A few things that are wrong with American Culture today....???

[KoKo]

How does the "Family of Mankind/Women Kind Disintegrate?" Look at America in 2005.

l. Your remains will likely not be buried or if cremated "spread" near to any of your relatives.

2. If the UPS/FedEx driver asks if you can take a package for your neighbor...you might not know your "neighbor" well enough to accept the package.

3. If your Wife/Husband/Child had an emergency you call "911" in the middle of the night rather than a relative, friend or neighbor to help you. It's "cleaner that way." You don't have to disturb anyone.

4. If you have an illness that you are going to die from...you immediately contact your local "Hospice Association" because you know that without family, friends or relatives close by you won't be able to cope and so you need the resources of an "impartial group" to help you through what no one else can do. (Therefore...the rise of wonderful Hospice Groups who "fill in" for what American Society and Families spread out over long distances, can no longer provide.)

5. If you company is downsized, merged or just thrown out of business for whatever reason, you never tell anyone for fear that they will see you as a "slacker" in the system...so you hide what happened and "re-finance your mortgage" or use your "credit card" to the max. You carry on as if nothing as happened because you feel ashamed, or you are confident that you will find new employment in time enough that your neighbors, relatives and friends won't find out about it.

6. Your kids are learning in "modular housing" and local Boards of Education are constantly looking for and finding ways to cut costs "per pupil" so that teachers and the facilities they teach in are no better off than "third world," countries. Teachers and Academics have little respect, make very little money and folks are always complaining about their asking for a "living wage." Some even feel they are paid too much and their "ideology is suspect."

7. There's so much more about vacant/empty America....I could go on...but those are my main points...:-(

[salin]

1. odd

that doesn't match much of my experience.

Very sad to read - and I am sure it does match some folks experiences.

[KoKo]

2. It's good to hear that your experience has been different...but many in

"Corporate America" are experiencing what I posted. I'm a Corporate mover. Asked to go wherever the good jobs were. It was our choice, but there ARE many like us. :shrug: Glad it's not YOU butthat you think what I say is "Odd"...maybe shows a disconnect?

[salin]

11. just odd in the sense

that while it is expressed as a generalized set of circumstances - that I am, once again, outside of that. I am yet again reminded that I am quite fortunate.

[Nikia]

3. I feel like that too

I feel disconnected with my family and feel like I don't belong in my new community where I have been living for the past three years.
I feel anonymous at many of the places where I go, although that is changing a little bit here in my town of under 10,000, when we lived in the bigger city for a year, this was very true.
I don't know what the answer is as we are encouraged to go wherever the jobs will take us, that indivdual sucess is most important, profits are more important than people, and the only committment that matters is marriage (if that). Many people do feel disconnected and I think that is encouraging an increase in depression and anxiety.

[KoKo]

5. It's very hard for those of us who were educated one way or the other..

and moved to fulfill our education and earn a living to have had to move and try to juggle our current family obligations and our need to be with those who still live somewhere locally.

In my family, though, we are all so spread out it's gotten increasingly hard to find a "center place" to go to. It was awful when my mother-in-law died last Summer and folks had to find a way for her five sons, the family and grandchildren all to get plane tickets to arrive and go to the ceremony. We are spread out all over America and in other Countries...and it wasn't easy. Some even felt that putting a tombstone up over my MIL and FIL's graves (my FIL died ten years ago) was a waste of money because no one would ever go back to where they lived to visit a grave. :-( The genaeologists amongst us raised a fuss because both parents where second generation Irish Immigrants and it was important to us that where they were buried was honored and that folks in the future looking for family connections would be able to search them. But, it almost caused a terrible family fight.

But...I wonder if any family except my husband and I will ever go again to visit the site. And, some think it's not important. They are just taking up "ground space" that could go to a "condo development" that might provide housing and jobs. :shrug:

[shraby]

4. Here's another..

you can go to the grocery store, church, downtown shopping, whatever and never see anyone you personally know.

[KoKo]

6. Yes...it seems everyone goes their own way today unless one lives in

a very small community and has kids who are young enough to interact. But, there are many Americans who move without kids at home, maybe the kids are grown or they never had kids or whatever.

It's difficult even for those who have kids to try to keep moving today because you have to go where your training is to find a job.

[Bellamia]

8. At my grocery store...

the clerks know my name; in my neighborhood very few "neighbors" do, but I've only been here 5 years.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. I have felt lucky whenever I've found community in America

It ain't easy.

I've recently moved back to where my relatives are, and I live in an urban village, where a lot of the business owners recognize me. I've also found a niche in my downtown church by following my interests in music and social justice.

I think part of the problem is that too many people have no lives outside of work, nuclear family chores, and TV. They live in impersonal exurbs where everyone is in the same boat and where all the businesses are chain stores.

There are a lot of complaints in the local press about it being "hard to meet people" in the Twin Cities. Actually, there are more things to get involved in then any one person could do in a lifetime. This month's issue of a local magazine has an article on how to meet people in the Twin Cities. I should have thought these would be no brainers: volunteer, join an activity club, get involved in the arts, take a class. But I have heard from more than one former student that they don't know what to do with their time or how to meet people once they're outside the prepackaged social life that college offers.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. American Culture? Here's what Mencken had to say about it.

"Such banal striving is most prodigally on display in the United States, where superficiality amounts to a national disease."

In response to your listed items I would say that most of what you regret is due to our becoming an "ownership society" where citizens are valued for what they own rather than what they do or think or contribute to the common good.

We elect people because of their "popularity" or "charisma" rather than their abilities or ideals (other than the usual banalities that pass for ideals). What a politician wears has become more important than what he thinks.

We have become a nation devoted to the lowest common denominator that rejects art and knowledge in favor of entertainment.

We praise "hard work" in the physical sense, but reject intellectualism as effete and "elitist".

Or, as Clemenceau said, "America the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervention of civilization."

[KoKo]

10. He was always good for "insight" and of the "cynical kind" that prevails

in the Bush times...but then he saw it in his own time.

My own experience with this, though is that it "ebbs and flows" according to whether a Dem or Repug is in power.

It's the worst today that I've ever seen it, though. :shrug: