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 Mrs. Esterhouse wrote:
A big problem is the general lack of self-awareness. Just look at the amount of adult temper tantrums that are thrown in public these days. The older I get the more adults act like babies in my eyes.

Only thing that bothers me more is the indignation. If you're a rude little dicksmack. you're not above receiving the same treatment.

My business (restaurant) sees adult tantrums on a regular basis. I've noticed a sharp uptick in it in the last year or so. My favorites thus far:

1. Throwing a screaming fit because we don't have enough items that are vegan, non soy, gluten free, no corn syrup, organic. ALL by the same person. (hey I live in rural Iowa)

2. High winds snapped power lines and took down a pole. Power was cut for 3 hours for this to be fixed. People could not understand that we CAN'T cook without power or lights.

3. A couple let their toddler feed himself. Then chewed-out the waitress because he got dirty. They made her clean their child before they'd pay.

4. An old timer getting mad because I wouldn't let him put any more on his tab. He had gotten it up to $140 and stopped coming in for a year.

5. When credit cards get declined somehow that's MY fault.

 Frazzled wrote:
Here is something that can be helpful: unplug from news, talking heads and preachy FB or other stuff for a bit. It's like a whiny pessimist constantly whispering in your ear.

Or staying out of some threads on dakka.

I feel like I have picked up on this too. I think a lot of it has to do with stress. In my state, there is a mass migration from the smaller towns to the bigger ones. Its been going on since the recession, but has picked up even more it seems. And many of these smaller towns that had expansion prior to the recession are withering away. It means more people crammed together paying more for homes in one place, and a dying economy in another where properties are losing value.

I actually had my hands full this weekend with a friend who drove across state on short notice to fill me in on how his life is going. Lost job and problems in the marriage. But he is not alone, I have other friends starting to take on a lot of debt too. A lot of these people also have kids. Home prices are skyrocketing, and so is food. I don't care what the government says about inflation, I see a lot of things rising much faster than pay raises. I don't think people are near the breaking point, but things are building up. Throw in massive student debt, auto loans, US Government debt, Chinese Debt, etc and its like a massive debt bomb is building.

And we're supposed to be in a great economy. And everyone has a little more cash coming from their paycheck now! You think people would be doing a little better. I am starting to worry what it is going to be like when we hit the inevitable recession, which I expect in a couple of years of rising interest rates. I can see the seeds being planted for the next recession all around me, and are baffled by the decisions people are making, either on their own for forced. Sure, throw in the politics, but I think that is just the icing. I think it really the economics of the cost of living, and people living way to close to each other (traffic, more apartments, etc). At least in my area.

Its not all bad tho. My friend's brother who I have known since he was 8, just got an approval for a $1,343,000 mortgage loan.

But I feel the negativity too. I am trying to deal with it by separating myself from as much as I can.

 Talizvar wrote:
It is rather funny where most women would say that men need to express their "feelings".
Problem is they really do not want to hear them and find most of them a turn-off.
Now though, in the land of personal freedoms, people are entitled to expressing their feelings no matter how disruptive they may be.
I agree there is a marked amount of "man-baby" behavior.
You have a problem?
Go fix it or ignore/move-on, griping about it is ok to do once, then terribly irritating to others when it drags on.
I am seriously considering implementing the "hurt feelings report".

My kids tend to say the words:
"It's not fair!"
My thoughts:
"The world is not obligated to be fair."
My interpretation:
"I don't like it!"
Heaven help me when I ask the question:
"What would you suggest?"
Then the most "unfair" and unreasonable drivel comes out and that is not just from my children.

No-one wants equality.
They just want to be the one in charge with none of the responsibility.

The whole idea behind expressing one's feelings is so they can talk about them, examine them and learn from the situation. People have been taking the idea literally and skipping the most important part. As for 'this isn't fair!' my best response (especially for kids) is 'why not?' At the very least it promotes thinking.

 cuda1179 wrote:
3. A couple let their toddler feed himself. Then chewed-out the waitress because he got dirty. They made her clean their child before they'd pay.

Whoa. Lots of questions!

What extent of clean up was the waitress required to perform on the wee lad?

Why was the waitress allowed to be put in that awkward position?

Why weren't the customers immediately asked to leave upon making such a ridiculous request?

As a small town Midwestern business owner myself, it gets really awkward (and with big potential financial/community blowback) to ask someone to leave.

The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

 Easy E wrote:
The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

I have come to really dislike this policy. I understand what it is supposed to be, but society has taken it way to far. It has gone from 'treat customers well' to 'let customers walk all over you'. Worse is how often customers expect that they are allowed to treat employees in the service industry as terribly as they like. It ties back into what I was saying about us deserving the government we have.

 Easy E wrote:
As a small town Midwestern business owner myself, it gets really awkward (and with big potential financial/community blowback) to ask someone to leave.

The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

As a business owner don't you have to be concerned about your worker's rights as well? And in a small town aren't the staff as much a part of the town make up as the customers? So if Sally the customer is rude to Tommy the waiter, and makes him clean up Jr. the annoying toddler, wouldn't that get around town and shame Sally? Or is that too simplistic a view of things? Probably too simplistic.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
[It has gone from 'treat customers well' to 'let customers walk all over you'. Worse is how often customers expect that they are allowed to treat employees in the service industry as terribly as they like.

Totally agree. When I worked retail people would just take their day out on me. I used to joke with my co-workers that we were providing a public health service for anger management. It is bs how entitled customers are, and how dehumanizing they can be to waitstaff and sales associates.



*edit Dun goofed on the quotes.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
As a small town Midwestern business owner myself, it gets really awkward (and with big potential financial/community blowback) to ask someone to leave.

The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

As a business owner don't you have to be concerned about your worker's rights as well? And in a small town aren't the staff as much a part of the town make up as the customers? So if Sally the customer is rude to Tommy the waiter, and makes him clean up Jr. the annoying toddler, wouldn't that get around town and shame Sally? Or is that too simplistic a view of things? Probably too simplistic.

To Quote Black Jeopardy's Host Darnell Hayes to T'Challa.....

That's really nice.... it's wrong. But that's really nice.




.... there are a lot of layers or class, local cutlure, history, power dynamics, etc. that go into it too.

On occasion, I have taken it upon myself to say whatever the staff may be thinking to another customer.

The last time it happened I was at my local convenience store trying to pick up a cup of coffee on my way to work. Another customer was trying to return a couple packs of cigarettes that he bought earlier during the day and get his money back. The clerk told him that it's corporate policy not to do any kind of returns on tobacco products. It was a few minutes of varying versions of

Customer: "this is fething stupid, I bought those here at the store"
Clerk: "I'm sorry, policy states that we cannot do returns on tobacco."
Customer: "But I got them for a friend and they were the wrong brand, I just want my money back."
Clerk: "I cannot offer any refunds on tobacco, I'm sorry".
Customer: "I come here all the fething time, just give me the money and take these fething cigarettes back"
Clerk: "THere is nothing I can do, it's policy that we do not do any kind of returns on any tobacco products."

Finally the customer turns to me, waiting in line behind him for the past few minutes just trying to pay for my coffee that is getting colder: "Don't you think this is fething bs?"

Me: "I'm sure that if there is anything he could do to prevent getting cussed out by some random dude who thinks that an overnight store clerk has any kind of authority to ignore whatever bs policy some corporate donkey-cave told him to follow, he would have done it 5 minutes ago."

Customer: ".........." takes his cigarettes and leaves.

Clerk: "The coffee is free."

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
3. A couple let their toddler feed himself. Then chewed-out the waitress because he got dirty. They made her clean their child before they'd pay.

Whoa. Lots of questions!

What extent of clean up was the waitress required to perform on the wee lad?

Why was the waitress allowed to be put in that awkward position?

Why weren't the customers immediately asked to leave upon making such a ridiculous request?

These people were allowed to do this because I wasn't there at the time, and the waitress is extremely nice and usually doesn't stand up for herself. If I was there or any other waitress served them it would have ended differently. They made her clean not only the kid (Brush him off, wipe his face, scrub a spot out of his shirt), but also clean the floor around him. They also wouldn't allow her to use the rolling broom (imagine a non-electric vacuum that has a rolling brush head) and insisted she pick crumbs up with her fingers.

Small town economy and gossip does suck. I've only thrown 5 people out in 10 years. One we caught putting graffiti in the bathroom, one for refusing to stop smoking (there is no smoking in any Iowa business), one old man for playing grab-butt with a 17 year old waitress, one for profuse, loud, and constant swearing, and two guys that got into a physical fight because of a screaming child.

The "customer is always right" thing only goes so far with me. It means you are allowed to order weird combinations of stuff, but if you order completely off-menu you will be up-charged. You have a right to prompt, accurate service. However, many have demanded to be the first served during a busy Sunday brunch where we have a waiting line out the door. People don't understand that physical space in the kitchen is finite, and they may have to wait 10 minutes before we even start their order.

 Easy E wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
As a small town Midwestern business owner myself, it gets really awkward (and with big potential financial/community blowback) to ask someone to leave.

The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

As a business owner don't you have to be concerned about your worker's rights as well? And in a small town aren't the staff as much a part of the town make up as the customers? So if Sally the customer is rude to Tommy the waiter, and makes him clean up Jr. the annoying toddler, wouldn't that get around town and shame Sally? Or is that too simplistic a view of things? Probably too simplistic.

To Quote Black Jeopardy's Host Darnell Hayes to T'Challa.....

That's really nice.... it's wrong. But that's really nice.




.... there are a lot of layers or class, local cutlure, history, power dynamics, etc. that go into it too.

LOL, fair enough. I don't think I could stomach living in a small town. I like the anonymity of a larger city.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
3. A couple let their toddler feed himself. Then chewed-out the waitress because he got dirty. They made her clean their child before they'd pay.

Whoa. Lots of questions!

What extent of clean up was the waitress required to perform on the wee lad?

Why was the waitress allowed to be put in that awkward position?

Why weren't the customers immediately asked to leave upon making such a ridiculous request?

These people were allowed to do this because I wasn't there at the time, and the waitress is extremely nice and usually doesn't stand up for herself. If I was there or any other waitress served them it would have ended differently. They made her clean not only the kid (Brush him off, wipe his face, scrub a spot out of his shirt), but also clean the floor around him. They also wouldn't allow her to use the rolling broom (imagine a non-electric vacuum that has a rolling brush head) and insisted she pick crumbs up with her fingers.

Jeez. I am livid for that poor woman! That is beyond the pale of proper behavior from the customers. Just curious, were those customers regulars/locals or out of towners? Gah! Screw those people!

 d-usa wrote:

Me: "I'm sure that if there is anything he could do to prevent getting cussed out by some random dude who thinks that an overnight store clerk has any kind of authority to ignore whatever bs policy some corporate donkey-cave told him to follow, he would have done it 5 minutes ago."

Customer: ".........." takes his cigarettes and leaves.

Clerk: "The coffee is free."

Epic

We had a similar incident at a place I worked at in college. Very whiny customer upset that we didn't have anymore of whatever kind of laundry detergent she wanted. Started cussing and screaming at people. Another customer walked by and without looking at her very loudly said "didn't know they were having a sale on new donkey-caves today."

No one laughed cause we were all kind of like "holy gak that just happened" but it's pretty damn funny.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
[
There is a lot of truth here. I worked my rear end off, didn't party, drink or smoke. I have no criminal record. What I got to show for is was 60K in debt that is taking 56% of my monthly income and that doesn't even pay the debt, just the interest. I live in a terrible crime ridden town, with rude people and very few decent friends (I have to drive 125 miles one way just to play warhammer with my good friends once per week). I doesn't seem fair, but I have trouble with that thought because I wasn't raised to believe that life is fair. Still, it shot be at least marginally fair shouldn't it?

I was a lot like you, but for one small difference. I went to college on a free ride scholarship. What I was majoring in (Mechanical Engineering) was one of those few fields where I could have realistically paid off a loan in a few years if I had gotten a student loan, making close to $100,000 starting wage. I ended up taking 300 and 400 level classes as electives, and found out that if I took a few key classes in my last semester I could graduate with a duel major. However, then an economic collapse happened, and a career that was all ready physical and emotionally draining got worse. After 2 years I quit, and bought my own business in my home town. Sure, I took a 40% pay cut, but I'm around family, the hours suck less, and I have a 2 minute commute.

Iv'e considered many times up and changing my career. I really do not like this one anyways, I'd rather be a park ranger working with visitors and teaching them about ES. But our current administration has cut those jobs nearly 40% and they were already hard enough to get before this happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KTG17 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Here is something that can be helpful: unplug from news, talking heads and preachy FB or other stuff for a bit. It's like a whiny pessimist constantly whispering in your ear.

Or staying out of some threads on dakka.

I feel like I have picked up on this too. I think a lot of it has to do with stress. In my state, there is a mass migration from the smaller towns to the bigger ones. Its been going on since the recession, but has picked up even more it seems. And many of these smaller towns that had expansion prior to the recession are withering away. It means more people crammed together paying more for homes in one place, and a dying economy in another where properties are losing value.

I actually had my hands full this weekend with a friend who drove across state on short notice to fill me in on how his life is going. Lost job and problems in the marriage. But he is not alone, I have other friends starting to take on a lot of debt too. A lot of these people also have kids. Home prices are skyrocketing, and so is food. I don't care what the government says about inflation, I see a lot of things rising much faster than pay raises. I don't think people are near the breaking point, but things are building up. Throw in massive student debt, auto loans, US Government debt, Chinese Debt, etc and its like a massive debt bomb is building.

And we're supposed to be in a great economy. And everyone has a little more cash coming from their paycheck now! You think people would be doing a little better. I am starting to worry what it is going to be like when we hit the inevitable recession, which I expect in a couple of years of rising interest rates. I can see the seeds being planted for the next recession all around me, and are baffled by the decisions people are making, either on their own for forced. Sure, throw in the politics, but I think that is just the icing. I think it really the economics of the cost of living, and people living way to close to each other (traffic, more apartments, etc). At least in my area.

Its not all bad tho. My friend's brother who I have known since he was 8, just got an approval for a $1,343,000 mortgage loan.

But I feel the negativity too. I am trying to deal with it by separating myself from as much as I can.

A little more cash. Yeah, I got 20 dollars a month. I do not believe the economy is as good as those in power wish us to believe.

However that aside, you are correct about the economics of it all. A lot of people I know who also have significant college debt have just stopped paying it all together. This is a recipe for disaster.

 Togusa wrote:
A little more cash. Yeah, I got 20 dollars a month. I do not believe the economy is as good as those in power wish us to believe.
However that aside, you are correct about the economics of it all. A lot of people I know who also have significant college debt have just stopped paying it all together. This is a recipe for disaster.

Funny how that works.
Society is completely dependent on people "investing" in their society: pay taxes, follow the laws, vote or invest in decision making and that is what makes it work.
Then there are those who feel we are all "sheeple" and the rules do not apply to them.
Enough people do that and it all falls apart.
The Greek financial crisis is based on people not paying their taxes and not trusting their banks so all their money is out of country: no liquid assets available.

I am sorry for the struggle.
I am sorry that you can see people not meet their commitments and they may or may not get away with it.
I look back at some very difficult moments in my life and find they give the motivation to plan more and work harder because I never want to go back to those difficult times or recreate them.

I worry for my kids who get all upset and have a temper tantrum because they want a game but they do not have the money and daddy will not pay for it on the spot (early teenagers for goodness sakes).
I see more drama for this kind of stuff than when my mom told me she wished she never adopted me and slapped me across the face for not getting a merit award for school she could present to me since she was trustee.
Sometimes crap gets real nasty and unreal and we need to be able to deal with it and not lose our minds with 1st world problems.

I simply feel the tension around me, I'll not pretend that I'm immune to it. There's only a certain level of it before I exhaust myself and simply need to create some distance between myself and other people.

I feel there's a set of unreasonable expectations, mostly set by what I'd call a faulty economical and social models that influence our lives in one way or the other. Failing to achieve them leads to cultivating anger, frustration and negative self worth.

Society is completely dependent on people "investing" in their society: pay taxes, follow the laws, vote or invest in decision making and that is what makes it work.
Then there are those who feel we are all "sheeple" and the rules do not apply to them.
Enough people do that and it all falls apart.

QFT.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
The expectations is that the customer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how stupid and ridiculous the situation is.

I have come to really dislike this policy. I understand what it is supposed to be, but society has taken it way to far. It has gone from 'treat customers well' to 'let customers walk all over you'. Worse is how often customers expect that they are allowed to treat employees in the service industry as terribly as they like. It ties back into what I was saying about us deserving the government we have.

In college, I worked at a department store that would return basically anything.

I once had to give a return on a set of golf clubs that some kid clearly hadn't taken care of -- they were caked in mud, beat up, etc. -- because the metal 'chipped'. Well, no gak when you're smacking them against trees and gak. No receipt, of course, and even by his own admission he'd had them for quite some time. I was able to determine that our store had at least at one time sold that set, and based on that, the floor manager gave him a full refund. That was a few hundred bucks even back then. He probably bought the clubs for $50 at a yard sale.

Once someone came in trying to return some clothes with JCPenney labels. She got really loud, yellling "I bought them HERE!", and so they ended up giving her some random amount of money, clipped the tags off, and put them on the rack. LOL.

The stories go on and on, and like with the clubs it was higher-ticket items at times. It was absolutely insane, and people who knew how it worked there obviously abused the heck out of the policy. But the mantra from the founder of the chain was that it's worth having customers walk away happy -- regardless of the circumstances -- rather than unhappy and ready to complain to others. I didn't agree when the 'customers' were basically thieves, but they were his stores.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Here is something that can be helpful: unplug from news, talking heads and preachy FB or other stuff for a bit. It's like a whiny pessimist constantly whispering in your ear.

I agree. The outrage machine is 100% real.

I've been dealing with a lot of those feelings these last few years. I've pretty much abandoned the idea of using most social networks. It's a huge downer to scroll down the timeline and see the same gak over and over again. I used to use Facebook to join reptile groups but then they became toxic as hell.

You mean venomous?

I think it's right to be angry and feel negative emotions when bad things happen. I don't take it out on others too often I hope, but I believe in feeling sad or angry when bad things happen. I make no apologies for it. I don't tend to look at "social media" much apart from fora like these though.

It sounds like a lot of people here are in really tough situations without much feeling of hope for improvement. I think it's perfectly justified to get angry in that situation. I won't say "get out and do something!" because I know the daily grind can be rough for a lot of us. But remember this feeling when it comes to be time to engage in the democratic process and think carefully about what will bring a better future for you. Don't allow cynicism to take the place of engagement with our processes, regardless of how flawed they may seem at the moment. We worked hard to get them and are lucky to have them.

There's so many good points here. It's funny how regardless of the political position everyone pretty much agrees the rich are making things miserable for the rest of us.

One may wonder if any period in history has seen such a rapid and widespread deterioration of self-control as the Western world has during the last 60 or so years. There are some common proverbs around the world along the lines of bad times fostering good behaviour, good times fostering bad behaviour. People have been living for generations in a largely urban environment that is at once astoundingly wealthy, and at the same time astonishingly lonely (the latter to an ever increasing degree). A milieu where stroking the self and one's own rights are lionized and where old forms of familial and communal cohesion that made humans into people are gone with the wind. A world of lonely luxuries where technology has been made to replace ever more facets of human life, and indeed where technology through traditional and social media feeds unhappiness. There are other factors feeding into it all, but the trends have been ongoing for a good while, with the infantilization, the egotism, the lack of respect for others, the unhappiness, the shrinking attention span, the lack of direction in life, and the rage becoming ever more pronounced.

An old proverb had it that it took a whole village to raise a child: No wonder common sense has become a rarity.

You will constantly find ancient Roman authors discuss their society's long degraded morals and decadence. Even if much of it is exaggeration, gossip, grumpiness, and not necessarily true for all of society given elite author and capital city bias, there may well be essence to these claims given the rich state of the Roman empire at its height. However, as a modern reader one is left to wonder how deep any such degradation could have run in a preindustrial, mainly rural society which lacked the means to achieve the extreme prosperity and technological prowess we have attained, tools with which we have broken free of many of the old constant constraints that have moulded people for millennia. One cannot help but wonder if the phenomena discussed by Roman writers would seem shallow and subtle to us in comparison to our own transformation, and likewise one cannot help but wonder what the Roman authors would make of our own time: Witness it aghast, counting the blessings of their own days when it comes to negative change of common conduct?

We're living at an increased remove from nature and each other, with little effort to counteract the manifold consequences thereof.

The best we can do is to master ourselves, foster a helpful and even stoic mindset, unplug, raise our children well, and let both them and ourselves have healthy and constructive experiences: Book reading, outdoor activities and so on. One should not assume anyone to be immune to the power of the modern world, so to speak, but the worst excesses of it on people's conduct can and should be avoided by the people themselves. In the end it's all down to individual choices. Swimming against the tide is inherent to life itself.

Be well.

well we have really grown estranged from one another. I am fully guilty of taking likely more offense than is intended. I have found that over the years I generally have come to despise Europeans (except Russians, Poles, and Hungarians) and find it hard to even "talk" with them. Typing takes away so much of communication, someone here mentioned something about being in the room and talking might make a difference. That might be the case. I travel around the world a lot, but I find myself having less and less in common with westerners than the east.

In the US there is just a lack of trust and goodwill between growing segments of society. I generally assume (right or wrongly) that a leftist is a liar, and that a rightwinger is about 80% of the time lying.

 remilia_scarlet wrote:
I've been dealing with a lot of those feelings these last few years. I've pretty much abandoned the idea of using most social networks. It's a huge downer to scroll down the timeline and see the same gak over and over again. I used to use Facebook to join reptile groups but then they became toxic as hell.

HOW?! How in the feth can a group based around the hobby of reptile handling become political?

A rhetorical question indeed, but your statement is so poignant in demonstrating just how much of a problem America currently has.

I am very fearful that if things continue as they have, we might begin to see isolated (we have seen some already) civil disobedience and violence which could quickly escalate to something much, much worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 thekingofkings wrote:
well we have really grown estranged from one another. I am fully guilty of taking likely more offense than is intended. I have found that over the years I generally have come to despise Europeans (except Russians, Poles, and Hungarians) and find it hard to even "talk" with them. Typing takes away so much of communication, someone here mentioned something about being in the room and talking might make a difference. That might be the case. I travel around the world a lot, but I find myself having less and less in common with westerners than the east.

In the US there is just a lack of trust and goodwill between growing segments of society. I generally assume (right or wrongly) that a leftist is a liar, and that a rightwinger is about 80% of the time lying.

Even that changes from person to person. I for example, generally assume that a leftist is a tool and a rightwinger is a giant douche. From my current experiences, aside from some sane examples, this is sadly pretty true.

For me, given the nature of my career, I'm always terrified about offending someone. Not because I give one feth about being offensive, but because I fear for my source of income. This is especially true with the gender stuff these days.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There's so many good points here. It's funny how regardless of the political position everyone pretty much agrees the rich are making things miserable for the rest of us.

Um...yeah. Moderate here, and I don't quite agree with your big statement there.

Moderates in my area with that point as well, myself included. Maybe it's a regional thing. But then the basic numbers on wealth distribution back that up so it's pretty easy to see why, to say nothing of the numerous other symptoms.

 gorgon wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There's so many good points here. It's funny how regardless of the political position everyone pretty much agrees the rich are making things miserable for the rest of us.

Um...yeah. Moderate here, and I don't quite agree with your big statement there.

Yeah, I believe that the current state of society is the result of steadily progressing along this path for the last two centuries or so. Along the way there have always been people ready, willing and able to profit from the ever quickening pace of change and innovation but I don't blame "the rich" for any of this. The spread of apathy throughout the populace and the irresistible lure of technological wonder and innovation have made it far to easy for people to forsake their agency over their lives in return for shallow luxury and distraction. Our political system has clearly been heading for a two party duopoly and oligarchy for several lifetimes of elections. Our system was designed to be able to be adjusted to fit the changing times and we can't even be bothered to attempt it because we're consumed with arguing about it. It's akin to pulling out Rogue Trader and using those rules to play a current game of 40K, sure it's possible but the amount of rules lawyering to make it fit would take a lot of enjoyment out of the game.

We could do a lot to improve our society and we could also do a lot to improve ourselves. We're the biggest obstacle to living a better life. We're all a microcosm of what ails society, we'd all likely do better if we worked less, stressed less, ate better food, got more exercise, got more sleep, spent less time online or in front of screens, spent more time outside, and spent more quality time with family and friends instead of working long hours doing work we're not passionate about in order to afford a lifestyle full of banalities and convenient luxuries that we don't really need but are pressured to have anyway. The same self imposed invisible chains of trepidation, fear and false comfort that hold us back individually also hold us back collectively. People have never been more empowered to be the best we can be but it's becoming increasing difficult to convince people to take that daring first step and go for it.

Keep in mind we have politics threads for this kind of discussion. Thanks!

I posted an overly simplified version of my sentiment because I meant it more as an idle comment. I would clarify, but off topic. Suffice to say there is indeed a lot more to it and I did not mean to imply 'the rich cause all our problems' or anything of ths sort.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I posted an overly simplified version of my sentiment because I meant it more as an idle comment. I would clarify, but off topic. Suffice to say there is indeed a lot more to it and I did not mean to imply 'the rich cause all our problems' or anything of ths sort.

I didn't intend for it to come off as an attack on you, so apologies if it came off that way. My point was that scapegoating is an easy trap to fall into and that the internet does a great job of preying on the self destructive aspects of human nature. It's really easy to not put your best foot forward and not treat people like real people when they're just words on a screen. I think that's the worst aspect of our rapid technological advancement, it takes us further and further away from interacting with real people and I think generally we're losing a lot of our social skills and friendliness. I rarely get into arguments with people in real life but it's insanely easy to fall into a lengthy argument over anything on the internet. That kind of default adversarial relationship with people just isn't healthy for individuals or society. We're all more similar than different and we don't have to agree on everything to get along in a functional civil society.

I did not read it as an attack but thank you for clarifying anyways, as we all know it's easy to misinterpret in text. At any rate I just wanted to establish that my post was more simplified/hyperbolic than the real state of things. I certainly agree with your sentiment or scape-goating.