Life After Common Sense Dies?

[mushka]

High brow? I feel more like an idiot to be honest.

[Ekphantos]

I guess I got all messed up by studying classics Quoting without proper reference is a deadly sin there

[noel]

I guess I got all messed up by studying classics Quoting without proper reference is a deadly sin there

Of course, Cicero... should have guesssed ... (or at least checked Times of London sources)... and those kids he wrote about caused the decline and fail of the Roman Empire...

Our equivalent today... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzUni...702F6D&index=6


=o)

Noel

[moondan]

Hi noel, your always a good read so I hope I dont rain on your parade too much.

Im closing in on 64 now, born 4 days after the previous generation had managed to obliterate some 70 million folk. I dont remember much of the latter fourties but the grey and dismal fifties are in my memories as if they were yesterday.
I didnt grow up without proper guidence and I dont think many of my mates did but that didnt stop us youngsters from making our teachers life hell, especially the novice ones.
We braved the cane and did our lines and in the metalwork class we filed down metal to the shape of arrowheads to fit our bow and arrows and left many inbedded in the front doors of many a neighbour.
We had quite an arsenal of weapons, from catapaults to air guns with the odd spear thrown in.
Long before our teens we had scavanged the surrounding fields for live bullets to pack old cigar cases with the cordite and many a tree was blown up to much hilarity and much to our shame the old lady down the street was driven crazy with our cheek.
The latter fifties saw the emergence of the Teddy boy with Elvis side burns and a razor that was as sharp as anything in Brando's Wild one.
The friday night dance wasn't timid either with gangs to contend with who would stripe your face if you even glanced at them, Saturdays was far worse.
The sixties was about flower power, but the real power lay with the mods and rockers who turned brighton waterfront into a battle ground every weekend and drugs were the thing to do.
Things didnt tame down in the seventies either when all shops in the vicinity of a football ground boarded their windows up and closed all day saturday.
The eighties saw the arrival of crack cocaine and guns were as common as snow in alaska.
I got married in the nineties so its more difficult to comment as I was under the mrs cosh
Through the fourties, fifties and sixties and into the seventies an average of 32 child murders took place each year, that average is now about 12 to 15 so society has improved in that most horrible area.
I do think there is a tendency for all to think the summers were better in their youth and certainly the days when people never locked their doors is a complete myth, My father certainly did and he also double checked.
Prior to 62 the hangman was kept busy and the prisons were harsh but in general the sentences were shorter but probably left a deeper impression.

I think the human race is further from the jungle than its ever been, their is less misery for most in the world but there is still a long way to go and perhaps we are better informed of lifes perils and so our impressions are distorted.
Anyway hope you dont mind my tuppence worth.
I must add I wasnt classed as a yob and nor my mates, we were run of the mill kids and its fair to say we had growing up pains but who doesnt?

[noel]

Hi noel, your always a good read so I hope I dont rain on your parade too much.Anyway hope you dont mind my tuppence worth.
I must add I wasnt classed as a yob and nor my mates, we were run of the mill kids and its fair to say we had growing up pains but who doesnt?

Moondan...
as my Dad used to say... "All a man's got is his Story to tell" and this one, yours, is well-appreciated...
and my own experiences don't differ much from yours mate... looking back over the span of my years,
from a seeing the forest from the trees vantage point, it seems almost like all my escapades really were Story fodder, and hopefully valuable lessons to be shared with others for what that may be worth.
My kids and their generation live in a different world than ours was, to be sure.
Different aspirations, different opportunities, different challenges.
But there is an identity, a resonance that spans the generational-divide...
a sameness that is one of the mysteries of being human. As Beckett wisely observed...
"...and the sun shone, because it had no alternative, on the nothing new."
That is why the Cicero quote is most interesting.
The kids are not the problem... in fact, they may have to be their own solution...
based upon the kind of world we have created for them...
The kids are AWESOME!
The point of my original post was to say that in cultures where the State is becoming more and more intrusive in family lives like the Church used to be...
officially sanctioned policies, hoping to generate more pluralistic tolerance and respect and equality seem to be having the opposite effect.
Is there a better way?


Just wondering.


=o|

Noel

[ChatLag]

I guess I got all messed up by studying classics Quoting without proper reference is a deadly sin there

@Ekphantos:
I like your signature a lot even if it reminds me of my cue action...

Have you never been asked what it means in English?
Would be interesting how you would translate THAT keeping the style...

[Monique]

Just an idea Noël... it should be forbidden to sleep in beds. After all statistics prove beyond any doubts that theses are the places are where most people die ...

On a more serious note: I don't think human nature has changed much over a few hundreds years. Peole are very much the same now and then, here and there... regarding their needs and their dreams. However overbearing and overprotecting tends to produce irresponsible and helpless individuals. Kids need to make their own experiences as this is not transferable as a knowledge. It's part of growing up. Give them more freedom ... and confront them with their responsibilities.

[noel]

Give them more freedom ... and confront them with their responsibilities.

ok.


=o)

Noel