My dad, Glen Stinson, always said that our society does not listen to those that are old and have lived a long and experienced life. And that we are poorer for it. One bit of wisdom he shared with me, I will share with you.

My dad was a WWII veteran, and had served in the Submarine service. 1/3 of the men in the submarine service did not come home from the war. They rest in silent metal tombs at the bottom of our world's oceans. And my dad grew up during the depression, the youngest son of a single-mother household...with a total of six kids in the house. Their father had left them...and the whole family had to work to survive. I tell you this, just so you'll know the perspective from which he was coming.

Why are the bonds between family members so weak? Why do people give up on marriages so easily and divorce? Why do people cheat on each other so easily? Why to fathers and mothers abandon their children to pursue selfish lives? Why do people have no loyalty to friends? Why do people lead jobless, purposeless lives? Why do people pursue drugs, cheap sex, and other self-centered indulgences rather than live up to their responsibilities? Why is our Society losing its values? Why is our Society decaying?

Dad had decades to consider why these things were happening...and why their frequency is increasing. And he was the sort of man that tried to put meaning to the things he observed. His answer was simple. People are increasingly self-centered, selfish, hurtful, and irresponsible because they can afford to be so. We have built a Society with very little starvation or true hardship.

There was a time when people needed family to simply survive. You needed the support and the assistance of you mother, father, brother, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, and everyone in your family to survive. If your crops went bad, or your spouse died, you lost your job, or you struck down by illness you needed your extended family to help you survive until you could recover through hard work and struggle from these negative events.

There was a time when people needed a stable marriage and homelife to simply survive. Life was hard, people worked long hours, and the challenge of survival could easily be lost if you did not endure in your relationships. Divorce destroyed not only the marriage it ended, but it threatened the very survival of both spouses and the children involved.

There was a time when you needed loyal and trustworthy friends to simply survive. If something went wrong in your life, without friends to assist you...you might not be able to recover from the hardship you faced. Maintaining those friends, and helping them when they were in need, ensured that you would receive help if by a bad turn of luck you were in need.

There was a tim when you needed the cooperation of your neighbors to simply survive. Neighbors worked hand in hand to lessen or eliminate the hardships of existance. They lifted each other up, and looked out for each other because they had to in order to survive.

There was a time that without these support systems and mutual relationships, you might lose your home, starve, or die. Your children might starve or die. Your very existance was threatened if you lived irresponsibly of failed to maintain your bonds and relationships with these groups of people.

But in today's world, none of this is true. We live in an incredibly rich Society. Even some of the poorest people in our Society have a place to live, a stove, a refridgerator, cars, microwaves, televisions, cell phones, a home computer, clothing, food, etc. We talk about poverty and homelessness, but those problems are nothing like they were just 50 or 60 years ago. Our average standard of living is so incredibly high...that we take it for granted.

During the Depression, my dad's toys disappeared in November, and he was given those same toys back as Christmas as presents. A huge treat was when his mom would bring home a single candy bar, and cut it into six pieces for the six children to share. They grew food in an empty lot nearby, just to have food to eat. They neighborhood pooled what little money they had to have their street covered in gravel and oil. And they lived inside the city of Kansas City. After WWII, when dad got married, he moved with his wife into a one bedroom apartment with a bed and a hotplate. They had to put food outside their window in the winter to keep it fresh because they didn't have a refridgerator. Dad was a hard worker with a fairly good job, but they had to save up for a long time to buy a refridgerator, and eventually they bought an old broken down car.

I've worked as a police officer in the inner city. The people that we all refer to as "downtrodden," "disadvantagd," and "poor" have homes filled with modern appliances, at least one car...usually two, their refridgerators are filled with food, and they have home phones as well as cell phones. Some of them work. We live in a Society of excess. A Society where the government provides a safety-net that can provide for you for years, and years. Even after Welfare-Reform, there are 11 Counties in Missouri where you can exist indefinitely on Welfare due to the "economic depravity" in those counties. Everyone has credit cards, and other means of living beyond their means.

So gone are the days where you need your extended family to help you survive. People trade in their spouses, cheat on each other, and hurt each other in the most selfish ways. People change jobs, have few close friends, and live as individuals confident that no matter how badly they choose to act, no matter how irresponsible their behavior, no matter how self-destructive they become...its extremely rare to starve and die in our Society. In a sense, our societial stability, values, and meaning have suffered greatly due to our material success.

And there is more. People are so incredibly mobile, jobs are relatively easy to come by, and housing plentiful and affordable, that people do not face the destruction of their reputation. They do not face the shame of bad action in their lives. They do not risk being shunned by those that they need, for they do not need anyone. Piss off you family by some horribly selfish action. Who cares...you don't need them anyway. Piss off your neighbors...you simply move. Piss off your friends? What friends? People collect aquaintences...not friends in our age of plenty.

So his answer makes sense to me. As I view the world, and the degenerate nature of our Society, it is hard to not see the world through his eyes. And the lessons he taught me about the world he grew up in...as opposed to the world we live in today.

Mark