Are We Losing Our Emotions

He is a young Millennial adult so hasn't familiarity with earlier cultural eras. His wondering question "Are we losing our emotions?" is however misplaced. He may have instead asked, "Has American culture with individual happiness changed for the worse?" And of course, many of we seniors in the USA would say yes greatly.
 

David777 said:
He is a young Millennial adult so hasn't familiarity with earlier cultural eras. His wondering question "Are we losing our emotions?" is however misplaced. He may have instead asked, "Has American culture with individual happiness changed for the worse?" And of course, many of we seniors in the USA would say yes greatly.
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And I'd be interested in knowing where young adults think this new culture will take us, as a society. Their answers would be more in line with where they hope it'll take us, or they might be hopeless and their projections would be apocalyptic, but I'm still interested.
 
I think we are becoming inured to all the generational changes assaulting us on such a regular basis. So much tragedy due to extraneous occurrences such as war and travel into areas that are really not within our cultural grasp. When all these alien forays undertaken by those who have little or no understanding of what is what, pulls us into a negative zone and simply wears us out.

We are left with little energy for reacting with honest emotions, if any.
 
I think I mentioned in some other thread that one woman told me they hadn't seen their (adult) kids in 3 years because it's easier to text. People have more phones than ever - many married couples still have a landline and each a cell phone of their own - yet I never reach them by phone. I get forwarded to unattended voice mailboxes that are full. No one writes letters and few send greeting cards - they just copy and paste a cheery little greeting into an email, if even that. It's much the same with Christmas cards.

To avoid arguments, I steer clear of most meaningful conversations of substance with my relatives, since those can develop into debates due to division in our country. We visit on occasion, at least once a year, so we can exchange pleasantries, tell jokes, and talk about the high price of eggs or toilet paper, or see the latest photo of the new grandbaby. And we can be polite at Thanksgiving and ask Karen to give us the recipe for her wonderful new scrumptuous caramel scrunch cake she brought.

Then we all go home and text now and then.
 
When I was 18 in 1965 the future looked bright. Now at 78 in 2025 it looks bleak. Maybe it's because when I was 18 I had a future to look forward to, while now at 78, let's face it, I don't have much of one ahead of me.

But I remember in my first semester of junior college (fall of 1965) one of my professors was talking about how the typical work week had been 6 12 hour days back at the turn of the century and now we had the 40 hour week. And he said that by the time we were his age we would probably only be working 20 hour weeks.

I can't remember the name of the course or the professor, but being a fundamentally lazy person I sure remember that idea of a 20 hour week. That sounded great to me. But as we all know, that never happened. What happened instead is that standard of one person working outside of the home for 40 hours a week to make ends meet, the standard is now 2 persons working 40 hours a week. So what the Hell happened?
 
A lot depends on where and how you live.
I can't deny that many people seem out of touch with most emotions, save anger. But a lot of that is perception. Stories of violence and rage get more news coverage and seem to go viral more than one's about neighborliness, kindness, compassion.

Where i live people, even young ones, aren't always glued to their phones. We hold doors, exchange pleasantries, help with heavy packages at Post Office, pick dropped things up and hand them to the dropper. Tall strangers volunteer to help short old ladies like me when they see us looking at the top shelf. If someone seems in distress people will check on them.
 
"Rabble-rousing is the act of agitating or stirring up a crowd with emotionally charged language, often for political purposes, aiming to incite anger, hatred, or even violent action. A rabble-rouser, or demagogue, uses inflammatory rhetoric to exploit people's emotions and prejudices, rather than appealing to reason, to manipulate public sentiment. "..... AI

It doesn't have anything to do with phones. We are being turned against each other. What you look at on your phone determines your mindset, but it is not the fault of the phone.
 
Feywon, I agree - perhaps it is where we live - but I think it is more likely our perception.

I dont find most people glued to their phones or behaving negatively where I live either - that may be because it is different where I live but I don't think so.
 
No one is in charge. It would be nice if some benevolent person could say everything is going to be okay. Instead we have negative spokespeople making the division worse.
 

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