Our society in 2007 - Are we evolving or de-evolving?

Dr. Pangloss sez this is the best of all possible worlds.

 

The increase in technology and ways to communicate has also brought about a lack of manners. With cellphones you can talk to anywhere you can get a signal. Maybe its me, but I cringe when I see someone standing at the urinal talking on the cellphone or when I can hear someone in the stall next to me talking on the cellphone. What's so important that it can't wait 2-5 minutes until you're done in the bathroom to talk to someone about? Does the person on the other end of the phone really need to hear you taking a piss or a dump?
Same goes for restaurants, some people loudly talking on the cellphone so the people three tables away know what you're talking about. Or at a customer service counter, someone is trying to help and the customer will be yapping away on the phone (or trying to get that person's order if its a fast food joint).
Or those that have to talk while driving without a hands-free device. If it's a life-or-death emergency, fine, talk away. If you're lost and are trying to get directions, how about pulling over to the side of the road, and writing them down?

 

Our society is not necessarily de-volving, as in regressing biologically and psychologically. However, as stated in-depth prior, the general reliance on technology is contributing to lowering the lowest common denominator.

 

Look how quickly a male posted an inappropriate comment on what was supposed to be a serious discussion for "ladies only" about sexual harrassment in the workplace. I'll let someone else decide what that says about society.

 

We're going to hell in a hand-basket. That's all you need to know right there.

 

Everyone: Read "Radical Evolution"

Then wish you could un-read it.

Technologically, we are evolving at an incredible rate --- soon we won't be able to control the rate of technological growth.

Socially/culturally, we are a society that loves Reality TV and shit like "My Sweet 16". So in that sense, not so much.

 

A couple of books I'm reading right now are easing my hell-in-a-handbasket worries. About a third of the way through Vol. I of Shelby Foote's "The Civil War" and I see that the questioning of the way an executive branch enters and prosecutes a war 140 years ago has a lot of similarities to what's going on now. And, about three-quarters of the way through Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins," the plot hinges on the conservative and liberals being at loggerheads 35 years before our current state of affairs.

And, I swear it's a coincidence that I happen to be reading books at the same time by guys who grew up together in Greenville, Miss.

 

On the devolution question, I think a bigger concern than technology is the environment.

I think the junk we're spewing into the air, the mercury, etc. will be found to be the instigator for many diseases from cancer to autism.

Everything is chemical'd and fragranced to the hilt. You can't escape the crap.

I was doing some reading on bottled water the other day -- the stuff we think is better for us. There are BPA plastic particles in some bottled water. "Aquafina" is water "purified" from Detroit.

When it's really hard to find clean water, you know we've got issues as a human race.