It's A Different World

[Eamonn]

If I'm very honest I have to admit that I'm a happy little fellow.

My life is good, I'm very comfortable enjoy what I do and like the people I have as family and friends.

I'm not cold, I'm not hungry and I'm loved.

 

While I'm willing to admit that I'm no longer a spring chicken, I'm not sure if I'm willing to accept the idea of being old.

I'm the product of two Irish parents, who left Ireland to find work in England.

Strange as it might sound, even though they stopped living in Ireland all of us, my brother and both sisters were brought up as if we were still living in rural Ireland.

Being Roman Catholic and the church was a very big part of my up bringing.

Missing Sunday Mass was never an option. Even after the Pope gave the thumbs up to eating fish on Fridays, we still stuck to the seafood diet.

My parents demanded total respect and obedience and we kids did what we were told.

Sex was something that was never ever a topic of conversation.

My youth and childhood were full of just being a kid.

I never knew nor cared how much money we had. I was never told.

I never knew what bills we had. I was never told.

 

The nuns at school, the teachers and later the masters demanded respect and obedience and by then I was used to the idea so following the rules didn't come hard.

I was an alter boy and was happy to serve.

No one ever tried to molest or harm me.

For a very long time I gave the idea of becoming a priest a lot of serious thought.

That was until I discovered girls.

 

I know that it might sound odd but I think that I was about 15 before I knew that there was such a thing as homosexuals.

Odd because I was after all living in London, which at the time was the place to be.

At about 15, me along with most of my school mates started using what would now be seen as gay slang terms as insults to others.

The person on the receiving end didn't have to be gay to get called one of these names.

The idea was to inflict as much hurt and harm, sometimes just for the heck or fun of it.

My idea of a homosexual was either a limp wristed effeminate man or a dirty old man in a dirty raincoat.

I didn't know anyone who belonged to these groups.

 

A lot of time has gone by.

My son is now 26.

I wanted him to have or share my values.

I think maybe without knowing it I wanted him to have as happy a childhood as I had.

His mother and I have always got along very well.

Our biggest fight ever was over two fried eggs! And that was before he was born.

If I failed him? It was because I was for a long time very money hungry and found out that I was the worse  boss that I ever worked for.

I love my son more then life, I'm very proud of him.

I can put my hand on my heart and say that he is a good kid who never gave me any real problems.

He never got into drugs, didn't drink till he was 21 and really is a very kind person.

 

I now work for a department of corrections.

Again I know it might sound odd but I enjoy my job. I enjoy my chats with the inmates

I know and enjoy my little chats with drug dealers, murderers, thieves and even child molesters.

I'm willing at least for a while to put my feelings and my judgments to one side. 

I don't and never will condone the crimes they have committed.

But often come away feeling that I've learned something.

 

I feel certain that I'd be unwilling to share any of these conversations with any youth members that I might serve in Scouts or Scouting.

Sadly I have had Scouts who when they have grown have got into trouble.

I'm not sure if I did something or didn't do enough for these Lads? But I don't beat myself up over it.

 

I have read and followed some of the threads here in the forum about gay Scouts and gay adult leaders.

I very much respect what people on both side have to say.

I also think that we all need to try our best to be kind to each other.

 

While turning the clock back is never an option, still part of me would love the idea that boys could just spend their youth enjoying just being boys.

No sex of any kind in Scouting.

Yes I know in this time with instant communications and openness that we can't put the Genie back in the bottle. 

But just as I'm unwilling to talk about murder, drug deals and the like, maybe we could just be kind and give sex a rest?

Eamonn

 

[Rick_in_CA]

@@Eamonn It sounds like you have a son to be proud of, and you should be proud of how you have raised him.
 

While turning the clock back is never an option, still part of me would love the idea that boys could just spend their youth enjoying just being boys.
No sex of any kind in Scouting.
Yes I know in this time with instant communications and openness that we can't put the Genie back in the bottle. 
But just as I'm unwilling to talk about murder, drug deals and the like, maybe we could just be kind and give sex a rest?

I agree with you, it would be nice if the BSA never got in the middle of the culture wars in the first place. Then we could focus on what matters, helping scouts grow into men of character. It's should be about service to others, personal character, and the golden rule. Not about vilifying others or telling then their religious faith is wrong or doesn't cut it to be "one of us".

 

As for the loss of innocence, I also agree with you. While I'm not sure as children we were ever that innocent, nor do I think it's healthy to keep kids ignorant, but kids today are pushed to "grow up" so fast now days. My friend has a young daughter, and trying to buy her a Halloween costume that didn't make her look like a pole dancer was a challenge. In what world is "sexy nurse" an appropriate choice for a six year old??? And it's not just Halloween costumes. When I was a kid, young girls were encourage to be cute maybe, but not sexy. Now you see six year old girls wearing tight shorts with "tasty" written across their crotch (I was completely floored when I saw that. It made me feel really sad). What parent thinks that is a good idea??? What company makes and markets shorts like that for six year olds??? I too wish kids has a chance to be kids.

 

However, as I watch my pretend nephew and niece grow up, I see two happy and healthy children (I don't have children of my own (to my regret), but I am truly privileged to be "Uncle Rick" to those two - even though I am not an actual relative). I guess things aren't as bad as I sometimes think. Positive parenting and other activities can compensate for a lot of the negatives in our culture. It's one of the reasons I'm involved in scouting. We can make a difference.

[AZMike]

Growing old makes you a stranger in your own country. 

 

When I saw the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" as a kid when it was first released, that was my blueprint for what I thought the future would be like - clean and shiny (at least the parts we saw - who knows, on earth it may have been more like "A Clockwork Orange"), manned space travel to the planets, and everything printed in Helvetica, the font of the future.

 

Instead, the year 2001 had a pretty-much dead manned space exploration program, tons of social problems I never would have dreamed of back in the 1960s, my mom died after a long debilitating illness, and maniacs hijacked planes and attacked my country.

 

Some of the changes were things I expected, like the omnipresence of computers in our lives, but the ways the Internet has affected us is amazing - who foresaw things like sexting, Wikipedia, identity-theft hacking, or sites like Tinder or Ashley Madison that facilitate adultery? As a teen, I had memorized probably 20 or 30 phone numbers that I frequently called - parents, friends, workplace. Nowadays, few people can remember any number beyond their own - we have grown comfortable with storing all those on the (also unforeseen) smart phone we carry in our pocket. The ready access to electronic storage and sources like Wikipedia seems to have stunted the memorization capabilities of the young, as well as everyone else. The access to spell-check like programs have made the ability to profread proorfeed proofread increasingly rare.

 

The biggest changes, though, seem to have been in social attitudes, as Eamonn suggested. The idea that two men could marry was considered kind of a ludicrous smutty joke when I was growing up in the 1970s. I remember a cartoon in a major magazine that showed two men in a bed with a tuxedo and a wedding dress hung over a chair. One of the men is reading a "marriage manual" and says "Wait a minute...according to this, one of us is supposed to be a woman." That cartoon (which could never be published today) pretty much summed up the idea of gay marriage back then.

 

The increasing social acceptance of previously unacceptable sexual lifestyles by many members of the Millennial Generation has been coupled with a retrogression in what is considered free speech, which is kind of bizarre. The "Free Speech" movement on campuses in the 1960s is pretty much dead, as speakers are increasingly denied a forum if it is considered hostile to prevailing attitudes among the young, or if it is thought to contain "triggers," "microaggressions," "privilege-based" statements, or anything else that requires retreat to a "safe space" among an increasingly infantilized youth culture. Even speakers who would have been considered on the Far Left are attacked and boycotted by anyone who can achieve a sense of notoriety and approval within their social network circles by claiming offense, who can generate an on-line petition and frighten a school administrator into pulling sanction for the event. Even applause has become considered a "trigger," so "jazz hands" are becoming the approved method of showing approval at campus events. The play "The Vagina Monologues," a play that for decades was considered a campus staple for feminist organizations, has been banned on campuses or censored because it doesn't acknowledge that "some women [i.e., transgenders] don't have vaginas."

 

Probably every generation feels that the next generation is dropping the ball, and maybe this is nature's way of making the old not fear death so much.

 

But yeah, one wishes there were more enclaves where one could avoid the craziness of modern culture.  

Edited May 16, 2015 by AZMike

[TAHAWK]

   â€œThe past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.â€

Edited May 16, 2015 by TAHAWK

[packsaddle]

AZMike, I can't speak for other campuses. But this one still has the most imaginative extremes presenting to whoever decides to attend. They are not heckled. If the students or faculty disagree with it they write rebuttals in the paper. There's too much studying to be done to waste time heckling someone who is going to be forgotten sooner if you don't.

I think you're exagerrating the PC trend.

As for the transgender thing, vaginoplasty has been available for more than a decade. The surgery is fairly well-known and I'm surprised that you're not aware of it.

 

As for fantasy movies predicting the future...wow. I still enjoy going into the stacks and once in a while pulling a Popular Science magazine from the 40s or maybe earlier time..to look at the preposterous predictions we made back then. I have a very long list of profoundly wrong predictions made by smart people [for example, "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here"...right!] and esteemed deliberative bodies, going back about 100 years now. That list is good for great laughs. The point I try to make is that there is almost no one who can predict the behavior of complex systems even as far out as just a few years. A few people may have a lucky guess once in a while but that's all it is, a guess really. I like to remind administrators of this when they try to assemble such nonsense as 5-year plans etc.

 

As far as fear of death goes, anyone who fears death is not having much of a life in the meantime, IMHO.

[packsaddle]

Continuing with one of the points that Eamonn made, I agree that there seem to be some scouters who are absolutely obsessed with sex, any aspect of it that they don't approve of, and it mystifies me as to why they have this obsession.

[Stosh]

   â€œThe past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.â€

 

And thus the reason older people understand both worlds and the younger generation doesn't.  Ancient history isn't taught much in schools anymore.

 

I grew up in the world of at any moment the whole world could just disappear. Nuclear holocaust was no big deal, we didn't want to survive because the world that would result wasn't worth it.

 

People today have their world changing millimeters at a time.  They don't realize what is happening.

 

It's kinda like the pot of cold water and hot water on the stove.  Toss a frog in the hot water and he immediately tries to get out to save himself.  Toss him in the cold pot and as it gradually warms up to a boil, he will die because the danger just creeps up. 

 

Maybe it's just youthful idealism on my part, but getting old isn't that big of a deal.  I believe the Golden Age of America has passed and therefore I don't expect things to get better over time.  The past 15 years have been quite a downward spiral and I don't see it turning around in my lifetime.

 

My glass half empty?  Maybe, but maybe your glass is too small.  They teach history classes for a reason.

[packsaddle]

An engineer would say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

[Stosh]

An engineer would say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

 Why do I have to be the only sane person in the world?

[AZMike]

An engineer would say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

A realist would say the glass is both half-full and half-empty.

[Stosh]

Fuzzy logic wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

[SeattlePioneer]

<<

I agree with you, it would be nice if the BSA never got in the middle of the culture wars in the first place. Then we could focus on what matters, helping scouts grow into men of character. It's should be about service to others, personal character, and the golden rule. Not about vilifying others or telling then their religious faith is wrong or doesn't cut it to be "one of us".

 

As for the loss of innocence, I also agree with you. While I'm not sure as children we were ever that innocent, nor do I think it's healthy to keep kids ignorant, but kids today are pushed to "grow up" so fast now days. My friend has a young daughter, and trying to buy her a Halloween costume that didn't make her look like a pole dancer was a challenge. In what world is "sexy nurse" an appropriate choice for a six year old??? And it's not just Halloween costumes. When I was a kid, young girls were encourage to be cute maybe, but not sexy. Now you see six year old girls wearing tight shorts with "tasty" written across their crotch (I was completely floored when I saw that. It made me feel really sad). What parent thinks that is a good idea??? What company makes and markets shorts like that for six year olds??? I too wish kids has a chance to be kids.>>

 

 

I find it amusing that you bemoan the culture war in paragraph one and then complain that you don't like the results of the culture war in paragraph two.

[AZMike]

AZMike, I can't speak for other campuses. But this one still has the most imaginative extremes presenting to whoever decides to attend. They are not heckled. If the students or faculty disagree with it they write rebuttals in the paper. There's too much studying to be done to waste time heckling someone who is going to be forgotten sooner if you don't.

I think you're exagerrating the PC trend.

As for the transgender thing, vaginoplasty has been available for more than a decade. The surgery is fairly well-known and I'm surprised that you're not aware of it.

 

As for fantasy movies predicting the future...wow. I still enjoy going into the stacks and once in a while pulling a Popular Science magazine from the 40s or maybe earlier time..to look at the preposterous predictions we made back then. I have a very long list of profoundly wrong predictions made by smart people [for example, "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here"...right!] and esteemed deliberative bodies, going back about 100 years now. That list is good for great laughs. The point I try to make is that there is almost no one who can predict the behavior of complex systems even as far out as just a few years. A few people may have a lucky guess once in a while but that's all it is, a guess really. I like to remind administrators of this when they try to assemble such nonsense as 5-year plans etc.

 

As far as fear of death goes, anyone who fears death is not having much of a life in the meantime, IMHO.

 

Not sure which campus you're on and you probably don't want to discuss that on an Internet forum, but yes, I spend time on campuses, and yes, things are getting crazy on some of them. Thankfully. most kids are too level-headed to buy into the Social Justice Warrior nonsense, but I don't think the campus zeitgeist I describe is unusual. You want examples?

 

I'm not really interested in learning more about "vaginoplasties," Packsaddle. You understand that creating a vagina replica fashioned out of male flesh is not really a vagina, right? Whether female impersonators can reshape their bodies to impersonate a woman's isn't really the issue the protestors raised at Mount Holyoke College, an all-women's college in Massachusetts - their point is that you can be a woman and not have a vagina, or something. And if the "Vagina Monologues" play doesn't recognize this new reality, it can't be presented, according to the new orthodoxy: “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman...Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.†(http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6202).

 

 

The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign just commissioned a study of hidden "racial microaggressions," and ways to combat them. You can read the actual findings here: http://www.racialmicroaggressions.illinois.edu/files/2015/03/RMA-Classroom-Report.pdf

 

According to the study, one can apparently be racist simply by being, if one is a member of a mostly all-white classroom with a minority member in it.

 

Among their recommendations:

 

Require all students to complete a General Education requirement about race, White privilege, and inequality in the United States. The Cultural Studies General Education requirement should be changed so that students must take both a non-Western culture and a US people of color cultural course.

Include diversity and inclusion in a third of the curriculum of all college 101 classes.

Develop workshops and training sessions and create brochures about racial microaggressions to help students identify when racial microaggressions are occurring, and to enable them to “nail†the aggressions, thus reduce their reoccurrence. For example, create a slogan or language to be use throughout campus. For example, “Racism Alertâ€, “Watch it! Racismâ€, “That is racially insensitiveâ€, or “That makes me uncomfortable.â€

[walk in the woods]

A realist would say the glass is both half-full and half-empty.

Technically the glass is always full, only the media filling it is different.

[TAHAWK]

The Keynesian argues that the glass is half-empty, and that government needs to intervene to fill it up.