Does society have an ethical responsibility to assist the next generation in succeeding?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Kittamaru, Jun 5, 2017.

  1. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    So, I posted this in the Business and Economics section:

    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in...-millenials-1970-vs-2017.159482/#post-3459884

    My question at this point is... should a society be responsible to provide at least a similar sort of "chance" to succeed as they were afforded in their formative times? Is it fair to expect a generation to overcome 500% or higher increases in costs with what effectively amounts to a slashing of their wages purchasing power?

    What kind of chances are our youth being given in this kind of situation? More importantly, perhaps; is it our problem, and if so, how do we fix it?
     
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  3. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    This is not a answer but a comment I heard a comedian make (sorry I forgot which one)

    Stuff the future generations

    What have they ever done for us?

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  5. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Hopefully, they will take care of us when we lack the strength or mental capacity to wipe our own ass in our Twilight years.
     
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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    True

    What I found during my last few years of nursing I was looking after people with what could be described as self inflicted injuries

    And they were younger than me

    The older than me did need some minimal help

    having their arse wiped was not one of them

    More it was to make them coffee for safety reasons

    Eliminate scalding accidents

    I'm not sure if Live long and prosper beats Live long and stay healthy

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  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    I agree that each generation should help the next do better than themselves. Unfortunately, there are too many people in power; government, seeking their own short term gain, at the expense of the future. The huge national deficit, accepted as normal, is a good example of mortgaging the future of the children, making it harder for next generation. The need for the deficit is due to incompetent short term thinking leadership, who induce short term thinking in their base.

    President Trump is trying to reverse the trend, by reducing the size of government and the deficit. This makes the incompetent uncomfortable, since they need this waste, to look competent and to pad their own short term gains. The more you grow the welfare state the less seed potato for the children of the future. A self sufficient population that is adding value and accumulating wealth makes it easier for the future. A dependent population that subtracts value from culture, makes it harder for the future.

    Tell me if this sounds familiar.

    Say we mortgage the future with short term eat the seed potato thinking; welfare state. We con the children to get huge college debt, so they can never get ahead. When the children decide there is no future, they start to live in the present and short term, with even less concern for their future of their children. Critical thinking skills diminish, since this is more needed for future thinkers. Short term thinkers become emotionally retarded, making it easier to control then with fear and desire.

    Those who do not wish to die, inside, but see no future, will start to rebel but without a future vision, they become anarchists; destroy in the now, but with no plan beyond that except a large welfare state for short term thinking. The swamp needs to be drained.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2017
  9. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    I would say this is pretty patently false - Trump is all about short term personal enrichment. Why else would he stiff so many contractors and builders out of millions, hire the cheapest off-shored labor possible (H1B visas), push to further reduce his tax burdens, employ every tax loophole, con so many out of their money (Trump U), spend millions of government funds at his own private resorts, and bankrupt multiple businesses for personal profit?
     
  10. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    It's such old school typical rhetoric to rail against a small portion of the populace as if they are the sole problem as well as those who are on the very bottom. it's shameful actually. Why do people like you, which are many, continue to pretend that the greed of capitalism does not have as many flaws as socialism or communism? and it's also rather inefficent by itself. if you want people to not be dependent, then provide good paying jobs, otherwise you have fantasy politics where some make it and some don't but with the pretense it works for everyone. when you have billionaires vs those who barely can scrape by, those on the bottom are going to need some type of assistance because they are not paid well enough.

    even in china with it's many newly built ghost cities, the average citizen can't afford these places. i saw a case where both the husband and wife and children were working in a nail salon and they had to share rent with other couples in a cramped duplex. it was because the newly built condos were starting off at 350k. they were eventually going to tear down their homes to build more but they can't afford to move into them, just as many who are struggling in a similar situation. even the guy who was working on these projects didn't agree with it and couldn't afford it himself. who are these for? just the elite? it's a classic travesty that those who are the real MEAT AND POTATOES of society that are responsible for the actual work for building and maintaining a society is not as privy to the fruits. it's actually insane and totally unethical but that's the way it's always been, right? so it's justifiable.

    it's amazing how stupid and ridiculously selfish those in power can be.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2017
    river likes this.
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Short answer: no. It's not an obligation, it's a judgment call.

    Some parents feel that the right thing to do for their children is to give them the boost up that they never had.

    Other parents feel that scraping and scratching to pay rent, and struggling to get a job is a critical rite of passage that, if subverted, can damage a fledgling's future success.

    Kinda saccarine, but the lesson of the butterfly applies.
     
  12. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, I don't mean so much in handing your children everything on a golden platter - I'm talking more about ensuring the opportunity to succeed is there - after all, we are looking at the current generation being the first in several generations to have a lower overall standard of living and level of opportunity than its predecessors - essentially, to analogize, the aging generation overhunted and generally consumed the "low hanging fruit" despite being able to reach the tops of the trees, so now the next generation of young giraffes are having issues just finding food... and now said older giraffes are going "meh, not my problem, I can still eat".
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    By any moral measure, yes. However, former times are not current times. Formerly, we enjoyed a one-time wealth of fossil fuels which are diminishing, and will eventually lead to economic collapse. So we also have to anticipate what wealth means when capital is permanently lost.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Click to tear until it sees the light of day.

    I would dispute insofar as I would argue the short answer is yes, derived from the observational reality of Darwinian preservation and promotion of species. Toward the problematic points you raise, I can still concur, as we can then challenge various propositions defining success. Human history is rife with erroneous models defining success; consider moralism—there was a great moment in history not too long ago when the Japanese, facing a collapsing birth rate, laid off the chastity trip long enough to plead with the young generation to start having sex and making babies, which consideration arose, as I recall, in a context related to the nation's economic recovery and prospectus.

    A weird detail I recall, I think from an eighties romantic comedy, was two New York mothers discussing the importance of finding the right preschool or else the child will never make it into Princeton, or whatever. For whatever reason, it stands out independent of its original context; it was a theme already apparent to me when I encountered the joke, and have witnessed in my own life over the years, and didn't we just have some passing fascination with "tiger" parenting, or some such?

    And, you know, I'm not saying we have a moral obligation to destroy our children in order to give them whatever advantages we wish to describe as advantageous, but just as a basic living function, what happens when natural selection results in a species that is capable of choosing to select out of order? That is to say, one of the interesting things about your answer is that yes, human beings can, indeed, opt out of a certain living impulse, explicitly choosing to deviate, and for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
     
  15. river

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    This OP and the responses to it makes helps me understand how we have derailed Humanities future survival .

    We seem to take Humanities survival for granted .
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    There is a good argument to be made that the Paris accords were never a real solution, just a way to feel better about fucking the Earth. Like people who manage industrial factories and drive a Prius.
     
  17. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Please, elaborate - I'm guessing you believe that the current generation is "entitled" to live as high on the hog as they wish, consuming as much irreplaceable resources and polluting as they Please with no regard for future generations?
     
  18. river

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    Hmm....never thought that my post#12 would be taken this way .

    What I mean't was that , for the most part is society, not society but capitalism, is destroying this planet for profit gain .

    Now I'm not against capitalism persay , but I am against its moral behaviour .

    Capitalism can be a good , it allows for the individual to guide their own destiny , to see through their own vision of themselves .

    But without Humanity foresight , the foresight of the consequences of their actions , then as I said , you derail your very Humanity .
     
  19. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    If that is your meaning, then I think you may have misunderstood my original post (or perhaps I wasn't clear? - Either way, let me try to explain). My point was very similar to what you just said - our super capitalistic society (late stage capitalism) is at the point where the "current generation" has, for several generations, enjoyed a period of excess and extreme growth, without thought of consequences or future need. I think that society has a moral obligation to make sure that they are not destroying the economic and environmental stability of said society so that there is something left for the next generation to pick up and proceed with.
     
  20. river

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    Agreed

    Its not society alone that has this obligation , but MORE importantly , the corporations must lead the way as well .
     
  21. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    If believing the claims of what the technology is doing to generation-Z or "i-Gen" in in terms of psychological and social damage, then perhaps more trouble looming than just deteriorating "success" in a financial context. But a wider panorama of issues just seems to hint all the more that the impairment of tomorrow's population is an already decided and fatalistic trajectory which discussion isn't going to avert or remedy. This inexorable momentum of high-tech progress and its maintenance of healthy economy / sales for the current moment is the passion, reasoning, convention, and god that society will continue genuflecting to. Damn any concerns brewing in an ethical side to futurology, full speed ahead to mental / physiological modification of the species and its eventual posthuman replacement!

    Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

    - - -
     
  22. superstring01 Moderator

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    Sure it does. That was the whole point about the Renaissance and the current revolution we're in the middle of: The Humanist Revolution.

    The problem is that people want easy answers to complex questions that will vary with every passing generation. That which was appropriate to the United States (or insert your nation-state here) back when we invented the standards (early 20th century) may not be relevant to the world we live in now. The nature of what we are and what we need to be successful in that world changes. 230 years ago, the US (and the several states) decided that the fundamental way we'd eliminate aristocracy and give everybody a chance to make something in the nation that we created was to grant fundamental rights and then provide a basic, government-funded education to all men until the 8th grade (it was mostly men). Over time, as the world we created became infinitely more complex, we increased the fundamental guarantees either through changes to the national charter or through providing certain infrastructure.

    The fundamental baseline of what it takes to give everybody a chance to succeed today is much, much higher than where it was 100 years ago. I'm not saying ALL conservatives do this, but conservatives tend to pule about "where does it end!?" and thereby inventing one permanent standard that magically works for every generation. Nothing is fixed. There are no single-standards that work great 200 years ago and 200 years from now. What a fundamental right meant back then will be utterly useless 100 years from now.

    Today, to have the very basic means of functioning in this world, one needs a significantly better education, food in their belly to take care of that education, clothing on their back, house over their head, and at the very least proper medical care. That wasn't the case 200 years ago because the world people lived in was different. In the US, one could wander west with a gun their family and cut down a bunch of trees and claim that land. You can't do that today. My grandfather built a multi-million dollar company with a high-school education and six years in the Marines. Today, that's nearly impossible (though, not 100% so, especially for extremely gifted people).

    The baseline for entry into the work force we have today is an associate's degree and even that is very low. I'm an IT and Engineering recruiter. I read employment reports and statistics for a living. I meet with companies and their hiring managers for a living. Yes, some really critical fields (like niche software development) are open to anybody with talent for a lot of companies (like Google), but the vast, vast majority of the jobs in existence today, require:
    • a four year degree (nursing, engineering, software, mathematics), or
    • an apprenticeship in a niche field (plumbing, carpentry).
    Without those, you're not getting into the work force. By pretending that all we owe someone is a basic 12 year elementary education is silly because the standards we've created in the world aren't where they were in 1912, when all states finally promised their citizens a full 12 years of education paid for by the state treasury (which is a joke considering that most states don't give their citizens a good education).
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The primary duty of species is its own perpetuation; therefore, yes, we have massive obligations to the function and wellbeing of subsequent generations.

    How that relates to, say, surviving in a modernish world, in which how many humans allegedly at the apex of civilized society and therefore the species are unable to function if the power goes out, in terms of participating in organized society and receiving and utilizing its benefits, is perhaps a bit more complicated.
     

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