Formalities, what caused them to disappear.

When you look at formalities what are the first words that come to your mind? For me it's sir and ma'am.

Holding the door open for strangers, being polite, saying thank you, all of these things seem like a lost art.

Everywhere I go I continue to see rude, stuck up teenagers with no respect at all. I'm not saying all young people are bad because that would be bashing myself (I'm 20 for anyone wondering) but the majority are definitely a lot ruder then they should be.

What is to blame for this behaviour though? Has America just generally changed what they find acceptable and the youth changed with it?

I think one of the key problems in the world right now is that not enough people think about a very key saying anymore, "lead by example". So many people don't consider that kids watch them trying to learn from them and forget to be good role models.

I think another issue is that people are constantly being exposed to violent, immoral content. One of the cruellest things that has become true because of TV and the internet is the simple fact people are more exposed to the stupid crap that goes on around the world.

As a programmer it's really a conflict of interest for me to be bashing technology but in all honesty it's the truth. Whenever you talk to older people a lot of the times they will say something along the lines of "the world was a lot better back 50 years ago." But that's not really the truth.

The issue isn't that people weren't crazy 50 years ago, humans haven't really changed all that much, what we have has changed but we as creatures haven't really changed at all.

The reason people believe things were better back then is because even when crazy stuff happened they just never knew about it, they were ignorant to what was happening and sometimes ignorance is happiness.

Ways to transfer news was very limited back then and it was simply a matter of people not knowing what was going on. Today we get to hear it all, most of the time a LOT. News casters have a funny habit of talking about the most depressing stuff 6 times a week and then only slightly depressing stuff the rest of the time.

An example of this is the batman shooting, if you were on the east coast that would of never reached your ears, you would of gone your entire life not knowing about it.

Same with most of the things that happen in the middle east that don't directly affect America, while I know it sounds bad to say this, people are better off not knowing about stuff like that when they have absolutely zero power to change any of it.

I simply believe that a combination of the extreme exposure of the reality of this messed up world along with the poor role models in society have truly just made people forget how to treat each other.

What are your beliefs on the matter? Regardless if you agree with me or think I'm crazy I want to hear what you think about the subject so please leave a comment with your thoughts.