Re: Is this a problem?

On 4/5/2010 9:30 PM, Màck©® wrote:
On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:48:03 -0500, sometimers
<sometimers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 4/4/2010 10:49 PM, Màck©® wrote:

On Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:06:39 -0500, sometimers

You paint a picture of an individual capable of rationalizing any act
who would never take personal responsibility.

You have it completely backwards. We took personal responsibility
for our actions, and expected everyone to do the same. This, now,
is the age of saying, "it wasn't right, how vile, how evil."

exactly what actions were you taking responsibility for?

All of them. The rule was "no teenage pregnancy" we had no teenage
pregnancies.

No proof.

Your point is?


The rule was no latchkey kids, we had no latchkey kids.

Again no proof.

Again, your point is?


If there had been a teenage pregnancy, the couple would have been
ostracized.

Is that a good thing? Not a very "moral" way to handle it.

Again, your point is? I didn't make the rules. We all lived by them.


The couple that broke the rule about not being married
while students in the high school I attended did not graduate with
us

Was that a good thing? It certainly wasn't a "moral" way to handle
it.

Again, your point is? I didn't make the rules. We all lived by them.


and I have no idea what the outcome of their circumstances became
or indeed if it changed over time.

I would bet real money that you knew little if anything of what went
on around you. Under the society you describe, silence was not a
golden rule, it was a matter of survival.

Again, your point is? I didn't make the rules. We all lived by them.


By challenging the statement with "exactly" you're once again setting
the discussion up for a "win" on your part. Are you going to tell me
that you truly don't understand how you load the discussion with
stuff like this?


You accuse me of copping out, then you avoid a direct answer.
According to what was written above, "YOU" have not taken
responsibility for anything.

Again, your point is? I didn't make the rules. We all lived by them.




Because it's what was expected therefore always right.

By definition. Define "right".

You skipped this very important aspect. "The rules" folks like you
rail against were not imposed by some invisible elite, they were
imposed by the society that lived those lives. If they were deemed
unjust by a segment of society that was able to slowly change those
rules, they changed both in the social and the legal contexts.

For example, I remember as a child that black people were required
to sit at the back of the bus, and I remember when that rule
suddenly changed, under president Trueman, perhaps in 1947?

America has a highly fluid society where it comes to those rules,
only rigid in enforcement for the time that any particular rule is
in effect. The rules change over time. Humans will at times, when
left to their own devices, create advantages for some subsets,
perhaps at the expense of other subsets. That's a common feature of
all human societies. Where those rules are inflexible and are to
the benefit of a ruling elite, we call it totalitarianism. We haven't
experienced that in the US, if anything we've experienced the reverse.

Back to the bus issue for a moment. While visiting the Atlanta region
about 1960, I noted that the afternoon bus ride home bound from the
northern suburbs had individuals overriding one law in favor of their
own comfort levels. Black domestics would peer at an approaching
bus to see which race was prevalent on a particular bus, and if
the passengers were predominantly white, they would step back from
the curb, letting a bus of mostly white people pass. They would
board the next bus that had their preferred racial mix. The local
sense of what was right for people retained, after 13 years of
anti-discriminatory codification, the older paradigm and they
were being retained by the very people the codification intended
to "help."

Are you truly that ignorant as to why they chose to avoid a bus full
of whites in that era?


Now you are objecting to the way people you never met and probably
have no experience with their culture decided to live.



In later years, as my circle of friends inevitably grew larger, I heard
that the rules in a community 25 miles away had been different during
my school years. Pregnancy among high school girls was accepted and
dealt with by allowing them to continue in school till their final
days, and then to return to school to complete their public education
when it suited them, even if they were 20 years old or older by that
time. But such things were not accepted and unheard of in the very
conservative community I grew up in.

Is that the society you wish to return to?


It was the way we lived in the 1950's. That's what this discussion is
about. From my standpoint it was not a bad life and I doubt I'd have
trouble living once again by the rules that existed then. It would be
a lot easier, in fact, at age 70, than it was as a kid going through
the hormone changes and just discovering the world for the first time.

From the responses this thread has gotten I doubt there are many
who would be willing, let alone able, to observe that system of
folkways and mores. More's the pity, actually. We lived to the
ideals of the age and knew no different.

OTOH if it weren't the particular sets of objections those who
object to that way of life have raised, it would be some other
set of objections. Just because we were pleased with what was
doesn't mean you have to be.

In the 1950's and before there were a lot of things universally,
or almost so, accepted that you can doubtless find moral objection
to today. The US is busy rewriting not only how things were
understood, but obliterating entire segments of history whenever
possible. For example, Columbus was seen as a hero in my youth.
Many today see him as a villain. There's been some movement towards
eliminating him from history studies mostly because his impact is
seen today as too Eurocentric.
.

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