(08-30-2017, 10:15 AM)flsprtsgod Wrote:

(08-29-2017, 05:58 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: How old are you? I don't mean that in a demeaning way, just wanting to know what decade your formative years were. I was born in 1972 so what I call my formative years were the 80's. 

I agree that people need to understand there were folks who suffered so others could live prosperously. The problem is with your own verbiage. Payback. The folks you are vowing payback on had nothing to do with the suffering of the aforementioned folks. Didn't have the slightest idea what was going on because we were kids/young adults in a world that didn't have the ability to learn the way we do now through technology. Keep using words like payback and you will never achieve anything other than division. 

You do realize that people weren't born into their lives of their choosing, right? How we were raised, who taught us what, where we were raised geographically, the morals and values we were taught (or in some cases the lack thereof.) Our foundations were laid out for us and built upon as we grew up. Society in our early years shapes how we will view things the rest of our lives, even if on a small scale. I was one of those people who swore up and down I would always be up with the times, always be rolling with whatever was happening around me, would never sound like my parents about "how back in the day." The thing is, you can't help it. And us older folks grew up in very small worlds where we only knew what we were told by our friends in the neighborhood and at school, parents, teachers, the Big Three news channels, the local paper, and the entertainment industry. All of this was very localized. There was no global anything other than the Olympics and the Cold War or Vietnam. 

Some stay in their little bubble world and never actually learn anything about people, places and things that are different than they are. They don't even want to or it never occurs to them to do so. Some, like myself, go out and experience all kinds of different people, places and things that (hopefully) broaden our views of the world. I am a lot more open minded than most people think and more than many of my friends care for me to be. My husband was born and raised in the county we live in. He's lived in two houses in his 46 years on earth. He was very narrow minded when we married but I have been able to show him that things are not always what they seem and he's beginning to understand how much he doesn't know and is willing to listen even if we end up agreeing to disagree on some issues. 

THIS is where we need to be as a society. Everyone is not going to agree on whatever issue is currently stirring people up. Sometimes we need to be willing to agree to disagree and move on. If it's an issue that needs to be addressed and 'worked on' then we need to be willing to listen to all sides and work toward a resolution that doesn't involve violence.

I'm your age, and my words were the intentions of those people I was describing. It's evident in how the political discourse is proceeding that the goal is revenge on the past, nothing more.

I'm not so sure that the entire problem with today's society is purely political...Technology and poor parenting have a huge roll in the kids behavior today...The kids today are so wrapped up in social media that they have very few REAL friends and hundreds of friends they have never met on social media who they interact with rather than face to face interaction...Watch a teenager for a day and see what they do...They are so dependent on their phones they won't even go to the bathroom without their phone, yet when the rare event where several teenagers are together they don't really even talk, they all just sit there staring at their phones showing each other what so and so said...They have ZERO social skills...To top that off, the teenagers believe most of everything they read on the internet...

Another major problem with the young people today is they were brought up with the tv as a baby sitter...Between video games, bazillions of cable channels, movies there isn't or wasn't very much any parental or social interaction, the majority of which was online...Iv'e heard some parents say they really don't care what their kids are doing as long as they aren't bothering them...

Today's society has no patience...They were born into the world of instant gratification which in it's self might not be such a bad thing...You want a meal throw something in the microwave for a few minutes and there you go...You want to hear a certain song. you don't need to wait for it to come on the radio, just watch/listen to it online...Those things are great, but when it comes to relationships, they rely on the internet or social media to find "LOVE"...I have to laugh like hell when I see the same people on FB change their status to "In a relationship" after talking to someone for a couple days and they are so much "IN LOVE" and a week later they are openly fighting  on FB, changing their status back to single only to change it back to In a relationship within a week...

The entire school system is [BLEEP] and nothing but [BLEEP]...They teach you how to take a test, but not how to retain knowledge...My stepson is now 21 but when he graduated from high school and had to mail things for college applications, he had no idea how to address an envelope, no idea how to look something up in the phone book, no idea how to fill out a job application, but by God he can tell you how to do anything on a smart phone and knows all the cheat codes for every popular video games...

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