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Originally Posted by HarryT
My parents were of the generation who were children during WWII, and they grew up with rationing, etc (there was rationing of most things in the UK until the mid 1950s). Consequently, people of my generation (ie born in the late 50s/early 60s) most definitely did NOT have the "you can have everything that you want NOW" attitude that I get the impression is commonplace today - we were taught to wait until we could afford to buy it.
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How is that even remotely an answer? So it wasn't when your generation was "the young ones" but it started the generation after?
What do you think happens when people grow up in a time when access to goods is relatively hard to obtain, and then start working (and become fairly affluent fairly quickly compared to their parents)? Don't you think that they will (just like Mr. Dickens whom you told an anecdote about a while back) disproportionately care about having lots of stuff? And don't you think that they will say to themselves something like: "I will never put my children through what we had to go through because of the war," and give them lots of shiny things to play with? And that, that way, whole slews of people will either care too much about good appropriation or just "grow up with the thought that they can have anything they want"?
This used to be what the "old rich" had against the "nouveau riche", specifically because the latter "lacked refinement", but to a lesser degree this also applies to most of western society today. While individuals might not care about acquiring 'more', most do, which is then also implicitly shown through making tv shows about "middle class" people, and so on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I don't know whose "fault" it is that the "I can have anything I want now" attitude came to exist, but the fact that is DOES exist is undeniable, and personally I think it's a very bad attitude to have - it leads people into debt.
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Sure, but the way to change that is not by decrying "the corruption of the youth;" instead, try writing a book about someone who is happy with, say, owning only PD works, and PD music (although that will be hard to find, as pretty much everything recorded after 1950 is still in copyright). Write it so that every Dan Brown reader will lap it up, and you will have found a way to influence the thinking of the "majority", which I'm sure will effect changes throughout society. (and I'm only being partially cheeky here)
PS. a book that deals with this (although it wasn't his book that convinced me of the point he was trying to make) is Anthony Cunningham's "The Heart of what Matters".