Has modern comfort destroyed human discipline?

Before anyone even tries it: Don't give me that horrible Socrates quote about how youth has always been bad. I can literally tell the difference in respect and discipline between people born 1988-1992 and people form 1996-2000.

Its almost like parents don't even raise their kids anymore.

Just to give one example. When I was in pre-school I would never bad mouth much older students. The reason was simple: I did not want to risk getting beaten up or otherwise get into trouble.

Now however I have noticed many young kids bad mouthing other people almost 3 times their own size without worrying about anything. I myself have been bad mouthed a number of times by some little shits when in public.

Modern comfort has made lots of people oblivious to how the world works. Some people have it so easy that they don't know how the world can be cruel, so they just assume that love and carrying can solve everything. Dismissing people who actually discipline their kids as being "evil and abusive".

Am I the only one who thinks that soon things such as children having respect for other people (or hell, just PEOPLE having respect for other people) will soon be a thing of the past?

EDIT: I think this article might be relevant: http://under30ceo.com/is-gen-y-the-most-narcissistic-generation-ever/

Yes.

I agree that young people have no respect anymore and can get away with so much because punishing them is considered "abuse". Fuck the parents who don't discipline their children.

It's one of the reasons I joined the military a few months ago. There's still order, respect, and honor there, where elsewhere, it's completely gone.

Certain values have to be taught, and certain actions have to be punished (and others praised, accordingly). For one reason or the other, modern parents feel that they don't need/want to do that.

In the past, there were situations such as hunger, poverty, civil war, authoritarianism etc. that imposed bringing up children in a certain way, otherwise they would've had a very, very hard time, even in modern "1st world countries" after WW2. Changes in lifestyle and standards of living made most "old school" methods superfluous.

E.g. take "girls' innocence" for instance. In a world without effective contraception, incurable veneral diseases, and where having children almost certainly meant poverty and hardships that could not be faced by your average single mother alone, you can understand that fucking around freely was not being seen as a very "cool" thing to do. The value of " a girls innocence" was simply a safeguard against things too complicated and too nasty to explain, if the shit hit the fan. With the pill, more education, and better cures, these things changed somewhat. And that's just one example.

But if the world keeps going the way it's going, the next generations will almost certainly experience a comeback of morality, strictness etc., as poverty and lack of education will bring some "ancient" problems back.

What field are you in, hc_gamer? I'm a student/office worker, and I've anecdotally observed a pretty even mix of work-hard and spoiled-brat archetypes among Millenials, so I can't say that I have a strong opinion on this generation. Not yet, anyway. Put another way: I've seen great things, and I've seen discouraging things, but the soup hasn't settled yet, so I'm withholding my judgement.

Also, while increasing comfort over the centuries has undoubtedly domesticated us [citation required], there's nothing to prove that this is a one-way continuum ending in absolute sloth. William Strauss & Neil Howe coined (I believe) the term 'generational cycles,' and I think it makes a lot of sense. Of course, though the cycles may repeat, they're never identical. I'm not sure which one we're in right now, but if you look at the state of the world's politics, economy, and rule of law*, is it any wonder that this generation suffers, on average, from a higher rate of ennui? The real test of this generation is: who will their leaders be, and what will they inspire the masses to?

*more to the point, they're more aware of these problems. We're still not sure what effects this level of depressing media saturation has on a generation, but I think we're rapidly finding out.

EDIT: durr, im dum, here's a [link] to what I was talking about re Strauss & Howe...

schwerpunk said:

Also, while increasing comfort over the centuries has undoubtedly domesticated us [citation required], there's nothing to prove that this is a one-way continuum ending in absolute sloth. William Strauss & Neil Howe coined (I believe) the term 'generational cycles,' and I think it makes a lot of sense. Of course, though the cycles may repeat, they're never identical.

The biggest problem I have with this argument is that the birth of the modern era in the late 1980's changed the way humans can live forever.

Sure as you say comfort has increased over the eras of human history, but only now for the first time ever do lots and lots of people actually believe that life both can and SHOULD be a piece of cake and that they should never have to expect any real effort on their own part. Even if people earlier in history like say in the 1950's were living much better lives then people from like say the middle-ages they still understood that life was not simple and that there had to be discipline. But now life has gotten so good for many that lots of people are obvlivous to how the world works.

To be honest though, some these problems may be made worse by my own nation's special circumstances. Iceland (where I live) is both extremely isolated from the rest of the world and has some of the highest standards of living in the world. This means that many Icelanders probably have stupid ideas of what normality is since there is nothing for most people to compare to their own lives except for the lives of other Icelanders.

I do think that social networking, media advertising, and what our culture has developed into has created a lot of people, especially in my generation, to have higher expectations of themselves than what they are finding themselves in now. I have a rather low paying job, I work many hours, and in the comfort of living at home with mom and dad, I was able to build up a large surplus of money to buy a house with. Now I'm living here, with my heat turned very low, using the computer for about an hour a day, taking 10 minute showers, playing severely outdated video games once a week, with no internet, no cable, no telephone, and no trash service, and I'm still finding myself struggling to pay the bills. I'm not in debt, I'm actually pretty far from it. But still, the pretty low standards that I set for myself to live in are still gearing me into decline.

There's no way I could smoke ciggarettes, buy a coffee and a breakfast sandwich every morning, catch a movie, shop for new clothes, grocery shop at stores with all organic food products, go to the gym, eat at a restaurant, and go to the bar for a few drinks like the country expects me to. I just can't afford to live that way.

But in the line of work that I do, I see people living that way all the time. And at least half of them are kidding themselves, with debt up to their eyeballs, and attempting to pay it off with government-funded programs. I sometimes wonder what the repercussions of living in debt are because quite a few people seem to be doing just fine.

hardcore_gamer said:

The biggest problem I have with this argument is that the birth of the modern era in the late 1980's changed the way humans can live forever.

Sure as you say comfort has increased over the eras of human history, but only now for the first time ever do lots and lots of people actually believe that life both can and SHOULD be a piece of cake and that they should never have to expect any real effort on their own part. Even if people earlier in history like say in the 1950's were living much better lives then people from like say the middle-ages they still understood that life was not simple and that there had to be discipline. But now life has gotten so good for many that lots of people are obvlivous to how the world works.

To be honest though, some these problems may be made worse by my own nation's special circumstances. Iceland (where I live) is both extremely isolated from the rest of the world and has some of the highest standards of living in the world. This means that many Icelanders probably have stupid ideas of what normality is since there is nothing for most people to compare to their own lives except for the lives of other Icelanders.

The concept of the decreased harshness / increased comfort of life over time is actually a topic that fascinates me greatly. Particularly how the human mind reacts to such changes. We know anecdotally that people on the whole become accustomed to improvements like these, but does that mean that their enjoyment of the greater comforts are, empirically (like, electrodes-on-the-brain-wise; i.e. you can measure that shit) better, and that their experience of the lesser inconveniences is somehow diminished? Like, is the trauma of losing cellphone reception in 2013 equivalent to the trauma of losing a finger in 0013?

Put another way, do humans have a dial of suffering/enjoyment that goes from 0 to 10, and does increased quality of life simply move the 0 and 10 up the scale, respectively (like, is the modern experience of a 0 now, the equivalent of a 10 in past ages?), or does it change the dial from 0 to 100?

EDIT: I like* 'like' a lot...
EDIT: *err, I meant, 'I say "like" a lot...' lol

40oz said:

I do think that social networking, media advertising, and what our culture has developed into has created a lot of people, especially in my generation, to have higher expectations of themselves than what they are finding themselves in now. I have a rather low paying job, I work many hours, and in the comfort of living at home with mom and dad, I was able to build up a large surplus of money to buy a house with. Now I'm living here, with my heat turned very low, using the computer for about an hour a day, taking 10 minute showers, playing severely outdated video games once a week, with no internet, no cable, no telephone, and no trash service, and I'm still finding myself struggling to pay the bills. I'm not in debt, I'm actually pretty far from it. But still, the pretty low standards that I set for myself to live in are still gearing me into decline.

There's no way I could smoke ciggarettes, buy a coffee and a breakfast sandwich every morning, catch a movie, shop for new clothes, grocery shop at stores with all organic food products, go to the gym, eat at a restaurant, and go to the bar for a few drinks like the country expects me to. I just can't afford to live that way.

But in the line of work that I do, I see people living that way all the time. And at least half of them are kidding themselves, with debt up to their eyeballs, and attempting to pay it off with government-funded programs. I sometimes wonder what the repercussions of living in debt are because quite a few people seem to be doing just fine.

Interesting. I basically live like this, too. In the UK. But I think most people do to be honest. I think the issue has come with people expecting this NOT to be the norm. Our grandparents' generation would have considered the way we live as perfectly satisfactory.

hardcore_gamer said:

Before anyone even tries it: Don't give me that horrible Socrates quote about how youth has always been bad.

Ok, I won't. But you're kidding yourself if you think kids are more undisciplined today than they were a couple of decades ago. Day-to-day life wasn't all THAT different back then. It's easy to scowl at kids' misbehaviour while forgetting that that's exactly what you were doing when you were that age.

Breaking a few rules and seeing how far you can push something before repercussions ensue is all part of growing up (I actually regret being so much of a chicken compared to some of my peers). I'm convinced the antiquated "Spare the rod and spoil the child" mentality is more damaging to a generation than a more laid-back attitude is.

DoomUK said:

It's easy to scowl at kids' misbehaviour while forgetting that that's exactly what you were doing when you were that age.

Except that I WASN'T doing exactly what kids are doing now when I was their age. I did not insult my parents in public because I feared what they might do if I did. I did not bad mouth much older students because I knew that doing so could get me beaten up. I did NOT behave in the same manner.

Also note that I am not even that old. Soon I will be in my mid 20's. So its not like I am just some old fart whining about the "spoiled youth".

DoomUK said:

Breaking a few rules and seeing how far you can push something before repercussions ensue is all part of growing up

Correct, but here is the thing: There are no longer any real repercussions.

If I had been able to bad mouth students 3 times my own size and yell at my parents until I got whatever I had wanted then I would probably have done so as well. But I did not, because I wasn't able to do so without horrible repercussions.

Because that is our problem right there: No fucking repercussions.

Its not that there is some kind of a magical gene that is making the youth and the younger people worse then older generations, its that the repercussions that you speak off no longer appear to exist.

No repercussions for doing stupid shit=People do more stupid shit.

hardcore_gamer said:

Now however I have noticed many young kids bad mouthing other people almost 3 times their own size without worrying about anything. I myself have been bad mouthed a number of times by some little shits when in public.

Indeed. I'm in my late twenties and I ended up quitting from places like Facebook and Twitter because of a few 16 yearolds who conspired hard to make me feel miserable. I grew tired of putting up with them. It's a rather long and complex story, I'd rather not give too much details.

But yeah, I think they keep getting more and more spoiled with every generation. To them the essence of life seems to be to mock anybody who couldn't get the same level of comfort and advanced technology which they have already obtained without even asking for.

DoomUK said:

But you're kidding yourself if you think kids are more undisciplined today than they were a couple of decades ago

No, I'm not kidding. My generation never had things like Youtube and Skype for defaming and degrading people to vast amounts of strangers around the world. This is serious shit that we lacked.

Children are taken from their parents, like eggs from chickens on a farm, to be raised in a disgusting socialist compulsory education holding pen to prevent them from interfering with all the adult scams going on in the real world. They're given no rights or respect so should give none in return. They're just assimilated into the disgusting adult world where they can in turn abuse their children in a cultural downward spiral.

Imitation is the primary mechanism of culture. Encyclopedia dramatica exists so people imitate it, like those kids who taunted that bus driver some time ago did so in a fairly "encylopedia dramatica" type of way. Human brains have no firewall; info just goes right to the brain through the eyes etc. There are very few respectable things with honor/integrity/etc to imitate. I actually think alex jones is fighting against a sick culture for that. And stefan molyneux argues for peaceful parenting as a key people can actually control at the local level to create a better society, but governments/monopolies/bureaucracy/force/authority/organized corruption etc make it difficult.
Also, I suspect there is a "natural selection" thing occurring in a game theory sort of way with the golden rule (nonviolence principle). For example, suppose everyone in society behaved according to the golden rule. Well just as with hawk and dove game theory models, what if a mutation appeared, like an individual who broke that rule and decided to become a charlatan and screw all the other people over. That individual might have an advantage in a society where everyone else was using the golden rule, so there might be an open niche that rewards people who use force etc, either financially or genetically or memetically.
I think the whole economic system basically rewards people who choose evil. Plastic people on Fox who blare propaganda for their elite masters get lots of money, and so does the creator of scientology and evil CEO's like the asshole that runs evilbay. So almost all the money is gravitating toward evil people and with money comes leverage to further manipulate other things to get them even more money. The result is our anti free market collapsing corrupt society, after lots of years of accumulated decadence.
Or something.

hardcore_gamer said:

Lots of stupid shit based on anecdotal evidence and lack of education.

EDIT: I think this article might be relevant: http://under30ceo.com/is-gen-y-the-most-narcissistic-generation-ever/

I think you'd do well to consider your resources better. I don't consider a Digital Business researcher as any more credible than you in this field.

hardcore_gamer said:

If I had been able to bad mouth students 3 times my own size and yell at my parents until I got whatever I had wanted then I would probably have done so as well. But I did not, because I wasn't able to do so without horrible repercussions.

There's nothing new here. Kids were provoking and ridiculing bigger kids when I was a kid. Sometimes they got away with it, sometimes they didn't; and when they didn't, the bigger kid would in turn be punished for retaliating. Kids were also trying their parents' patience in exactly the same way that you describe.

188DarkRevived said:

No, I'm not kidding. My generation never had things like Youtube and Skype for defaming and degrading people to vast amounts of strangers around the world. This is serious shit that we lacked.

And what if YT and Skype were around when you were a kid? Are you seriously telling me no one would have used them to be abusive towards others?

Mocking those with less stuff was always the favourite passtime of people with an inflated ratio of stuff to experience. If you see more of that now it's because more people have more stuff (and because you probably see more people than you used to because of a variety of factors).

Kids aren't any worse now than when I was a kid. I refuse to feel sorry because beating up little kids is no longer acceptable just because they like to mouth off.

This shit about there being no consequences for things is ludicrous anyway. We now have schools that expel kids for making gun hand gestures. WTF? It looks to me more like the simplistic morals from 50s TV convinced boomers that the world can be run on simple, thoughtless rules.

Maes is right about how shit hitting the fan will quickly discipline people in pretty much any culture. There are some negative aspects to highly ordered societies though. Conformity is a pretty evil thing in most cases, and that's usually how the discipline manifests itself. In the times when older kids tend to beat up younger ones they don't just do it because the kids were being mouthy. They also seem to like beating up people who are different for any reason, including nerds.

Going by your hawk and dove analogy gggmork, I'd say we're already there. Your average, law-abiding Western citizen is the dove and then we've got hawks at the top level of business/banking/government/law that are just grabbing it all for themselves and screwing everybody who isn't in that club over. Desperation at the very bottom is turning the doves into pigeons (because rats aren't birds :P ) and we've got a festering melee in most of the slums. If a dove drops down to the bottom, it either has to adapt to the dirty, violent lifestyle to keep going or escape as quickly as possible, because without either of those you don't survive. Likewise, if you go to the top you best be able to fight your corner, or you'll be fucked over before they've even introduced themselves.


As for the topic at large, I hate kids and always have done. They don't have rational fears because they've not learnt the repercussions, with the difference being that these days the repercussions aren't usually there. Instead they are constantly defended from their world and the consequences of their actions by parents who will never hear a word against them (even if the parent is otherwise neglectful). As a result, kids get built up in a purely positive environment, thinking they're the shit. Narcissism ensues, but they do eventually get a taste of the real world, where you then find out what they're really made of.

I've seen the report be reported recently on BBC News and read most of the comments posted. I genuinely think there is a trend towards narcissism in the current generations (I include my own in this, as well as the older one or two). However, I think there is also a trend towards narcissism in society at large and historically has been for a while. From what I've gathered one of the main founding principles of America (a recently established country, in case you're wondering why I'm picking it out specifically) is essentially "We deserve the best and should work towards it" but over time the Western world (which is culturally led by the USA) has taken more of the "We deserve the best" attitude and left the working hard part behind.


Honestly, I don't think we can expect great changes in the near future though, it'll probably get worse. Hell, I'm definitely narcissistic and introspective myself, and I definitely had things like "right", "wrong", "hard work" and "respect" drilled into me when I was younger. I suppose the saving grace is that I am still accepting of the fact that, whilst I probably do have an undue sense of entitlement, I won't get shit all without working hard for it.

hc_gamer, I've always been more reserved than my peers, too. Although in my case it was a form of rebellion against my overly laissez-faire parents. I still feel somewhat disenfranchised when I consider my generational cohorts.

I'm not saying that parenting trends don't exist, but they're only one part of the vast mish-mash of factors that influence kids. The whole mess of influences is almost too overwhelming to analyze. To say that a certain type of parenting will produce a certain type of person is ignoring the vast array of external/internal influences on parents and children, and the feedback effects of those influences being modified and bounced among their respective recipients and emitters.

P.S. sorry this post is so vague, I have to go catch a bus in a few.

A few summers in a vacation camp for children, or even the experience of the army, are often enough to teach you how you can get along with much, much less than you thought necessary, how important it is to bond with others, and how there are other ways of living, too.

Most importantly, they teach you that mommy won't always be there to do your laundry and wash your ass.

Yes I agree with this. Respect in people is hard to come by, the saying of "respect others then they'll respect you" doesn't even apply nowadays. I was taught discipline a different way to some people and have had countless interactions with many different people who will just treat me like shit, even though I have done the moral thing and been nice to them and respected them.

I've seen kids nowadays vandalising properties amongst other things all just for "fun" and it just seems to increase by the second. Quite a lot of people around Bedfordshire also "start" on innocent, hard working and good people for no reason.

Also, the lack of respect youths have also influence a lot of other people to use an example, one of my friends made a few new friends with some people from the town next to mine. After a few months of getting on and being good friends the activities they committed started to get onto the side of crime (arson, vandalising property to name a couple). Also his respect for me just, vanished just because I didn't want to be a part of it.

Anyway later on (this was last year by the way) my friend decided that he could trust them enough to allow them round for a party, he got robbed straight in the house whilst he slept and his car got burned. He decided to later have me as a friend back (I feel uncomfortable even when I go and meet him nowadays). It amazes me really as his parents taught him discipline but the influence of other people converted him.

All I'm trying to say is it's not just parents but other people around who just have no respect can also convert people.

Springy said:

Anyway later on (this was last year by the way) my friend decided that he could trust them enough to allow them round for a party, he got robbed straight in the house whilst he slept and his car got burned.

While I understand that parties can ruin peoples homes, I can't help but wonder how his car got light on fire.

hardcore_gamer said:

While I understand that parties can ruin peoples homes, I can't help but wonder how his car got light on fire.

They must've done it. Doesn't surprise me as the guy is well known in Sandy for being a completely disrespectful twat even to his mates. One of them left to London and he was actually an alright bloke.

I agree. I could name a bunch of things that seem "messed up" about today's world compared to even ten years ago.

Stuff is going down FAST. Nobody has any respect, no morals (Most don't, anyway). It seems like everyone is lost in a way, everyone's all mixed up. In simpler times, everyone knew what to do with life and their were rules.

Pretty soon, I feel that people will just do whatever. Include badmouth complete strangers.

I could go on, but, I don't want to create controversy so, I'll leave it at that. =P

My 10 year old cousin is 10x more mature than my ex girl friend was. I rest my case, haha. Than again, her parents also believe in raising your kids. My ex's parents just didn't give a flying fuzzball.

hardcore_gamer said:

Now however I have noticed many young kids bad mouthing other people almost 3 times their own size without worrying about anything. I myself have been bad mouthed a number of times by some little shits when in public.

Yeah, there's this one little brat in my apartment complex that was talking shit to me one day. I just ignored him, but fuck if I had done the same thing when I was a kid I would have been put in the hospital if not by my neighbor then by my dad.

I think one very important thing we must not forget is exactly how much time parents have left to actually do 'proper' parenting. It's very easy to bash and criticise other people's parenting, and just as easy to claim and assert what constitutes 'proper' parenting.

Undoubtedly, parents do not even have enough time to parent. Considering the Neo-liberal Capitalist ways that is essentially the embodiment of the Western World, more parents spend more time working than they do parenting. In the old days, we had mothers restrict their ambitions to mere mothering (unfortunately at the expense of themselves), and that meant more time for personal and close proximity interactions between parent and child. But now, no thanks to frequent misconceptions of feminism, mothers are now working and parenting, and thinking that was a way of shattering the glass ceiling. Well, obviously not. No wonder child-care centres are making more than they ever did (at least from what I've heard). Considering when most parents are not present in their children's lives (or are too tired to parent and interact with their children), working in order to survive, who's left to guide these children to live the best they can in the face of inherent consumerist and nihilistic nature of modern living?

DoomUK said:

And what if YT and Skype were around when you were a kid? Are you seriously telling me no one would have used them to be abusive towards others?

There have been some occasions back in elementary school and middle school and even secondary school when a few kids of my own generation would find some way of harassing me despite the fact that advanced technology was lacking.
But even then, those peers of mine were more willing to apologize to me a few days down the road. They were more susceptible to some kind of genuine remorse than the modern British teenagers with whom I've dealt with across an ocean for over the past 2 years.
It's hard to explain in words, but there is a tremendous difference between the attitudes of the present and the attitudes of yesteryears.
I guess that this is something that you can only begin to realize through personal encounters. If you only socialize with your peers and don't get much chances to be in a situation where you socialize either willingly or unwillingly with people who are up to 12/13 years younger than you then you just won't be able to understand and feel the difference.

hardcore_gamer said:

Before anyone even tries it: Don't give me that horrible Socrates quote about how youth has always been bad. I can literally tell the difference in respect and discipline between people born 1988-1992 and people form 1996-2000.

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

Even if you think it's horrible, it's the truth. The fact of the matter is you're getting old.

188DarkRevived said:

If you only socialize with your peers and don't get much chances to be in a situation where you socialize either willingly or unwillingly with people who are up to 12/13 years younger than you then you just won't be able to understand and feel the difference.

No, I don't socialise with people under the age of 18. But that doesn't change the fact that I don't see anything being said in here that is evidence of discrepancies between kids of today and kids of 20 years ago. People are making assertions about changes in kids' behaviour with nothing to prove it. [Certain] kids have misbehaved and shown no respect for others and their elders for quite a while. And particularly "troubled" kids have existed since time memorial.

Of course, you do hear about gangs of "youths" physically assaulting adults and committing other serious crimes - which might or might not have even been contemplated 50 or more years ago - but there's juvenile prisons for that. I'm not hearing anything about someone being stabbed by a 13-15 year old in public, who went completely unpunished.

hardcore_gamer said:

Soon I will be in my mid 20's.

That's your problem right there. This is the worst part of your life.

Joshy said:

who's left to guide these children to live the best they can in the face of inherent consumerist and nihilistic nature of modern living?

50cent/Duke Nukem/The Postal Dude?

Bring back conscription! There's nothing wrong with today's youth that can't be fixed by a bit of good old-fashioned military discipline - and being sent to fight the godless commies!