The Guardian has a
somewhat interesting if very self serving article by psychologist Tanya Byron about "ephebophobia" or the fear of tearaway youth. She begins with a pithy observation, namely that adults have been complaining that the kids these days have no respect, since time immemorial:
"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." These words - expressing the all-too-familiar contemporary condemnation of young people - were actually inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.
In other words, every generation thinks that the next generation is the worst ever. That's an excellent point. Yet she somehow missed the irony in the next line:
Such quotes illustrate what I believe has become a historically nurtured and culturally damaging phenomenon: ephebiphobia - the fear of youth. But today this problem is worse than ever.
Is it really? Or is there another Egyptian tomb somewhere, yet to be uncovered, in which someone laments how silly modern Egyptians are for thinking that everything was better in the good old days?
8 comments:
" Why can't they be like we were? Perfect in every way, What's the matter with kids today?" -Paul Lynde as Harold McAfee in 'Bye Bye Birdie'
you should follow this link to see how bad they really were in egypt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1kqqMXWEFs
I remember doing one of my (several) clerical posts which took place in a large open office. The predictable conversation about how bad the kids were, how they were all knifed etc was going on, and my supervisor - nice as she is said
"And it really has just reached ludicurous levels. There was this story on the news about a man who complained about the noise some kids were making outside his house and they stabbed him and he died. Unbelievable. That just never would have happened. And the story was even more tragic because almost exactly the same thing had happened to his Dad 30 years ago."
The irony was, unfortunately, missed by most of those in the room.
G.
That made me laugh out loud and I had to explain the joke to my office-mates. Thanks, G.
Sometimes I fondly dream of a law mandating that newspapers print a graph of the relevant year-on-year crime statistics under every story about a crime. The mind has a much better memory for stories ("Dad stabbed!") than for statistics, that might go some way towards redressing the balance.
Undoubtedly Samuel L Jackson's best role in about 10 years.
I think you're absolutely right in terms of some perspective needing to be taken, and stats might be the best way to do that.
Having said that, I also remember a story on the news a couple of years ago saying "violent crime statistics demonstrate that violent crime is at an all time high, and murder rates in the North of England have risen by a shocking 350%" or something along those lines. Of course, this was the first set of crime statistics since Harold Shipman was convicted but hey! let's not worry about providing an accurate message about our 'broken society' here kids.
I think that before being allowed to read the stats, people should be forced to read the most fantastic science writer of our age (which nicely links to your blog a couple up), the one and only Steven J. Gould. Further I can think of nowhere better than this essay here, 'The Median Is Not The Message' - one of the most fantastic essays I've ever had the pleasure to read.
http://www.mesotheliomahelp.net/median_is_not_the_message.html
p.s. it is quite short!
G.
Indeed, it's possible to lie with statistics. But it's a lot easier to lie without statistics. And if you lie with statistics, say by quoting the first figures since the arrest of Shipman, you can be caught out. Whereas if you just say "Crime is getting worse", that's impossible to disprove. There will always be some sense in which crime in getting worse.
What a turban this man has I use to use that kind of turban when my girlfriend wants in order to get intimation.
I think that this is really interesting,I know that the people love this kind of stories because it is so cool,thanks for sharing!
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