Are we staying closer and closer to our comfort zones?

[Flagg]

I know this probably belongs in the Lounge section, but in many ways this has to do with the news.

How many of you think we live in darker times than we did say, 20, 30, 50 years ago. Because it seems we are sucumbing to a more risk free way of life, especially within the West.

One such problem is how the news seems to have "paedo paranoia", that we must protect the children, that children should never be allowed to go anywhere on there own and so on. It's as if paedophiles and child killers have only just appeared in the last 10 years. I know when I was a kid, every weekend me and my friends would go over the park to play football, go to school on my own, ride bikes a couple of miles away to see friends and guess what? We all survived the experience. Another one is disciplining children in general. That seems frowned upon. Teachers are not allowed to do anything to kids now. And again, were our parents or grandparents permanantly scarred from a little coroporate punishment in education? And people wonder why teenagers today have zero respect for their elders. I've noticed with a couple of threads recently about the nature of dogs, how dangerous dogs are, etc. So, dogs weren't dangerous 30 years ago? I mean what is going on here? The Media is basically turning us into pussies. I mean im sure many, many of us could give other examples of apparant dangers that seem to only have appeared now.

Is the sense of adventure and exploration at the same level as a few decades (centuries?) ago, or even higher, or has it declined. If it's declined, is it because there's now many more artificial ways of scratching its itch, and are these distancing us from the "real world"?

Are we succumbing to a more risk-free general way of life, both in terms of change and personal risk? Another reason this could be is because people are afraid of being sued to Hell and back for everything they own, will own or might have owned.

Someone cuts their hand at work, and the Doctor gives them two weeks off work. A kid gets a nose bleed and its like the end of the world.

Is this a bad thing?

Or are the risks still there and still being taken, but perhaps in a less visible format?

We are turning into frightened sheep, each year, something new in the Media is fabricated to put the fear of God in us. Too much of this or too little of that is bad for our diet, every non english speaking country wants to bring about the end of civilisation, in the next ten years we'll reach 1 million ppm for CO2 emmisions, we can't say this because it will offend someone, we must say this because we need to be patriotic, studies show that *insert crap* will raise the risk of cancer by 2%.....and so on.

[Flagg]

This:


PLUS



EQUALS the Boogy Man and Swine Flu will kill us all. Don't even trust the weather because a tornado might destroy your house and then Government death panels will deem you unworthy to live.

[Kratos]

not me, I'm desensitized to it having been listening to it all my life.
but then again I don't have kids, that tends to send people off the deep end these days.

I leave my door unlocked most of the time, nothing ever happens...chased a home robber down who wasn't robbing my house but someone else's and caught him for the police just cause I could and it was fun.

takes pretty clear and imminant danger for me to get too worked up...but maybe I'm not normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkr0-nVwmQY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syjM1dPriBA&NR=1
I'd prefer a gun

[Tock]

Paedo paranoia . . .

Well, here in Texas, a guy can murder a couple of gay men, and end up in jail for 8 years. A guy can sell drugs to someone, and their 10 year old kid gets into it and dies, and the guy gets 12 years. I read of a 17 year old guy who had sex with a 12 year old boy and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

There's no way that I condone any of this stuff, but it seems to me that sentencing ought to include some consideration of how upset the victim of the sex crime was. I mean, if a 22 year old and a 16 year old are having a good time, and nobody was physically or emotionally injured, I don't really see why the older person should be locked up for several decades. On the other hand, if the older person terrorized the younger (or vice versa), or took advantage of the younger one's inexperience, then longer prison terms would be appropriate.

Not having given the issue a whole lot of thought, this seems reasonable to me at the moment . . .

[BgMc31]

Shit, I live in Vegas. I have 3 teenagers including a daughter who just started college and my wife and I aren't clingy at all. We're confident in the way we've raised our kids to know they will make the best decision...MOST OF THE TIME. But they are kids and we know they will make mistakes. We never sheltered them, even though they've lived privledged lives. We made our kids go outside and play, we encourage them to have friends and be social. I have to admit I am very protective of my daughter, not because of the scare tactics used by the media, but I don't want her to make the same stupid mistakes my wife and I made.