The Slippery Slope of Cultural Decline

The Slippery Slope of Cultural Decline

Nobody wants to own up to it, much less discuss it. Yet, it seems so tangible that we can almost smell it in the air, taste it in our mouths, and feel it in our bones. It is the slippery slope of cultural decline that is painfully obvious- painful to the point of denial, and obvious to the point of certainty.

Think about it.

Our culture- collectively speaking, that is- has gradually, yet undeniably, been in decline for the last century, to the extent one could almost plot it on a graph. As time has passed, the culture in which we live has regressed to the point where we are close, very close, to hitting the skids.

Case in point- Times Square…

In 1900, a woman exposing her stockinged ankle- her ANKLE, mind you- could be arrested, as many were, for indecent exposure. Today, while we shake our heads at such draconian, such Victorian, attitudes and standards of decency, in 2015 women are parading around the same Times Square baring their painted breasts, and charging money for posed pictures- albeit without any censure or citation. In fact, Sunday, August 23rd was declared “National Go Topless Day” encouraging women all over the country to bare their breasts, under the rationalization and contrived aegis of “equality”. For those of us that came of age in the 1970s, such an initiative would not have been possible in our wildest and weirdest fantasies, and for our parents who disdained women trotting about in public, sans brassiere, not even considered within the remotest realm of possibility.

Case in Point- Popular Music and Dancing-

With the arrival of the “Jazz Age” in the 1920s, replete with flappers donning hemlines above the knees for the first time, much was made at the time about the perceived indecency of the music and new dances, such as “the Charleston”. In the 1940’s, men wearing oversized “zoot suits”, jitterbugging to the tunes of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, caused an actual and deadly riot in Los Angeles. In the 1950s, television cameras would not show images of Elvis Presley’s hips due to the suggestive nature of his gyrations. In the 1960’s, parents of baby boomers bemoaned the mop-tops of the Beatles when they appeared on “the Ed Sullivan Show” and this quartet was wearing dress suits! Go to a dance club today, and one can easily find young people “grinding” one another in a way their parents would describe “dry humping” in the back seat of an automobile, a generation before. One only needs to compare the lyrics of Cole Porter to the lyrics often found in rap music to see a vast difference in what is seen as appropriate for public consumption.

These are but two examples of cultural decline. There are many more examples, enough to fill a book, but the point is sufficiently made, nevertheless.

It is indeed a vast dichotomy to consider that, given all of the technical, scientific, medical and informational advances made since the turn of the century, our culture has taken an absolute nose dive into the abyss of acceptable behavior- and this dive doesn’t seem to be abating anytime soon. Just as the arrival of the internet promised to bring all of us closer together, it did the polar opposite as people today seem to be more isolated from one another than ever before. There are even cases of young people having “texting dates’” where they sit across from one another, texting back and forth, without a spoken word. Call us crazy but if that had been the norm when we were dating back in the 1970’s, there would have been no romantic progression past the first date- not to this writer, in any event.

History tells us that, time and time again, societies which have experienced extended periods of cultural decline have presaged their own eventual self-destruction, and anyone who believes that contemporary cultural decline will not repeat this eventuality, knows neither their history nor their destiny. As William Shakespeare once wrote in act II, scene I of “the Tempest”, “what’s past is prologue”, and we are speedily sliding down the slippery slope of our own demise.

-Drew Nickell, 28 August 2015

©2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

2 thoughts on “The Slippery Slope of Cultural Decline”

  1. I am absolutely speechless at how on the money you really are! Everything you’ve said has been exactly how I have felt for a while… Very well done!

    1. Well, all I can say is thank you very much for saying so, Marianne, and thanks ever more so for registering yourself on this site, which I appreciate more than you might otherwise imagine. 🙂

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