Nudity

[gregimotis]

Okay hold on there - Was that a thought-out rebuttal deviod of personal attacks and name calling? Maybe you meant to log into the other forum by accident.


Seriously though, I don't disagree with everything you said but I'd like to hear an expansion on part of it. I've heard it said before that sexual liberty/promiscuity can lead to - or is a symptom of - the fall of a society, but I'm not sure how the two things are related. Maybe if you mean more generally that the loss of absolute moral values leads ther I could follow...

[Hikage]

I've heard it said before that sexual liberty/promiscuity can lead to - or is a symptom of - the fall of a society, but I'm not sure how the two things are related. Maybe if you mean more generally that the loss of absolute moral values leads ther I could follow...

I wouldn't place the blame of society's downfall soley on the lack of sexual morals. There are other symptoms and causes that contribute. Allow me to explain by following the life of a typical person born during the 50's.

A woman is born in 1950, let's call her Jen. Jen is born to parents who suffered through the depression, experienced the lifestyle of the "roaring" 20's, and fought through a variety of means in the second world war. Jen's parents teach her to be respectful. Her idea of a hot date is "parking" and "necking" with someone, always holding that losing her virginity is not an option. Jen's parents took her to a lutheran church every Sunday where she had the message of celibacy, respect for parents, and love for her neighbor hammered into her brain. Never had Jen considered talking back to her parents, taking what she had for granted, going against the family design for her, etc.

Enter woman suffrage and woman's rights programs. The culture of the woman is redefined and now women are finding themselves in jobs usually reserved for men. More women are leaving the home and taking class at colleges and universities throughout the country.

Jen is one of them. She is accepted at a local college and finds there a freedom which she has not encountered before. She soon realizes that she can have more free time if she skips church, tells Dad that she went, and finds something else to do on her Sunday mornings, losing that message of respect for herself and others that she never really believed in anyway, but tolerated for her family.

One day, she is invited to attend a protest against the war -- eer excuse me -- "police action" in Vietnam. She sees what it is like to stand out against the authority, and that she can do it legally. She begins to understand that there is no legal law demanding her to live as Daddy deems. She stretches her bounds, parties a little more, drinks, and perhaps smokes. Soon, she is not just "necking" with the "boys" but giving herself to the men who remind her nothing of home.

Jen graduates and settles down with one of these men. No longer influenced by the youthful spirit of the campus, Jen mellows into the role of a mother as she concieves children. Not desiring to waste her school years, but not wanting to abandon her children, she takes a part-time job where she can work mornings and be home in time for her children to return from school. She raises them well and teaches them, perhaps indirectly, what she learned through life. That is, to question authority as it can often be wrong.

This in and of itself is not a bad teaching, but when taught nationally can be devasting. Children interpret this message as they don't need to listen to their teachers. If they disagree with a teacher, they can tell them off (and they currently frequently do). Furthermore, the parent is ironically also seen as an authority. The rebellion that waited until college for Jen is now seen in high school for her children because they learned this lesson earlier. It doesn't take long for her children to be experimenting with the opposite sex as she had. Afterall, she found time to be "necking", and her children find similar time to be commencing the begings of long-lived sex-lives.

Running side-long to all this rhetoric is the under-lying message from the culture which permeated all levels from the 70's until present. Especially during the 80-90's, the age where Jen's children were in school, teachers began instructing the principles of tolerance in response to racism and sexism - both of which were being combated and losing miserably in Jen's day. Children are taught to accept others for whatever reason. Star Trek: The Next Generation airs touting it's prime directive not to interfere with other world's (people) but to live in mutual respect. A klingon, an obvious reference to Communism, now serves on the flagship's bridge.

Furthermore, psychologists and therapists begin to increase their numbers as lessons in tolerance and confusion due to gender-role switching ease patient's emotional barriers into bursting. Phrases such as "I just need to be honest to my feelings" emerge from these sessions, returning us to my previous post.

Finally, now that students are practing sexual intercourse at such an early age, we see teenagers become pregnant soon after graduation of high school or sadly, while still in school. These children are merged with the children of suburban mom's who are working full-time positions and whose first priority is no longer to their families, but to their jobs. Responsibility is handed over to crowded daycare centers who promise to teach respect through tolerance. Not having that one-on-one instruction of generations past and having only limited time with their families for quality time and modeling of character development, these daycare children grow up to lack a sense of other people as thinking, feeling, sensient beings, other humans. Instead they are seen as people to manipulate to get what they want and need.

As it stands today, a teacher can no longer rely on a young student's guilt or empathy to correct poor behavior towards other students. As the generation before them engaged in sexual activity in high school, now the middle schools suffer the brunt of this problem. And where is Jen? She is home, wondering why her children don't call her except on birthdays and holidays.

Sexual trangression is not the end-all of societies but it cannot be denied that it contributes to and represents serious problems that do lead to the decay of family and inevitably to country as an all for one's self-culture where the type A personality is heralded, taught, praised, and valued.

-Hikage

[Tom Yum]

What an intellectual response that sought out approval from fellow man....jj. Actually it was well written. You certainly addressed some societal problems.

Life is not allways as simple as we make it out to be. Some of us grew up in homes like "Leave it to Beaver" in the 50's where everything and everyone is well defined in an environment that is easy to hold accountable to the Bible, some of us grew up in households like "Different Strokes" - different and somewhat accountable to the bible and some of us grew up in households like the movie "Boyz in The Hood" or "Kids" you'll see where I am going with this.

If you have courage Hikeage, rent the movie "Boyz in The Hood" and make sure no one under 17 is around when you watch it. The movie is violent at times, but shows a part of American society that needs help.

Let's assume that our new character "Jon" grows up middle class in a Metropolitan City. He goes to a public school and attends church on a regular basis. His first school starts off as a nice elementary school with children of middle class families like his own.

By the time he gets into high school, his school has redrawn district lines criss-crossed and tangled itself through so many neighborhoods to maximize tax revenues from some neighborhoods and increase tax write offs from others, his classmates will likely be Colombian, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, and Black. Are they all middle class? Some, but the majority aren't. So he enters a school with 3,000 students - all of different socioeconomic status and of different race (kind of a microcosm of the real world, no?)

Enter a highschool that is very multi-racial with youngsters that have hormones from Hades and some from very broken homes. Sure most kids are there to finish their education and move on, but others don't have such high hopes. If just 10% of the school population comes from broken homes, that's ~ 300 kids with potential problems. These kids know who each other.

Kids who just happen to come from families where the dad has severly abused them or there is no dad, tend to develop emotional problems. Alot of these problem kids find other problem kids that can relate to them, they relate, break bread and voala you have your gang. Add to this the art of rap music which allthough harsh sounding, relates to these kids. We'd all like to believe that every household is wholesom, but some households are less than wholesom.

Troubled kids from certain ethnicities form their own gangs, or sometimes form mixed gangs. Some of the gangs aren't even troubled kids, just bored guys from well to do families who have nothing better to do but get obsessed with 'street' culture. I would wager that the 10% of these troubled kids probably cause 90% of the schools misdemeanors, assaults or murder.

Meanwhile, back to Jon. Jon is trying to mind his own business - going to class, do well in school and sports and still goes to church. Unfortunately as you get to class you pass through hallways and coves where some of the gangs are hanging out, scowering - with the dreary institutional paint jobs of the school walls and bland design, its allmost like you're in a state penitentary...lol! Making eye contact the wrong way with the wrong people can get Jon into alot of trouble...Jon would get beat down pretty quick if he were intolerant of different kinds of people. If he was racist? Don't ask...

These gangs aren't like Eddie Hascal and his two pals. Some gangs probably have a few members that have aggravated assault charges or murder on their hands. They have access to some powerful firearms and use them not only for intimidation purposes... I know it sounds unreal from someone not in the trenches, but I can tell you it is very real. Please refer to a recent news article in the city of Houston about 4 - 18 year olds charged with murder and what they did. Keep in mind, these are highschool kids and likely attended a publich school.

Some gangs are a bunch of physical bullies and into intimidaiton, some are low key guys who buy/sell drugs and rarely get into scuffles, yet others gangs are mean, violent people.

In order to survive, Jon can either hide, harden up or be in denial. If he chooses to make friends and try to enjoy some of his public highschool experience, he will need to be tolerant. Kids who are intolerant of others and in denial end up like the Columbine kids. Kids who learn tolerance (note: tolerance is not a religion, rather a personality trait) are comfortable with any race and have better insight and don't come across as fake or insencere when dealing with people of different color.

If Jon stayed in the path of a protected school system that maintained Christian beliefs, tolerant or intolerant wouldn't matter. There are some fine Christian schools out there that have raised great kids and set great standards.

If Jon goes to the public schools of today in a large Metropolitan city, he needs to be tolerant to survive. I know this sounds strange, but if you need proof take tours of public high schools in various middle and lower middle class areas to see for yourself.

I hope that might have straightened out any misconceptions you might have had. Its true that schools teach tolerance these days, but without this tolerance these public schools would be powder kegs waiting to explode. True that it is difficult to keep public schools Christian, but there are good Christian schools too.

The real beauty is to see someone come out of this kind of environment and make a strong connection with the bible and voluntarily chose to accept God into their life on their own free will.

Forced Christianity sometimes has the by product of the Jen's you were writing about.

[Hikage]

Good post...

I wouldn't say so much that you straigtened out my misconceptions, rather embelished incredibly well on what was missing from my narrative. I admit that I skimped in my description of what would be happenening to the present generation in school partly because I was tired of writing and mostly because I was struggling to put it into words.

Let me say that as a teacher, I can thoroughly verify that your description of a school is 100 percent on the mark.

Much of what I said leads one to believe that I am against ideas such as tolerance, Star Trek, and Christianity. Ironically, I am a proponent of all.

Unfortunately, given that we do not live in a perfect society, perfect ideas are prone to bring imperfect results. I am not finding fault with anything that has led to today's problems, merely pointing them out.

-Hikage

[Tom Yum]

Hikeage, I wouldn't call it embelishment because it is true.

Teachers have a great gift. The challenge is to get the teacher in the same mocassins as the student so that someday, the student will be in the same mocassins as the teacher.

There are alot of Christians from different backgrounds. Some that grew up in wholesome and protected environments; some that grew up in horrible and wretched environments - with the rest somewhere in between. Again, I cannot explain the beauty of seeing someone come up from a rough upbringing transform into a Christian. These people bring wisdom and experience that is powerfully validated by the Bible so they are internally motivated.

I wanted you to know that the approach we take on sharing the Bible can either convert a man for life or push him away. Call me stubborn, but if I were to evangelize, I would focus on getting man to do so on his free will and at opportune timing rather than the brimstone and fire method.

You are right about secularism growing in our society. Its happening for many reasons, some obvious and some not so obvious. Some argue that Christianity is slipping to a secular, post-modern lifestyle and by screaming louder and using fear as a motivator, it will survive.

In my very, very humble opinion, it grows when you hear the latest rap song called "Jesus Walks?" being played on the hip hop station - an unlikely outlet for Christian music. The beats and electronic music and sampling make you think this is going to be a hard rap but if you keep the station on, the man is talking about how 'He wants to talk with Jesus, since its been so long' 'how he asks for forgivenss' and that 'God's spirit is still alive today and is waiting at the hearts of the guys who are the thugs, hustlers and killers to turn their lives around.'

I would wager that most Chrisitans do not even know about this song. I have listened to it carefully. It has a good message and sounds pretty cool.

PS - Rome was not built in one day.

[Tom Yum]

Anyways when you kept on using the word tolerance what you really meant was acceptance. If you were to tolerate a group of brothers you'd deal with them with a look of distain and a grimace on your face while not outright calling the ni---. Obviously the response you'd receive would be less that friendly.

The PC crowd has worked to add a definition to the word tolerance which basically means acceptance, because many people despite preaching how accepting of other races they are, deap down find the idea of accepting them repugnant. Hence they decided that slowly using the word tolerance in the of acceptance wouldn't offend the subtle racists and would appease the "oppressed" groups.

You may find it hard to believe but South Park opened my eyes to the this phenomenon.

The point I'm getting at is that you have to get along.

Bad people are bad people, regardless of where they came from. Same with good people. If you're quick to judge, that's another story.

Some of the pc crowd say they want equal this or that, but when it comes down to it, they've never invited a colored friend over to hang out, watch the superbowl, to drink coffee or play golf.