Cultural degeneration

[Norsemaiden]

A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham's law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.

In no country has the process of vulgarization gone further than in Britain: in this at least, we lead the world. A nation famed not so long ago for the restraint of its manners is now notorious for the coarseness of its appetites and its unbridled and anti-social attempts to satisfy them. The mass drunkenness seen on weekends in the center of every British town and city, rendering them unendurable to even minimally civilised people, goes hand in hand with the appallingly crude, violent and shallow relations between the sexes. Britain's mass bastardy is not a sign of an increase in the authenticity of our human relations but a natural consequence of the unbridled hedonism that leads in short order to chaos and misery, especially among the poor. Take restraint away, and violent discord follows.

From "Our Culture, What's Left of It" by Theodore Dalrymple

A sign of the end of civilisation?

 

[BloodSword]

after all, we are animals. in the US, adults(and i use that term loosely) after thanksgiving, which here is the biggest shopping day for christmas, were standing in line to purchase the new play station game box. adults were stomping and beating one another to be able to get a fuckin' game. every day i read or see something that is completely appalling. we, as a society are regressing.

 

[Norsemaiden]

The thing is that it wasn't the lower classes that are the source of this degeneration, but in fact the liberal intellectual elite. It has a lot to do with the way that art has come to be valued in a large part for its ability to shock and "challenge" taboos.

Also, when the media constantly provides prurient stories about the private lives of politicians, film/tv stars, popular musicians,etc it all has the (intentional?) consequence of subverting the concept of virtue and denying its possibility.

This quote is really funny imo:

At the [soccer] match itself, in the Olympic stadium, the English crowd behaved with typical unpleasantness. For about three hours - before, during and after the game - it hurled insults in unison at the Italian crowd. It chanted, Who the fuck do you think you are? and You're shit and you know you are with scarcely a break. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in the English section of the stadium who did not join in.

Dalrymple "Life at the Bottom".

No offence to Italians - I don't agree with the above sentiments after all - only the idiocy of it amuses me. I find a lot of degenerate behaviour amusing, while staying aloof from it, but perhaps I should be horrified by it instead. Is this so?
Nietzsche would probably say one shouldn't let such things get you down too much - but the important thing is not to be tainted by it and not to allow your children to become part of that culture. The only way to avoid that is to act in opposition to it where practical.

 

[OldScratch]

"The scholar without good-breeding is a pedant; the philospopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable." Lord Chesterfield

There can be little doubt that we are growing more coarse and vulgar as a society on many levels. One need look no further than our obsessively adored entertainment(pop)culture, to see from whence much of this derives. When "pimps, thugs and gangstas" become socially acceptable and possibly even embraced as role-models for a nation's youth, it seems safe to say something might be wrong.

So-called Reality-TV is the perfect example of the wantonly vulgar and coarse on parade. These often culturally-bankrupt programs appeal to little but the baser instincts of man. Avarice, greed, deceit, betrayal, sexual and emotional exhibitionism are the order of the day...and the celebrants are either entirely unaware of their disgraceful behavior or worse, proud of it!

Indeed, any of us who spend any time on the internet must admit that the positively obnoxious behavior routinely on display in cyberspace might be comical were it not so destructive and pathetic. Apparently, electronic anonymity for all its convenience and utility also breeds a most vile breed of coward.

Bloodsword's account of the American Christmas consumer orgy is a pretty sad commentary on where we are culturally. We cannot even enjoy a family holiday without it being transformed into yet another opportunity to "shop 'til we drop." How noble...

It is life imitating art and art imitating life...only there is no real art in it. What then does that say about the quality of the life?

 

[speed]

Its a bizarre dream of mine to travel to England and become a hooligan. Yes, you heard me right: I wish to fully engage in acts of hooliganism. I wish to get to the local pub early before a game, drink while the game is being played--I am American, and thus entirely resistant to the attraction of futbol--and then join a gaggle of bright-jersied hooligans, harass young lasses on the street, harass all persons on the street, pick up cars and other objects, chant silly fight songs, and light bonfires into the night. Oh what fun: random drunken mob violence! I can think of nothing better.

 

[metal_wrath]

In the case of the United States I think we are most definitely degenerating from our idea of what our culture should be like, but not necessarily any less evolved than where we were at the turn of the century. In regards to the cultural degeneration of England, I think it is a popular myth that the Brits were always "proper", socially mannered people. I think I will quote a post which I posted in the general music discussion board:

...I was basing my statement on the lack of decency which one can witness on your sitcoms, which are rampant with crude sexual dialogue which isn't censored, things like that would not even be allowed in US television. Also the UK seems to be less sexually restrictive than the US. The UK has been at the forefront of the Medeival age, which has seen countless atrocities committed under your monarchy, including barbaric crusades, killing of all opposition, conquest, bad food, execution of such heroic figures as Joan of Arc, corrupt religious institutions. Also your country still is partly a monarchy, which proves that you are stuck in your ways. Also CHAVS

a partly humorous comment about my views on the English culture...

 

[BloodSword]

Its a bizarre dream of mine to travel to England and become a hooligan. Yes, you heard me right: I wish to fully engage in acts of hooliganism. I wish to get to the local pub early before a game, drink while the game is being played--I am American, and thus entirely resistant to the attraction of futbol--and then join a gaggle of bright-jersied hooligans, harass young lasses on the street, harass all persons on the street, pick up cars and other objects, chant silly fight songs, and light bonfires into the night. Oh what fun: random drunken mob violence! I can think of nothing better.

You don't have to go to England to do that, my friend. I assume this is a joke!!

 

[Έρεβος]

You don't have to go to England to do that, my friend. I assume this is a joke!!

Ah, but it oh so much more amusing to do so in England than in America.

 

[TalesOfTerror]

So what is the ideal?
Victorian times?
No thanks.

 

[speed]

You don't have to go to England to do that, my friend. I assume this is a joke!!

Hm, well unless its the Red-Sox or a college team winning some big game, the level of hooliganism is incredibly low comparatively, plus one has to constantly worry about actually being arrested. American pigs--I mean cops--are not as friendly.

I mean these British Islanders (Scots, Irish, English) even travel throughout Europe in packs, engaging in hooliganism. Exporting hooliganism: quite the committment they have I say.

 

[Norsemaiden]

So what is the ideal?
Victorian times?
No thanks.

We aren't supposed to be discussing standards of living (although behaviour does closely relate to quality of life) but standards of behaviour. I don't advocate a return to Victorian times, but the avoidance of a situation where society breaks down due to the spread of degenerate behaviour.

But this is in a large part due to a decrease in the intelligence.

When I was young and inexperienced, I used to ask the patient or his relatives to turn the television off; but in England that means (at best) only a slight reduction in its volume. It is disconcerting to conduct a medical examination with a moving picture casting a changing light over the room, and the patient trying to peer over one's shoulder, or around one's side, to catch a glimpse of it, while confusing one's questions with the dialogue of a soap opera. Once I went into a paralysed old lady's house and found the television on. I asked the daughter, who was present, to turn it off.

"I don't know how," she said. And she didn't.

Nowadays I march into the house and turn the television off myself. It is the only way to get the patient's full attention - even if he or she is seriously ill and likely to die without medical treatment.

Dalrymple

He also says it is quite commonplace in hospital wards for the visting boyfriend/girlfriend to get into bed (in full view of everyone) with their amour and start heavy petting.

And the increase in single mothers is not all due to some sophisticated views on the bourgeois nature of marriage or such like, but due to irresponsibility and fecklessness. It is really common for a girl to have a child with one drug addict loser in her teens and go through a few more by different scum bags later. She will very likely be a regular victim of domestic violence as well. In these kind of relationships, the man will commonly kick the woman in the stomach while pregnant in an attempt to bring on an abortion.

Relationships like this were far rarer in the past, and have a lot to do with the consequences of the fulfillment of the sexual revolution started in the 60s.
The aim of that revolution was to

empty the relationship between the sexes of all moral significance and to destroy the customs and institiutions that governed it.

Dalrymple

The prophets of the sexual revolution campaigned to

convince the Western world that untrammeled sexuality was the secret of happiness and that sexual repression, along with the bourgeois family life that had once contained and channeled sexuality, were nothing more than engines of pathology.

They thought this would lead to a perfect, peaceful, egalitarian world (if we dismiss conspiracy theories that would say these people knew full well that it would cause the results we are now reaping.)

 

[Horus]

He also says it is quite commonplace in hospital wards for the visting boyfriend/girlfriend to get into bed (in full view of everyone) with their amour and start heavy petting.

Wait, what?

And the increase in single mothers is not all due to some sophisticated views on the bourgeois nature of marriage or such like, but due to irresponsibility and fecklessness. It is really common for a girl to have a child with one drug addict loser in her teens and go through a few more by different scum bags later. She will very likely be a regular victim of domestic violence as well. In these kind of relationships, the man will commonly kick the woman in the stomach while pregnant in an attempt to bring on an abortion.

I actually know personally one such occasion of a teen pregnancy, A girl who I sat next to in my Math class last year, who I've known since the 6th or 7th grade came to school pregnant at the beginning of the year. Of course, nobody realzed until it became painstakingly obvious. It's much more sad when you're actually witnessing this kinda stuff around you.

 

[Έρεβος]

So what is the ideal?
Victorian times?
No thanks.

The Victorian times were the beginning of the disgust we are talking about. What we are saying is not suggesting we "return" to any certain time period, but rather the adopting an ideal that isn't so patheticly degenerative--realistic romanticism, or the like. The Victorian times were the death of the romanticist mindset.

 

[OldScratch]

The Victorian times were the beginning of the disgust we are talking about. What we are saying is not suggesting we "return" to any certain time period, but rather the adopting an ideal that isn't so patheticly degenerative--realistic romanticism, or the like. The Victorian times were the death of the romanticist mindset.

This is a good point. The haughty(often phony)and enduring prudishness born of the Victorian era also played no small part in ultimately creating the backlash effect that subsequently spawned a reckless "sexual-revolution" in the post war(WW2) era. The proverbial behavioral pendulum swung from one extreme to the other as it tends to do. The Temperance movement did essentially the same thing, with a resulting turn toward socially sanctioned overindulgence. Hence today, bars and clubs full of impossibly inebriated men and women are considered perfectly normal social gathering places. It can be no surprise that rampant promiscuity and violence often follow...

 

[Έρεβος]

This is a good point. The haughty(often phony)and enduring prudishness born of the Victorian era also played no small part in ultimately creating the backlash effect that subsequently spawned a reckless "sexual-revolution" in the post war(WW2) era. The proverbial behavioral pendulum swung from one extreme to the other as it tends to do. The Temperance movement did essentially the same thing, with a resulting turn toward socially sanctioned overindulgence. Hence today, bars and clubs full of impossibly inebriated men and women are considered perfectly normal social gathering places. It can be no surprise that rampant promiscuity and violence often follow...

And the pendulum swings further and further out of control, so far that its working parts are started to bend, its screws starting to snap and fall out; it must be stopped - or slowed sufficiently - and repaired, or it'll all crash and shatter when it swings just a bit too far.

I'd say the rebirth of romanticism is the needed gaint to stop this pendulum's swing.

 

[Norsemaiden]

And the pendulum swings further and further out of control, so far that its working parts are started to bend, its screws starting to snap and fall out; it must be stopped - or slowed sufficiently - and repaired, or it'll all crash and shatter when it swings just a bit too far.

I'd say the rebirth of romanticism is the needed gaint to stop this pendulum's swing.

Yes, a rebirth of romanticism would be good, but now we have a situation where multiculturalism has to be taken into account. This makes it impossible to evoke that mindset in the population. Really, the reaction against the generation is going to be a case of some (who can't behave in that extreme carelessly, or even aggressively, decadent way) feeling the need to put up barriers and batten down the hatches. It will lead to an increasing social divide. Romanticism is possible for those who want to reject modern society.

Politicians always say how we should be "breaking down barriers", but the chaotic situation they and their fellow liberal-minded meddlers have made, can only lead to a society riven by divisions.

Loss of the most basic manners is a certain sign of the decay of civilisation. How could anyone realisically think that rejecting the whole notion that there should be commonly accepted standards of behaviour would lead to a utopia of peace and love? It will only lead to war.

 

[speed]

Norsemaiden, and other interested people, here's a link to a wonderfully witty,erudite, and baiting article on Bush and the idiocy of the American populace by my favorite American aristocratic homosexual, Gore Vidal: Truthdig - President Jonah (redux)