First, different does not mean bad. Romanticization of the past is never beneficial.
Second, we struggle with issues today that were not issues a generation ago, but have overcome others. We can weigh those against each other, but I do not know how productive that is.
Third, again, that same statement has been put forward since about three thousand years ago.
I was not really speaking of the past as if it were all rosy by any means. But the fact remains that cultures usually build on top of what they have. So values aren’t discarded but refined. Heuristics aren’t scrapped but refined. ‘traditions’ aren’t scrapped but refined.
So how cultures evolve is first they have a set of morals they receive from religion or by natural knowledge. Then the culture grows up around preserving, encouraging, and following these values and preventing occasions where immoral acts will take place. The history of a culture contains a lot lessons learned from mistakes and collective wisdom of many lives than you and I can ever possibly achieve in one life time about these things. This wisdom is passed on in the form of traditions and prudential heuristics. When a culture forgets its past, usually it does cause a lot of errors.
Usually this means that each individual will have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes they will, or sometimes they will simply change the set of morals to reflect their own positions.
In what sense? The young people are still young. How can you claim that they will not mature as they age?
Could you give some concrete examples?
A good example would be our current culture and sexuality.
Initially, after the sexual revolution through the hands of some, many were exposed to its effects. Sex was viewed as casual and sex before marriage was made to look like a norm. Women were encouraged to wear revealing outfits that would encourage sexual attraction. Contraception was made to look very normal. For a young Catholic growing up today, given a Catholic moral set, they will find it harder and harder to follow. The culture around them is simply against them.
As time goes by, many simply adopt the culture and change the morals. So many don’t come back and the cycle of the new culture is re-enforced.
Also, bear in mind that obedience to parents ends as the child gains independence, as pointed out in Catholic teaching. Respect never ends. But I would say that young people today are concerned with correctness regardless of source. In that sense, I agree, there is less inherent respect given to parents qua parents. I do not think that this is inherently that problematic.
Very correct. But you have to keep in mind that when a child becomes independent is also a culturally determined phenomenon to some extent. For some in our new culture, this age is as low as 10. For others 17 etc. In the past, and still in most other cultures, it is the moment in which the child gets married.
So to some extent this is a very big problem. When a 17 year old for an example is allowed to decide on his own what is right or wrong, they can make some pretty bad decisions. It is psychologically a very delicate age and usually not the period of any person’s life where they look back and go “I did some smart things then”. Usually the only smart thing many do is follow the ancient tradition or parental advice and going to receive a further education.
Well, to give you a very common example that one hears all the time. Take a case where a girl visits her boy friend. They have decided to stay chaste till marriage. But it gets late, and she decides to spend the night with him without any intent of having sex. Prudence and tradition will say this is wrong. In the course of the night, usually due to natural attraction, they do get tempted and in fact end up doing something they will regret.
This is not something unique to the younger generation. You speak as if everyone prior made no mistakes ever. That is obviously not the case. How many 40-50 year-olds did drugs at some point in their lives? How many played harmful pranks? How many abused alcohol, played hookey, etc.? I really do not think this is a generational issue.
Very interestingly, the problems you highlight are very unique to our present society. The degradation of our culture did not begin with our generation. It was something that started long time ago as early as late 1800’s and some seeds in the Renaissance.
As a result, you see lot of old timers today who also made lot of mistakes in their lives. Some lived to tell the tale, others did not make it. Even among the ones who made it, they handed on some of their bad ideas to their own children.
But if you look outside at other cultures, the number of grown-ups that you will find who engaged in such deviant activities is very less. The usual rebellious acts are not even close to the level of violations like ‘doing drugs’, ‘abusing alcohol’ that you find in our culture. The ones who do things like in our culture are very few.
What all this means is that the systems in those cultures also include mechanisms to better cope with the usual rebellion and immature behavior that every person goes through at a certain age. Our current culture has thrown away our ancient collective wisdom on these things and as a result have no mechanisms in place to keep things in-check. As a result, every subsequent generation has become very vastly different from the first.
The same problems have started to occur in other cultures as well as the young in these cultures look up to us as their role models.
Why should I assume the worst? “Prudence and tradition” are not universally applicable in cases like this.