Society is going to shit man. We ain't what we used to be.
""Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero 40BCE
"And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have grey hair on the temples at their birth. The father will not agree with his children, nor the children with their father, nor guest with his host, nor comrade with comrade; nor will brother be dear to brother as aforetime. Men will dishonor their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them, chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the cost of their nurture, for might shall be their right: and one man will sack another's city. There will be no favor for the man who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather men will praise the evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength will be right, and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all."
~ Hesiod 700BCE
"Although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. This is the mistake of people who are attached to past generations. They have no understanding of this point."
~ 18th Century
""The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
~ Plato
"How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines."
~ Krisnamurti 1920's
"The signs of corruption.--Consider the following signs of those states of society which are necessary from time to time and which are designated with the word "corruption." As soon as corruption sets in anywhere superstition becomes rank. and the previous common faith of a people becomes pale and powerless against it. For superstition is second-order free spirit: those who surrender to it choose certain forms and formulas that they find congenial and permit themselves some freedom of choice. Whoever is superstitious is always, compared with the religious human being, much more of a person; and a superstitious society is one in which there are many individuals and much delight in individuality...
Second, a society in which corruptions spreads is accused of exhaustion... But what is generally overlooked is that the ancient national energy and national passion that became gloriously visible in war and warlike games have now been transmuted into countless private passions and have merely become less visible. Indeed, in times of "corruption" the power and force of the national energies that are expended are probably greater than ever and the individual squanders them as lavishly as he could not have formerly when he was simply not yet rich enough. Thus it is precisely in times of "exhaustion" that tragedy runs through houses and streets, that great love and great hatred are born, and that the flame of knowledge flares up into the sky.
Third, it is usually said... that such times of corruption are gentler and that cruelty declines drastically, compared with the old, stronger age which was more given to faith. All I concede is that cruelty now becomes more refined and that its older forms henceforth offend the new taste; but the art of wounding and torturing others with words and looks reaches its supreme development...The men of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know of types of murder that require neither daggers nor assault; they know that whatever is said well is believed.
Fourth, when "morals decay" those men emerge whom one calls tyrants: they are the precursors and as it were the precocious harbingers of individuals... In these ages bribery and treason reach their peak, for the love of the newly discovered ego is much more powerful now than the love of the old, used-up "fatherland"... Individuals--being truly in-and-for-themselves-- care, as is well known, more for the moment than do their opposites, the herd men... The times of corruption are those when the apples fall from the tree: I mean the individuals, for they carry the seeds of the future and are the authors of the spiritual colonization and origin of new states and communities. Corruption is merely a nasty word for the autumn of a people."
~ Nietzsche 1800's
) and they couldn't leave husbands they didn't love. Or perhaps the materialistic 1920s with alcohol prohibition and the rise of organized crime?
