[Blarg]

Good post on the different social habits. This has been a trend that's ongoing for some time, and it's not on the wane yet. People, both young and old, don't belong to as many clubs, and take less interest in their communities. Parents used to kick kids out of the house to make them go socialize even if they didn't feel like it. Now it seems that the least you can do for them is give them an expensive perfect coccoon in their room -- DVD player, t.v., nintendo or whatever, often computer and internet connection, stereo. Really, with a toilet and a fridge there, they'd almost never have to come out, might never be asked to, and might not be missed. It has become easier to get by reasonably happily without being a social person at all. And it has become more acceptable parenting to not worry so much about it.

Also, social consciousness seems to have dropped off. Now you hear people talking a lot more about their "lifestyle." That does lead, to the good, toward being concentrated one one's career and directed. But it leads also, to the bad, to being politically indifferent, which is a danger to democracy far more than any number of radicals or loonies, over-excited kids, or verminous scumbags could be. I'm not optimistic about America maintaining its freedoms in the future. It could interfere with someone's lifestyle.

Also, the influence of gangster this and that, and all the posing, complete selfishness, and arrogance that goes with it, into the youth culture has demeaned and degraded general discourse. Gangsters are douchebags of the highest order, and that anyone would want to imitate them in any way or incorporate any of their real or imagined values and outlook into their own, shows how little social novelty often really offers, and even how regressive it can be.

I used to worry that Americans might destroy the world. We were certainly enormously destructive and short-sighted. Now I wonder if we might just let it be destroyed, because we have no vision at all, and are becoming so enormously indifferent that we have no real standards or goals anyway and just can't be bothered.