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Originally Posted by Cyborg Ninja
I'm just going to ramble about something that's been on my mind for years. I don't know what the past was like, but young men today, including teens, seem to be wandering aimlessly with no direction and a lack of discipline. Obviously I'm talking about a general trend, and not about all men. I feel as if they lack a father figure and a "higher calling," as cheesy as that may sound. I've seen the stark difference between a mature man and one who still doesn't have things together. I see how these boys think about and treat women and minorities. Most of them are white and suburban and come from decent homes. They have little sense of empathy for other people, and that disturbs me very much.
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Racism, misogyny, homophobia, and classism are the norm, not the exception. The human race is one big bunch of fucked up people, but it's just now that we can really see how bad it gets when war and genocide aren't going on. On top of that, with so many people connected by modern communication, the lowest common denominator is really low.
We used to hate people, now we just make fun of them. It's easier to be ignorant than admit you're wrong, so people continue being ignorant. Pop culture and the media are driving a wedge between races, religions, genders, etc. because it gets ratings. On top of the ignorance, everyone has a persecution complex. Are you a minority? the man is keeping you down (the system is still heavily biased, but not to the extent that people want you to believe.) White? those damn minorities are using affirmative action to take your jobs; while we're at it, why can black people use a word that embodies hundreds of years of hate and violence we perpetrated against them and we can't? the black man is keeping us down! Christian? Those damn atheists and Muslims are taking over the country; what? you're 76.5% of the population? you sure have the right to impose your will on the rest. Atheist? we had better take God out of everything public and private and tell everyone who believes in God that they're idiots, because that's the way to convince them that 5% of the population are the sane ones; most of you are no better than the fundamentalists you hate.
I could go on and on, but you get my point by now. People need to shut the fuck up, think about someone other than themselves, and try to get along better.
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It's something that I have seen little interest in except when a troubled boy goes out and shoots a dozen people. Unfortunately, the media tends to blame it on a single factor such as violent video games or music. This problem in our society needs to be addressed. I don't believe that boys in the past were so confused as they are today.
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There were problems in the past, and they were addressed. These days, everyone knows there's a problem, but they refuse to admit that they're part of it, so it gets worse. Blaming the parents is a big step in the right direction, but nobody will do it because the majority of people are, or will be, parents, and that means taking personal responsibility. Correlation is equal to causation because the media says so, and we eat it up because it's easier than trying to say otherwise to the legions of idiots zombified by Fox News and CNN.
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They were forced to conform to standards set by others with little leeway. I've read accounts of problems with Japanese society, such as the hikikomori, and usually it is attributed to rapid changes in the economy, society, and how young men are no longer promised a stable job as they were in the past. Could perhaps Westerners be experiencing the same problems?
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Back to the white suburban upper-middle class kids, they've had everything handed to them and can't adapt to real life because it doesn't work that way. Nobody is promised anything, you have to work to earn it, and in our culture where talentless hack musicians, pro athletes, and slimy businessmen are the rich, who the fuck wants to do it the honest way?
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My biggest issue is with the lack of empathy among boys today. Most dislike, seemingly vehemently hate, other people who are not like them. It's not something they notice outright about themselves, and sometimes they brush it off as nothing but "Internet humor." But this type of behavior online is not healthy or normal: a truly healthy person would not find much of this misogynist, homophobic, racist, hateful humor "funny" or even have it cross their mind. There's one example that pops up in my mind of a guy who fits into this age bracket... he used to hate me, but we're now friends. He hated me for a long time, but I always treated him kindly and fairly. Eventually, I think he came to notice this and warm up to me. He told me that he used to hate me, and for no particular reason at all. This wasn't the only time I've met men who experienced that kind of odd and unwarranted hatred. Perhaps they don't believe that kindness truly exists, or that not everyone has ulterior motives.
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It's entirely possible to make jokes about people without meaning it. At school, we have the kind of colorblind society that everyone says we need to strive for. Race is literally a joke, and nothing more. Our old student government preisdent was nicknamed "el spic presidente." Our friend Usamah and his friends were "the terror squad." There there's Cracka Mike, Negro Tony, Gay Dave, the list can go on and on, but the point is that nobody takes race more seriously than a skin color, so we can joke about it without being hurtful.
I don't believe that kindness and altruism are inherent parts of the human psyche. Back to the parenting issue, this is one of the things that parents should be teaching their kids instead of parking them in front of the TV for hours and giving them a few hundred bucks a month allowance. A lot of people do have ulterior motives, and all you have to do is take a look at the Ladder Theory thread to see that people assume that nobody else is genuine.