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Disrespect; a society norm or is it a huge problem?

Is this a societal norm or a problem?

  • Total voters
    29
I think it is the norm for kids to be disrespectful, but for anyone who thinks kids have only recently started being little brats:


Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
 
Jredbaron96 said:
I think it is the norm for kids to be disrespectful, but for anyone who thinks kids have only recently started being little brats:


Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
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it means our civilization doesnt make any progress


hehe
 
Goshin said:
Heh, this looks like a good time to tell a story about my father. He was in his late sixties when this happened, so it was probably 1990 or so.

My Dad and Mom, and his best friend "Buck" and his wife, had gone out together for dinner; afterwards they decided to go to the local mall and stroll around. They had just entered when a pair of young men, around 18-20 yo, came walking by casually cursing at each other at the top of their lungs.

My Dad and his buddy Buck, were both very old-school gentlemen... they were also WW2 vets and tough as nails. They grabbed the aforementioned young men and pinned them to the wall, and told them that here in the South men didn't use such foul language in front of ladies. They then invited the young men to apologize to the ladies in question (their wives)... the guys did this quickly and then ran off as soon as Dad and Buck let them go.

I was about 25-26 at the time, and when Mom told me what had happened I was torn between the conflicting desires to laugh my head off, and/or castigate my father vigorously for starting something that could have had serious consequences, and/or clapping him on the shoulder and saying "well done!" :mrgreen:

I settled for laughing a little and telling him, in a half-joking manner, that maybe Buck was a bad influence and he shouldn't hang out with him. Except come to think of it he was about as bad as Buck.

Sadly both Dad and Buck are gone now, and with them most of the men and most of the values of the Greatest Generation, and even in the South public decency has coarsened a great deal. Still I look back fondly on those old men I knew and wonder if we'll ever see their like again.
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That's endearing and cute - really - yes - the older generations can do stuff like that and look exactly that way: endearing and cute.

But if my husband ever did something like that I'd be so embarrassed - it would cause major problems. I'm not fragile or incapable of just ignoring people in public.
 
We've become quite a bit more cruder over the years. When cuss words flow through people's speech every few words, there's a problem. I'm not that bothered by it in general, long as one realizes there is a time and place for everything; that applies to one's manner of speech among other things.

Jredbaron96 said:
I think it is the norm for kids to be disrespectful, but for anyone who thinks kids have only recently started being little brats:


Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
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As it's been said before, every generation always has something bad to say about the next one.
 
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Jredbaron96 said:
I think it is the norm for kids to be disrespectful, but for anyone who thinks kids have only recently started being little brats:


Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
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That's awesome - Socrates kicks ass for that observation :)
Like some of us thought - it's all about perception.
 
TheGirlNextDoor said:
Do you feel that disrespect among young people (ages teens to early 20s) is rampant?

My own children are 16 and 14, and I'm telling you... cursing and disrespectful behavior isn't tolerated. Although they will try to get away with it, there are very clear and very swift consequences. My children do not swear at me, teachers or other adults. However, some of their friends DO and it seems that either because of lack of parental guidance or laxa-daisy enforcement by school officials country wide - it appears at least, to be an epidemic of sorts.

Thoughts?
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Torn. I think I'm some was it is a norm, especially in some areas. I also think it is problem. I do, however, see some signs if improvement. Students this year on the whole have been better.
 
Respect must be earned, and the elder generations aren't doing a whole lot to earn respect from the young.

In truth, the mere fact of age should never determine whether or not someone should be afforded respect.
 
Paschendale said:
Respect must be earned, and the elder generations aren't doing a whole lot to earn respect from the young.

In truth, the mere fact of age should never determine whether or not someone should be afforded respect.
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Don't entirely buy that. Until proven otherwise, mere experience and position demands some basic courtesy. Having manners and listening to older people in the normal course of business is not something that has to be earned first. It must be lost before and of a serious nature before rudeness and bad behavior s justified.
 
Boo Radley said:
Don't entirely buy that. Until proven otherwise, mere experience and position demands some basic courtesy. Having manners and listening to older people in the normal course of business is not something that has to be earned first. It must be lost before and of a serious nature before rudeness and bad behavior s justified.
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Eh... no. Merely having experiences doesn't mean that someone learned anything from them. And basic courtesy ought to be afforded to everyone, regardless of their age. Being polite and courteous has nothing to do with the interactions between the old and the young. But the older so often expect deference merely for being older. No one should be deferred to unless they earn it, and expecting deference when you haven't earned it... that's pretty disrespectful, I would say. So, you get what you give.
 
TheGirlNextDoor said:
Oh let me tell you...I was a challenge as a teen. There were worse kids, but I was a handful.

Just let me say this.. the mother's curse works well..."when you grow you I hope your children act JUST LIKE YOU ". THEY do, and I've since called my mother and apologized for my wild teen years. :lol:
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If this is true, than I am in trouble. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG trouble.
 
TheGirlNextDoor said:
Do you feel that disrespect among young people (ages teens to early 20s) is rampant?

My own children are 16 and 14, and I'm telling you... cursing and disrespectful behavior isn't tolerated. Although they will try to get away with it, there are very clear and very swift consequences. My children do not swear at me, teachers or other adults. However, some of their friends DO and it seems that either because of lack of parental guidance or laxa-daisy enforcement by school officials country wide - it appears at least, to be an epidemic of sorts.

Thoughts?
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While they may not do it to you, in front of you or are reported as doing so does not mean they don't do it. When I was a young kid, I cursed like a sailor. But I never did it in the presence of an adult, especially my mom.

The problem is, you will never be able to control a kids friends. That is now the major influence in their life now that both parents are to busy working to raise their kids. If you are a family of two working parents, you leave your kids hours on end, to be influence by TV, Internet and even more now than ever, their degenerate friends. It's not cool to be polite anymore, so of course, the more popular kids are going to be the least polite because it's "cool". And in that sense, they are the largest influence in whatever group they infect. Mostly because the parents are not around to observe what kind of people their kids are hanging around with. And of course, everyone's child is a little angle while around their parents, when their parents are not around, which is most of the time, they are far from angels.
 
Paschendale said:
Respect must be earned, and the elder generations aren't doing a whole lot to earn respect from the young.

In truth, the mere fact of age should never determine whether or not someone should be afforded respect.
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I disagree. Respect is given regardless, and should be. There is no harm in respecting someone even if you don't believe they deserve it. You can be respectfully indifferent and tactfully disagreeable.
 
Paschendale said:
Eh... no. Merely having experiences doesn't mean that someone learned anything from them. And basic courtesy ought to be afforded to everyone, regardless of their age. Being polite and courteous has nothing to do with the interactions between the old and the young. But the older so often expect deference merely for being older. No one should be deferred to unless they earn it, and expecting deference when you haven't earned it... that's pretty disrespectful, I would say. So, you get what you give.
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You can learn even from a negative example. But besides the point. If you can't look to experience with common respect, you are not likely to do it across the board.
 
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