I don't have much to say about this case, except that when I was a teenager I can remember coming across several women who were drunken to the point of incapacity. It always struck me that my duty for the evening included watching over them to make sure they were OK in the end. The young weren't any brighter or better able to handle their early experimentation with alcohol back then, but nobody got hurt on my watch.
I'm not sure why young men today don't feel the same way about things. I am sure they ought to.
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I've been wanting to write about this, but in the mean time, I'm pretty sure they ought to as well.
As should this kid's so-called female friends.
It's no great mystery to me why these kids don't seem to know right from wrong - the culture they live in wasn't created by kids but by "adults", and its main function seems to be to ridicule and discredit morality and personal responsibility.
Very depressing stuff all around - FWIW, it means a lot to me to see you mentioning it at all. I know it's not a pleasant topic.
Good to know there are some things that can still be relied upon.
Hear, hear, Grim!
They've grown up in a society that in it's popular culture, seems as though it approves of lewdness, finding humor in watching others get hurt or humiliated (reality T.V.), and otherwise endorses a lifestyle of 'do your own thing' or 'whatever makes you feel good', after having been raised under the 'everyone is special, everyone gets a trophy, let me build your self-esteem' parenting style. Of course the only thing they thought of when they got drunk was their own impulses and exercise of power over the helpless, instead of the fact that they were dragging around and humiliating not a rag doll, but a fellow human being.
You know what they say- "In vino veritas".
They've also grown up in a culture that views graphic re-enactments of gang bangs as harmless entertainment.
All impulses are normal and healthy and we mustn't judge, much less try to exercise any self restraint.
The culture has quite a bit to do with what we consider normal/acceptable and what is beyond the pale. There is no pale, anymore.
I think most young men still do.
Steubenville is a hole. Most of the mills closed. Unemployment/unemployability is rampant, as are drugs and robbery. Those boys are the 2nd or 3rd generation who probably never saw anybody get up and go to work everyday.
I'm not sure they do, though.
How else do we explain boys and grown men "sharing" naked photos of their girlfriends and even wives via cell phone? How do we explain the popularity of sexting? How do we account for bloggers like John Hawkins, who wrote about having had "friends" show him cell phone photos of their girlfriends?
I"m sorry, but if a "friend" tried to show me something like that, I'd lose all respect for him or her and we'd no longer be friends. A real friend would take his friend to task, even if it was awkward and uncomfortable.
There are lines in life that should be defended.
If most boys/men still see the moral line Grim describes, how do we explain the market for revenge p0rn, which isn't just a hobby anymore, but appears to have a viable business model?
A year ago, I would have thought that damage from such incidents would be limited because only crazy people are interested in/do that sort of thing. But this stuff isn't on the fringe anymore. It's gone mainstream - so much so that ordinary people can no longer avoid it. And we don't want to face that, just as the kids at that party didn't want to face what was going on right before their eyes.
Because they've been relentlessly taught that morality is relative - that there are no moral absolutes. It's been pounded into them in the schools, and their parents - often of the same convictions - have not opposed the message.
I suppose you could look at this as the long-sought achievement of full social equality in America: now every young man, however humble his origins, feels he can behave like a Kennedy.
I stand corrected, I suppose. I failed to consider that I only hang out with people like us.
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