"I'm especially bothered by the lack of thought most people seem to put into much of what they do anymore. Maybe things have just become so "easy" and routine that there's not much challenge in getting through life"
This is exactly how i feel. I think the biggest difference between election 1984 and election 2004, is that we've had it too good for too long. People no longer appreciate a strong recovery... people have come to EXPECT a never-ending BOOM.
Another thing that worries me is how coarse our society has become(our entertainment is a huge part of this). It seems like the more media forms there are, and the longer theyve been with us, the more coarse and cynical we get as a nation. Hence "bad" has become good, and "good" has become "boring".
As we become more affluent religion and family seem to be playing far less a role in society. I personally am bucking that trend, but I still see it going on in most of society.
This is a very interesting topic to me so please give me some of your thoughts.
I do know that societies go through cycles - I'm old enough to have lived through and "experienced" the sixties, and it was a rough time. In fact I went overseas with the Army in mid-65 and returned at the end of 66; coming back to the US at the end of that eighteen months was like the difference between night and day, as they say, beginning with my being called a "babykiller" by a ticket agent in the SF airport. Music had changed, clothing had changed, there were angry demonstrations in the streets, rancor filled the radio and TV - it was bad. Then we got to "Watergate", and the backbiting, infighting, and betrayals got even worse. In fact, I believe today is the thirtieth anniversay of Nixon's resignation, a very dark day indeed. Yet only six relatively short years later we elected a decent, steady conservative to the presidency in Ronald Reagan, with the help of a lot of reasonable people who took a good look at the candidates and crossed party lines to do what was best for the country. We returned to a period of relative calm and worldwide peace, and strong prosperity. The human spirit seems to have a built-in feedback mechanism which will let it go off on the wrong track for only so long before it starts looking for a switch back to the mainline, so to speak. I'm hoping it doesn't take another 911 for us to start behaving more grown-up, but sooner or later I think we will.
In the meantime I think your idea of "personally bucking the trend" is fine. You have to know your own center and stick with family members, religion, interests, friends and whatever else matters most to you - that should be the center of your life, and allow you to avoid whenever possible elements of the culture that irritate you the most. But I think it also helps to occasionally take a jab at those elements. I try never to let a week go by without at least sending one nasty e-mail or letter of complaint to some media outlet or public figure - that way I feel I'm doing some little part to help reverse those parts of the culture I find most objectionable. In his talk Ben Stein mentioned that he had campaigned for Bush in 2000 and at one point his agent told him that he might ruin his career in Hollywood by doing so. Stein replied that he didn't think that was going to happen, but he wouldn't care if it did because his freedom of speech was important to him, and he would still have his personal life, wife and children which were most important of all. He's a very smart man.....