This is Western Progress? Maybe not!

Any system left to its own resources will eventually descend into chaos. Previous posts have discussed this notion.  However some things bear repeating and this is one of them.

There is a barometer and it is our memories of history.  If you think back a few years to your childhood and compare today's culture with the one in which you grew up as a child, it yields a certain understanding that the things that provided stability in our culture are being eroded away.  Gradual as that erosion is, it still is moving our culture toward chaos and ultimately none existence.

Recently I had occasion to think about what life was like in the 1950s.  Our family did not live in an affluent neighborhood and there were nights that we had a "beans and rice" diet, pants were patched in the knees, and "hand me downs" were okay.  Even so there was a certain ethic that guided even the poor among us.  

• Though the neighbor's daughter was an unwed mother, such was kept behind closed doors.
• Abortion was unheard of and certainly held to be wrong.
• Rumor had it that a classmate overdosed, even so drugs were something someone else did and were not condoned.
• Teachers could hug you, even so sassing a teacher could earn you hacks with his wooden paddle--there was always more waiting for you at home.
• Getting drunk was about as high as one might get and it was none too frequent.
• Jimmy's parents getting a divorce was whispered as a secret.
• Bobby Darin and "Mack the Knife" was risque music.
• Men did not cuss around women and women did not cuss at all.
• People stood up when a woman entered the room, the flag passed by, and when shaking hands.

More?

• A police officer was to be respected and teachers were always right even when wrong.
• Going out to eat was a real treat, fast food was waiting at a drive-in for your hamburger to be cooked. 
• We could count on each other when something went wrong.
• We had first girlfriends that we followed home but did not touch--well maybe we held hands secretly.
• Passing secret notes to your girlfriend was a big thing until  your teacher caught you.
• Any mother in the neighborhood could give you a tongue lashing!
• Sexual immorality was looked down upon--the movies kept bedroom scenes behind closed doors.
• We had heroes like John Wayne and the Lone Ranger who believed in God, Country, and doing right.
• Girls were to be protected, they did not cuss, and certainly did not smoke.
• A baseball cap wasn't a gang symbol and we kept our pants up.
• People waited their turn, opened doors for women, used words like Mr. Mrs. and said, "yes sir"  
• Boys were expected to join the military, girls were not! Women in combat?  Unheard of!!!
• When someone was in need we helped because there was no fear of being sued.

Shall I go on? 

• We had prisons not correction centers. 
• We would call on the phone, send letters on real paper, visit and talk, but not text and email.
• Most boys had a sling shot or a BB gun, we smoked stolen cigarettes, and played in the street.
• Character and values were important.
• Church was important even if you did not go.
• The evening news was news not hours of editorial opinion.
• Going on a trip once every year or two was a big deal.
• Men and boys opened doors for women, even those we did not know.
• We kids pushed the paralyzed neighbor around the block and were not afraid to talk with him
• World War II service men went to work despite battle fatigue because that is what men did.

Want more?

• We openly sang "God Bless America" and would have made short work of anyone who said, "Not God Bless America but God Damn America..."
• We rode in the back of pick-up trucks, biked with no hands and no helmet, climbed trees and fell out of them, and oh by the way, skinned knees were a part of being a kid.
• If we even had a television, we watched cartoons then went outside to play, even in the winter time.
• Corruption in government was dealt with.
• Conservation was in and important.  Culture was not controlled by environmentalist with their junk science.
• Seat belts and other government good ideas were unheard of.
• Neighbors were known to us and would lend a hand when needed.  They were not hidden in big houses behind locked gates and locked doors.
• Rock fights and slugging it out was survivable besides, that is what men in the making did.  
• Sex education came from your buddies.
• Only truants skipped school.

Well, you add yours to the list!

My, my, my haven't we progressed.  Imagine another 50-60 years.  If thing continue in the current constant state of unraveling toward chaos, and unless there is some kind of a major intervention (Revival, Great Awakening etc.), then we are headed for a moral, ethical, cultural, etc. meltdown and the ending of the United States of America as we know her.

The insidious part of all of this is that these changes are so slow and gradual that they garnered little notice.  Imagine if someone like Lady Gaga had suddenly appeared in the 50s.  She would have been arrested and hauled off to jail for indecent exposure among other things.  Imagine the open foul language that is a part the day to day media today.  You can argue first amendment free speech all you want but the reality is that potty mouth is potty mouth and it is uncouth.

As we have demanded our freedoms so very often they have lead to excesses and those excesses are often at the expense of the culture and the country at large.  Unless there is change we are doomed to finding ourselves as a page in a dusty revisionist history book.

"GOD BLESS AMERICA, LAND THAT I LOVE..."