The degradation of Society and morals and kindness and the rise of Selfishness.

Started by freax, January 19, 2015, 04:17:36 AM

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freax


NCGunDude

I got involved with a home fellowship based Christian ministry 24 years ago, after having been raised in the church, serving in the military and graduating from a 4 year university. I had lots of odd jobs, started my own business, got into IT in 1997 and currently work in the public sector.

With all of the volatility in the world, there's isn't much hope anything is going to change for the better anytime soon. It's possible, but not very likely. The current world system could be tweaked to work for everyone, but it's being used to exploit the many for the gain of the few. The only sanity I have found, is the truth of God's word. The alternative is to accept people are greedy. I accept that people are greedy, that it is a part of human nature. That is a correct view. Is the solution then, to do as they do, or worse, since it seems the only way to beat them, is at their own game? Of course not! So, what is the answer? I had this same question, and I looked for the answer a lot of places, in world history books, etc. The history books are good at telling us what happened, but never the why. Of course, historians can postulate.

I didn't find any answers until I got involved with this Christian ministry 25 years ago, who taught me to read and understand the bible for myself. I don't proclaim to know everything, but I know who does.

I would encourage you to go around to different churches, until you find one you like. Just be yourself. A word of caution, however, if the leaders of the synagogue in Jesus' day were of their father, the devil, there's no reason to think the church is any different today. Christian doctrine was compromised with pagan beliefs to form a state religion in 3rd century Rome. This is where we get Sunday worship, Spring fertility rites at Easter, and Christ's mass at the winter solstice. However, we also have the truth of the one true God in his word, which has survived and is entrusted to us. Find a bible fellowship and don't give up on God. He hasn't given up on you.

So as not to offend anyone with my personal religious views, I'll pm you my personal e-mail and we can continue this discussion offline.

gil

Hello,

No offense. Religion is a personal endeavour. Probably better off-forum, due to the volatility of the subject.

To bring my $0.02 to the discussion: Human nature is what it is. It hasn't changed since the first Cro-Magnons. Morals are not degrading, they just haven't improved, because we are the same. Selfishness is not to blame, we are all selfish by our very existence. Lack of empathy maybe, that's another story.. Sure, we send rockets into space, but that doesn't mean we have conquered ourselves. That very human nature causing some much trouble, wars and murders, might be necessary for survival of the specie. A bit of refinement would go a long way of course.. But changes like that take thousands of years, and I'm not sure we'll make it that far.

How to deal with all that, and the stress?

You can't control the situation, so there is no real point worrying about it. You can have sone preps, do the best you can, and forget about the rest. Then every day should be about doing something good for yourself, be it some hobby, having a nice Cognac with a cigar or baking and eating an awesome cake, whatever... You can't make your life hell by worrying about something that hasn't happened yet, and may not, or something that hasn't happened to you. A post SHTF life would be hell. No need to make you pre SHTF life hell as well! Stop thinking about it, have fun!

I am getting into sailing, that's a great way to have fun. I rarely go to bars, and only with friends. I prefer coffee shops (where I meet the friends I rarely go to bars with.. :o)! All in all, I really try to stay out of the rat race. I don't even own a car or a television, don't want either. I don't "consume" much, and I don't care about owning "stuff." I do buy quality items when I need something though. I also try to dress well.. You wouldn't believe the difference it makes in the way people treat you! A little bit of a dressing effort makes your days much easier.

Better invest in knowledge than material things. Knowledge, nobody can take away from you, other than by killing you. Buy experiences, not things. Buy adventures you'll remember!

Most important: You must enjoy life RIGHT NOW, not possibly later...

Gil.

RadioRay

I do find that 'we' in many areas are more crass, more likely to step in front of someone and more likely to be glaringly rude, than a few decades ago.  Frankly, I see this for many reasons, some similar to NCdude. 

However, I also see that there is no penalty for being rude, pushy, self-possessed & etc.  Kind people are kind because it's who they are and any departure from that is only temporary. Destructively selfish people were significantly restrained by a society which had certain behavioural standards. When -punishment- for violating standards of even 'common decency' rusted away, so did 'acting' kind, because there was no reason to act on other than self interest, 'Who's gonna do anything about it?!".  It used to be that to insult a man's Wife would bring a punch in the face - with no legal problems associated with it. "He got what he deserved." would be the normal response. It used to be that stealing brought a good beating and being forced to repay more than you stole.  (Except for politicians...),  Now, there is an excuse for every bad behaviour and LEGAL protection from the consequences of same.

I do find that the old adage is true:

"An Armed Society is a POLITE Society."
 

Hence, Idaho is more polite than Baltimore , Maryland.


If they won't be kind because they ARE kind, they'll -act- kindly because they are afraid of pain.




>RadioRay ..._  ._
"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry

KK0G

I have to agree with Gil, human nature hasn't changed in millennia and isn't going to anytime soon.Sure, our technology and knowledge base may have advanced which improves our standard of living, but if you look back through history you see the same things in societies happening again and again. Another aspect of human nature is that because of our relatively short life spans, we tend to view the world as a whole during our short existence which tends to skew our perception of society and how humans interact with each other.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Lamewolf

Quote from: KK0G on January 20, 2015, 09:10:36 AM
I have to agree with Gil, human nature hasn't changed in millennia and isn't going to anytime soon.Sure, our technology and knowledge base may have advanced which improves our standard of living, but if you look back through history you see the same things in societies happening again and again. Another aspect of human nature is that because of our relatively short life spans, we tend to view the world as a whole during our short existence which tends to skew our perception of society and how humans interact with each other.

I think human nature has changed.  I work one on one with people every day and have for over 30 years now.  Folks used to expect to carry their own load, but nowadays folks have a feeling of entitlement and want everything for free and get very irate when they find out it don't work that way.  I was taught to earn my own keep, pay my own bills, and don't expect anyone to do it for me and I still believe that very strongly.  But todays society is full of people that expects everything to be given to them, they don't want to work for it or earn it  In some cases their expectations are justified, like when the buy a new product that has a warranty and that product fails as a result in poor workmanship or quality.  But folks today will buy something, break it themselves then expect the seller to pay for the damage.  I'm a service advisor at an auto dealership and for example, I get customers all the time that will buy a new vehicle, wreck it and then expect the manufacturer to pay for the damage because "its still under warranty".  When you explain to them that their warranty doesn't cover collision damage and that they need to file a claim with their insurance company, they always say "if I do that they will raise my rates"  What do they think insurance is for ?   Had one customer that pulled out in front of traffic and got T boned because she ran a stop sign and then wanted her warranty to pay for the damage and that is why she bought a new car because it has a warranty and she won't have to pay for that sort of thing.  When she found out a warranty doesn't cover collision, she got very irate and started cussing me out and asked for the customer service number.  She was told the same thing by the manufacturer !  But that's the way most folks are today, they don't want to take responsibility for their actions and always want someone else to pay for it.

PS: Freax, you need to cut out the caffeine ! :o


gil

QuoteI think human nature has changed.  I work one on one with people every day and have for over 30 years now.  Folks used to expect to carry their own load, but nowadays folks have a feeling of entitlement and want everything for free and get very irate when they find out it don't work that way.

True, but that doesn't mean human nature has changed. It means life has become comfortable... I am pretty sure that when we still lived in caves, there were lazy people, just like today. They might have been beaten a bit once in a while, but they were there... Today, no beatings, no consequences, not much blame even, if any. A hundred years ago these people had to work. they had no choice. Today, they can vote for some socialo-communist buffon to steal money from others.

I think I may have mentioned this in a prior post somewhere, but I once watched a survival TV show where about a dozen people were dropped in the Alaskan wilderness and had to go from point A to point B. Half of them started doing stuff, building shelter, hunting, gathering, etc. The other half just sat down and complained. Some quit the first day. Then in society, you have the predators. Some are violent, others are cunning, like the aforementioned voters. I do not believe the ratio of these people/behaviors has changed much since we started making tools...

We all have the potential to turn violent. I used to do a lot of underwater cave diving arounf Gainsville and North of Tampa. The understanding among cave divers has always been that if your buddy runs out of air, he will come for yours. You will grab his regulator if you run out of air. If there isn't enough air for both to get out alive, there will be a fight. It was expected, and measures were taken to avoid getting to that point. It is hard to accept, but it isn't something we can control, except maybe for some people with loved ones, when sacrifice is a possibility. With a stranger however, all bets are off.

We are intelligent animals and will always be. We are self centered and selfish because if we weren't, we simply wouldn't have made it.

You can be selfish and kind, selfish and do no harm to others. If someone calls me selfish, I don't take it as an insult, I just see them as someone who wants something from me, or rather, wanted something and didn't get it... Yes, I help my friends when they need it, but they are my friends and bring me happiness, help me sometimes when I need them. I even help strangers, but only if it doesn't affect me negatively. We all act this way, we are all selfish. Some people are just nicer, while others are assholes, or predators.

What has changed is comfort, which brings the worst out of many people.

Gil.

Lamewolf

Quote

True, but that doesn't mean human nature has changed.

Gil.

Well, all I know is, with the one on one game, years ago folks came in expecting to pay for services rendered.  This new generation does everything they can to get out of paying for services rendered !  To me, that's a big change !

KK0G

Quote from: Lamewolf on February 10, 2015, 07:30:40 AM
Quote

True, but that doesn't mean human nature has changed.

Gil.

Well, all I know is, with the one on one game, years ago folks came in expecting to pay for services rendered.  This new generation does everything they can to get out of paying for services rendered !  To me, that's a big change !


That's all true, but you have to look at why it's true. Human nature means we try to take advantage of our environment and the environment we live in rewards the type of people you're talking about. Remove the safety nets that we have in place and they'll quit mooching off of the rest of society. Isn't it amazing how it always boils down to politics? :o
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

cockpitbob

It's infiltrated all parts of our culture.  Some of you are old enough to remember movies made before the 70s where someone down on their luck was offered help, usually some money.  That person would get mad and indignant, throw the money back saying "I don't need your charity!  I can stand on my own two feet!".  I haven't seen anything like that in 30 years.  Few people have that kind of pride in themselves.

ciphercomms

Everything boils down to politics...and religion...the two things my mother said not to talk about in public.

Human nature hasn't changed but methods of moderating the worst features of our natures has changed. Go back 100 or 1,000 years...people have always tried to scam each other. Food safety and workplace safety are good examples. 'Cut' milk and dead dogs ground up in your sausage were common 100 years ago. Workplace deaths and injuries are down 90% since Federal safety regulations started going into effect...and worker productivity is way up in spite of government 'meddling'.

I don't have too much of a problem with the safety nets modern democratic societies provide. Otherwise it's just 'tooth and claw' with starving children like Mogadishu, Somalia and air pollution like Beijing, China.

 

NCGunDude

It's called peak everything, and yes, we will experience shocks to the system. There is no evidence other societies have "pushed the reset button". The Romans were the greatest civilization ever known, and the Greeks prior to that. There have been leaders and conquerors, and you can read about it all in the history books.

I've stated previously in this thread, I have a standard for truth, and that is the word of God, which is about as WA (as in WAG) as it gets. It's the best we've got, and no one has or ever will do any better for man than what has already been done, salvation (John 3:16).

One thing about population is, it can be reduced in a hurry. I prep because I like a fighting chance.

Here's a good topic for a thread. What, how, and why would you prep for an EMP/Solar flare? What about CBRN? What's in your kit?

Cheers, freax!

ciphercomms

Hmm...

'Peak everything' and partial re-sets have occurred frequently in history. Terrible famines, plagues, wars, and economic disruptions happen all the time.

I like the Judeo-Christian scriptures just fine, and I'll mention the starving, nomadic, pre-technological Israelites in the Old Testament being 'bailed out' by the Egyptians (the story of Joseph in Genesis), when famine struck, with stored grain, in settled cities, with a pretty advanced level of agricultural technology. All the Jews had to do was build a couple of pyramids for slave wages.

A thousand years later Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors were pretty brutal about eliminating any opposition to their grand plans, and still had trouble keeping everybody fed back home. And I can pretty much walk you through the trials and travails of the human species a century at a time, right up to the hundreds of millions of hungry and sick people in the third world today.

There is a wildly complicated relationship between technology and politics (which is kind of related to religion) that governs how well humankind gets along on Earth. We are not necessarily at peak 'peak everything' yet. China and India, with far higher populations than United States, crammed into far smaller land areas, are both doing sort of okay in improving the health and wellbeing of their citizens.

The technology seems like it's almost 'there', almost at the point where a larger population could live decently or where a stable population could look forward to better lives. Politics, however, seems to be lagging behind. There is little doubt that wealth is becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. That runs counter to the sweep of history and is probably the thing that is going to get 'corrected', one way or another, pretty soon.

I have to go in a few minutes, but I want to mention the drumbeat theme of inflation that keeps showing up here and elsewhere. There is virtually NO inflation in the developed Western democracies in North America, Europe, and Asia. There hasn't been significant inflation for 20 or 30 years. In fact there is a lot more concern these days about DEFLATION in most advanced economies. The U.S. dollar has been very strong against other major currencies in recent years. Everything isn't all roses and lollipops, but we're most of us doing pretty well and the immediate future doesn't actually look all that troubling.

I'd like to talk about all the carbon dioxide in the air and all the plastic in the ocean but I have to dash off. Right now.








ciphercomms

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and plastic in the oceans.

Most people have a little trouble with the scale of things. To say that the breathable atmosphere is somewhere around 18,000 feet thick, or that the average depth of the oceans is around 12,000 feet doesn't really translate for a lot of folks. So...

Thought experiment: If Earth were shrunk down to the size of a beach ball, say two feet in diameter, how thick would the scaled down atmosphere be ? And how deep would the oceans be ? Think about it...and answer the question before you read on...

I've posed that question to a fair number of people, dozens or scores, mostly college educated (although some were liberal arts majors) and the typical answer, even from most tech-oriented folks, is probably "an inch or so". Well, that would be off by several orders of magnitude.

1,000 feet scales down to right around 0.0006 inches...so the 12,000 foot deep oceans are about 0.007 of an inch and the 18,000 foot thick atmosphere is about 0.01 of an inch. That's roughly two sheets of tissue paper for the oceans and three sheets of tissue paper for the atmosphere (300 pages of the Chicago telephone book are about an inch). Surprised ? A lot of people have checked my math because they can hardly believe that's all there is...but that's all there is. And we're dumping plastic and burning fuels like there's no tomorrow.

I've dragged this string some distance away from 'the rise of selfishness'...but maybe not so far.


ciphercomms

What does the 'R' in 'CBRN' stand for ? I'm not real concerned about a Nuc'-Bio'-Chem' attack...but there's a lot of civilian commercial NBC stuff around here just waiting to blow up all by itself, or get involved in a road or rail accident. There are a whole bunch of trucks and trains around here at the southern tip of Lake Michigan...and nuclear power plants. We're pretty woefully unprepared for anything like that. There are $50 full-face respirators out there (Chinese...) that take local 'home center' 3M filter cartridges. I think I'm going to buy my wife a respirator for her birthday. (NO! Don't do THAT!)

I can't handle a pre-electronic 30 year-old 'project' vehicle. After EMP we will ride our bicycles. For now we are doing our calculated best to balance carbon footprints against mobility with relatively efficient small AWD hatchbacks.

I thought I read something on 'welcome' page about NO Bible study strings allowed here. How do we do private messages ?