Topic: A decline of moral values, the increase in teenage pregnancy blah blah

[mwilley]

Hi, love the show you are the best I am you #1 fan, avid listener etc! €:-)

I am always nonplussed by people's accounts of the good old days, how things were much safer back then and so forth.  It annoys me because there is clearly a lot of selective memorising going on.
Then today, while I was listening to the show I found a link to these guys who have put a study together on this very topic:
It is called "Implicit self-change and the ideology of social decline" from Eibach, R. and Libby, L. (2004 I think), and it is at:

http://www.allacademic.com/one/prol/prol01/index.php?cmd=Download+Document&key=unpublished_manuscript&file_index=1&pop_up=true&no_click_key=true&attachment_style=attachment&PHPSESSID=9b129dcf379449d5dc3b2800728a1c63

I hope that long link works, its a great study.  An awesome bit of skeptical research and very readable.  Just read the first two pages for a toe-curlingly accurate account of how misrepresentation of facts can have an extraordinary impact.
The idea that things are getting worse is very damaging.  I work in education, (ejumacation!), and teachers and schools have a kind of crisis mentality based on some idyllic interpretation of what the past was like.  It then affects how they deal with marginalised children in all manner of ways.
I suspect that this is a delusion that causes quite a lot of sociological damage, a self-fulfiling prophesy in many ways.  As always, I am keen to hear what you think.  It would be great to hear my soapbox wheeled out on the show,
cheers...  Matthew Willey

PS, I tried to post this directly but horrible things happened.

[Evil Eye]

I love this...

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
- attrib. (possibly incorrectly)to Socrates c.410 BC

[mwilley]

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
- attrib. (possibly incorrectly)to Socrates c.410 BC

I know! And still nothing has been done about it!