hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.
War on "me" generation
JOHN Brumby has declared war on the "me" generation of out-of-control young Victorians who lack respect and fuel crime.
Mr Brumby's strategy will dominate the Government's social agenda next year.
A round table of experts and parents will meet to carve out a way to teach the young right from wrong.
Education ministers today are expected to declare a shared goal in Australia of better values among the young.
::View Article::
This will be interesting.
Communities, or a group of people bound by some sort of consensus, definitely need to address the content of their values. Values are those intangible, though important, things which link a community together to varying degrees in that people share some goal(s). The individual, the collective, material wealth, some religion or another, sport, pleasure, work etc can all become things that are valued by a society/community. The individual can benefit from valuing the collective and the collective can benefit from value being placed on the individual - so it’s very dynamic and not so clear cut.
It will be interesting to see whether Victorians and then Australians are able to reach a consensus on what values should be promoted to our youth. We live in a liberal, multicultural society: two social ideas which are not exactly allies to notions like 'shared goals' and 'common good' - unless what is shared and held in common is the promotion of different views on what is important in life and for society. Quite a confusing situation.
Cases like this, i.e. youth violence/superfluous individualism, only begin to highlight the importance of consensus in a community. War torn regions like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo drive the point home.
It's interesting to witness the paradoxes developing in large modern nations: how to maintain some low level consensus (order) in the face of ideologies like liberalism and multiculturalism which promote division.
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