Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Children Parents Are Raising

Tim Challies just linked to a couple of pages that tell us a lot about our culture. Here's an infographic about Millennials, "American teens and twenty-somethings currently making the passage into adulthood". Here are some statistics on pornography and teenagers.

4 comments:

  1. More like aren't raising, amirite?


    That millenials infographic really sums it up well: atheistic, liberal, entitled, impolite, wishful thinkers without a clue about the real world. No wonder this country is doomed.

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  2. Dont even want to look...can just about imagine...sad.

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  3. Our culture has its issues, but what era are we pining away for, exactly, and how much of that is based on anything resembling reality?

    Brothels were apparently common in Philadelphia in the colonial era. Benjamin Franklin had admitted to hiring his "share of strumpets". Cotton Mather's efforts in ridding his city of prostitution was met with relative indifference, according to many historical records.

    Then you had American slavery whereby men and women were essentially used as human chattel and stripped of most of their human dignity for profit.

    The last century had Jim Crow laws, segregation and the widespread murder and lynchings of blacks.

    Yes, our culture is oversexualized. The belief that abortion is a "right" no matter what trimester it is is also an issue (although that tide seems to be turning in the opposite direction). However, that is partially due to the way we insulate society from the realities of abortion (much as we do the realities of war). When it comes to in-your-face violence, though, the idea of hanging even a criminal in the town square in front of jeering onlookers would appall most Americans, I think.

    So, we seem to be a less brutal and inhumane culture, generally speaking. We treat women and minorities as equals. I think that's a good thing, don't you?

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  4. James,

    Previous generations don't set the standard. Even if they did, the people discussed above who are so wrong on so many issues were born at a time when opposition to slavery, treating women and minorities as equals, etc. were already widespread. We judge people largely by the context in which they live, factors like access to information and technology. If you have more opportunities, more is expected of you.

    There are a lot of problems with your analysis, like your ignoring of a culture's relationship with God and its theological beliefs, priorities, and authority structure. You don't say much about abortion, and what you do say is abhorrent (making a trimester distinction). You don't address the long term implications of the problems that I cited above (e.g., how pornography use is likely to affect future marriages and other relationships). What about increased self-esteem? Increased willingness to go into debt? Etc.

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