Is This How We Got Here? (To Hell In a Handbasket--Redux)

Thursday, October 13, 2005

To Hell in a Handbasket
Trench asks, in a recent entry at http://www.newsofdoom.com/, "Have we become this selfish, as a society?" The question is in regard to an entry about the body of a newborn baby found in an airport trash bin. Security cameras caught the person putting the body in there.Yes, Trench, we have become that selfish. You are recording it on a daily basis. The teen who kills her mother because she won't let her go out. The man who shoots his wife and himself, leaving parentless kids. The one who kills his entire family. The unidentified little boy found dead in the woods.
As parents, a lot of us are doing something seriously wrong. Maybe it was the last generation. Maybe the one before that. Sociologically, I think it has something to do with the post WWII generation. Before WWII, families focused on survival, and parents trained their children to look after each other. They were expected to look after their parents when the need arose. After all, who else was going to do that? Parents didn't expect the school system to teach their children ethics. They didn't expect doctors to perform miracles. They didn't expect to get "counselling" when tribulation came.
After WWII, our culture took a turn toward affluence. Consumer goods were cheap. Where the WWII veteran's parents saved for months to buy a radio, the vet could get a TV on credit. He had been through hell, putting his life on the line, and felt he deserved it. He wanted to "give his children everything he never had." He did that. His children grew up expecting to be given everything their parents never had.
When those who came of age around 1970 got married, they went into instant debt to have all the things their parents had. Where former generations started families with hand-me-down furniture, and relied on whatever they received as gifts, the 70's couple had new furniture, console TV's and stereos, colour-coordinated bed and bath linens and two sets of china, all purchased on credit. With both husband and wife working, why not?
Then they had kids. And then came day care. Mom couldn't afford to quit her job to raise the kids--the stuff would all be repossessed. And this was the generation that had learned to equate "stuff" with love.
For those who reached maturity in the 90's, it's even worse. Both parents have to work to pay for the house itself, never mind the "stuff."Children are not being raised in the bosom of their family. They are going to day care. The parents spend their evenings and weekends schlepping the kids from one organized activity to another. When home, they are focused on some box or other--either a computer, a TV, or a video game.In spite of politicians and televangelists touting "family values," there are not a whole lot of them left.
All of the above is, of course, my opinion only, and I have no credentials beyond an observation of humanity to enable me to form this opinion.