the OP, but in the school where he teaches, in a poor economic and heavily indigenous area, they have special classes to teach kids how to actually relate to society and such, sort of 'life-skills' and he is one of the instigators of the program.

I just turned 60 and I don't miss anything about the old days. I believe over time memories become clouded and selective. For the most part the world gets better every day.