To be honest, bullying has not really changed that much.Mediums have changed such as facebook introduction, but relatively, bullying is the same. Decline in education? The word is lazy, not mentally screwed up. Employment oppurtunities? I will give a nod here that it is tougher for the younger generation to need to deal with trying to use college student loans to eat and try and make a life for themselves only to come out 80k+ in debt and no job. Of course many 17 year olds are getting charges as an adult these days, and those felonies are not dropping off which kind of makes it hard for them to find work as well.

As per more mentally screwed up, oh please. We need to mainstream develope ways to recycle human tears into drinking water because there is just so much of it flowing free in the horribly mistreated youth. I think you can see where my mentality on these excuses are. I also think you are pushing this into another thread subject, which if you wish to make it, go for it. To that end, I have not nor will I change my stance.Trying to get me to give a appreciative nod of support to this dude's cause, message, actions, or ultimate failures is like getting blood from a turnip.

CreasianDevaili

At the Red: Schools are a LOT less scrict over bullying than they were in the past, partially because of schools being held at fault by the state/federal governments for instances of bullying simply existing in their walls, removing all culpability in this regard from the bullies and partially because schools are limited in the discipline they can enforce on the students without being in legal trouble. Bullying is more of a problem because schools don't clamp down on it, even if it isn't more widely occuring.

At the Blue: It doesn't actually matter either way, if its a problem affecting the youth as a whole, it is in part a faliure of general society (either through the increased number of irresponsible single mothers or because young people are cynical jerks in part due to the communities (and their schools) that they live in most likely).

At the Green: Not necessarily appreciation or sympathy, but a pragmatic concern to stem unsightly change if for nothing else than to prevent them from compounding into a bigger issue as time marches on. My opinion on this incideint is that it is an unfortuante side effect of a larger overall problem with the youth rather than an isolated incident of a psychotic boy. Society doesn't have to care, but only if they feel if they can function perfectly well with a bunch of apathetic/nihilistic young men around being non-productive.

At Yellow: Kind of, but only because the sight of plenty of posters marginalizing the issue as an isolated incident while I beleive he (and the people he killed himself in front of) are just another case of victims of the increasing apathy we have for each other.

[QUOTE="Nibroc420"]

@CreasianDevaili, Just because you may think you've gone through the same things, doesn't mean you have. You're making assumptions about what caused this man to decide to kill himself. You do not know him. I don't know him. Chances are no-one on this board knew him. However rather than everyone going "what a retard he should've done X,Y, or Z." How about we look at the positives, and the message that might reach the people in the crowd. There's no reason insulting a dead man, and there's no sense in stating what he "should have" done. People should have listened to him, they didn't, he's dead. Try to take something good out of this, rather than senselessly insulting the dead.

CreasianDevaili

That argument cuts both ways. If hardships aren't unique (or even minute in the grand scheme of things) and yet kids aren't able to manage them and decide to kill themselves, than either hardships are flat out tougher than in earlier times (more bullying, decline in education, and decline in employment opprotunities for a few things) for our kids or kids are more mentally screwed up than earlier generations. Either way, it will result ina decline in the quality of our young people as they take up the mantle of being responsible for the welfare of the country. But you're right, we shouldn't worry about rising levels of disfunctional and/or nilistic youth, they'll just disappear into an ether and nothave an effect onour communities; that apathy worked so well for the ghettos afterall.

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"][QUOTE="Wasdie"]

So let's tax them more and make them cut jobs? I don't get this logic.

The last time we increased taxes on businesses was during a major economic boom in the 90s. The reason why we had the economic boom was the rise of websites. We don't have a booming industry in the US right now. We can't just start taxing everything and our problems will be solved.

The best thing we can do right now is keep taxes low and cut spending where we dont need it and hope some sort of new industry picks up in the US.

Wasdie

We need to do that too. It's BS that a few bigs corps don't pay crap for taxes, but most do pay their taxes. We also need to not be bailing out every businesses that wants it. Those bailouts ended up in the pockets of CEOs NOT where they should have been.

I support corporations as a whole for providing jobs, but I think that the ones who abuse the system should be greatly punished. It's not fair competition.

Okay this is a lie.Businesses don't provide jobs, the demand from consumers is what ultimately jump starts an economy. Consumers demand an affordable product, companies employ people to produce the necessary supply. The economy can't exist in the first placeif everyone except the rich are dirt poor.

Three simple points as to why I think this:

1.Crippling mismanagement. The military is undermined constantly by politicians in Washington. Its either with using the military to establish puppet Governments overseas instead of winning wars efficiently or its undermining the efficiency of the military itself; let's be real here, injecting gender eglatarianism in a organization designed for killing armed combatants and subjugating foreign nations is utterly brain dead thinking and not even something that gains you much public support (or wouldn't if Americans in general had a better concept of war aside from a guy holding a gun that magically doesn't recoil shooting armed combatants).

2. How many notable wars have we actually won since WWII (the Pacific theatre anyway)that weren't bittersweet victories even with all of our technological advantages? The only one I can think of was the second Gulf War and frankly,I personally feel that the majority of Sadaam's army deserting him and that Sadaam himself was essentially a more incompetent and ineffectual version of Hitler from a strategical standpoint helped minimize American losses.

3. Any military kind of requires that there are men willing to answer the call of duty instead of, you know, dodge the draft in mass (or at least widespread enough to the point that it was actually noticable to the broader public) like what happened during the Vietnam draft. Mind you, this was during 1960 and I don't beleive for a second that the welfare of American young men have improved from that time (societal ridicule, a lesser sense of purpose, being overshadowed by female peers in employment and college enrollment, and rampant increases of single parenthood from the time vs the risevideogames and porn). At some point, hiring mercanaries has to become more cost effective than instituting a draft withlow rates of return.

Technological, industiral, and natural resource edges aside, these three factors I outlined really lead me to beleive that our military is vastly overated in terms of general performance (though I beleive that we're still one of the best relative to other countries, mind you).

As far as Americais concerned, its simple math really. Most straight men hate huge deviations from standard cultural manhood (which isn't exclusively regarding gays, as straight males are victimized by other straight guys, but homosexuality seems to be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of deviation from normal masculinity) and let it be voiced loudly. Straight women by contrast really just find lesbians annoying or creepy but not outright hateable (unless a lesbian pisses them off personally). Straight women if anything target their hatred and contempt to the bottom 60% of straight men before anything else.

As far as most ofthe rest of the world is concerned, it is consider a duty for men to marry a woman and to provide for her and a family rather than something that men and women naturally do out of love. Gay men of course subvert this.

Question for the original poster. Of course it's a free country and all, but if I may ask, do you have ANY hobbies or interests OTHER than your sexuality? Sex is a part of life, a big part in many respects. But you kinda/sorta seem to be OBSESSED with your sexuality. I understand the whole "homosexuals are tormented in today's society" and all. I can sympathize with you to a point, but if I can be so bold as to give some unsolicited advise....... Relax a little bit. Take a breath. Even with different struggles in life, there is still a lot of good out there. Enjoy it a little, would ya? DISCLAIMER: Of course I don't know you and I might be WAY off base, as this is just an observation/opinion.YellowOneKinobi

Dude, I don't know if you have noticed, but straight guys obsess over sexuality a lot more than the majority of other gays and are only slightly less awful than the flaming minority of effeminate gays. Young straight men obsess over getting laid a LOT and older straight men (the married and religious ones anyway) obsess over controling how younger men act, esecially from a sexual standpoint.

Simply put, the increase in suicide and the general increase of depression, angst, and narcassism among young people is in part due to rampant individualism and a culture of zero-sum, collective **** you attitude. A premiere sign of a narcassistic culture in being unable to see life through the lens of the distraught and assuming your life experiences and your beleif system applies to everyone.

The main problem with criticising angst is that though it is by its nature a self-centered way of thinking, its not like much of the rest of American society is even marginally alturistic or tolerant. The world is a dog-eat-dog world full of people with no regard to your quality of life living in your own neighbourhood and many young people tend to adopt such behavior of the broader culture. Broader society of course shames young people for adopting such cultural narcassism (which is logical in all fairness), but is too caught up in its own solipsism to clean its own house and expects young peopleto be self sacrificing and yet doesn't itself adopt any sense of even marginal alturism and responsiblity towards the impovrished (when it doesn't concern the plight of women anyway).

We're a culture of "Stop whining and pull yourself up by the bootstraps" except that:

• American men as a group seem programed to automatically take care of every little nuisance in front of women if they whine enough...
• Leave these SAME arrogant women who have had been cuddled all their lives to be the ones primarily responsible to raise the next generation of kids to be productive....
• And finally not seem to come to a conclusion that, recoginizing the dependency or cynicism of succeding generations, something is SERIOUSLY wrong in how we raise kids and the need to reform the system.

We realize that we can't tolerant narcassism and blind amorality in our kids (when their male), but we can't seem to ask ourselves HOW a huge chunk of our kids have gotten to that point.

We do need control of global population growth, but as far as finite resources and our current world populaion go, the only two resourceswe REALLY need to pay attention to are food and energy; none of the others are that cripling to our standard of life.

The issue with energy depend heavily on how quickly our Governments get the Big Oil corporate lobbyists our of Washington and for our institutions to be fully willing to embrace new energy technologies invented by small businesses (not counting BS solutions like corn fuel). We really won't be able to ever get off of oil until oil becomes TOO expensive for the current status quo in Washington to hold.

As far as food is concerned, the most important thing is for the governments of the world need to get control of the world's food supply out of the hands of the autonomous corporations and for each nation to have ultimately responsiblity and control over producing enough food for its people (this is one little area that I honestly trust the Government, as inept as they are, over giant corporations who can cross borders). At least governments who starve their people would collapse in on themselves or be overthrown provided we don't suddenly get all sentimental and give such corrupt regimes aid "for the interest of the children". The corporations are completely invincible unless the political elite destroy them personally.

Number one is FAR better for society at large. Intellectualism lead to the stagnation of Ancient Greece and is in part responsible towards the decline in American progress when we're more concerned with debating on how the world SHOULD be rather than working to maximize cultural and economic improvement and being realistic of our limits to influence outside events and forces.

Number 2 is MUCH better for an individual in allowing him to avoid the social pitfalls befallen on others. Being hard working and partially killing yourself has NO benefit (beyond the minimum necessary to sustain his own existance) to an individual when undertaking otherwise socially constructive endeavors like college, marriage, having kids, running on the corporate treadmill, and serving in the military has a big chance of biting you in the ass and leaving you with a worse quality of life thanks to a combination of the abusive sociopaths running these institutions and the partial apathy of your fellow countrymen towards your hardship.

[QUOTE="sSubZerOo"][QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]Some cuts do need to be made.....making it conducive to have jobs in the US and then moving people from social programs to a working tax base would be best...LJS9502_basic

Let's be real here, there is very little room for people to be trulyindependent anymore, especially from the system. We all live in an interdependent system where our actions or inactions can indirectly affect a lot of other people (the housing bubble and general housing economy being a BIG one). We live in a world where the actions of a small group of 19 men defined the decade with their assault of the World Trade towers, a world where school shootings are a conceivable possibility, and a world where women face the possibility of being at the complete mercy of a violent man without the expectation of average bystanders helping her (Virginia Tech and the Polytechnic Institute shootings for big ones). Conservatives simply don't realize the world has changed far too much for the old methods to be applicable to modern life (leftists being the de facto women's party aren't quite as huberistic).

Now granted, most people need to be capable of being self-sufficient, but that isn't the same as being on your own with no real recourse for aid. We simply don't know which guywe step over is going to go off the deep end and cause tragedy.

The problems with our current institutions is mainly overburdening and simultaneously marginalizing productive younger men, the unwillingness to hold the priveledged minority demographics (particularly women) accountable for their actions the way we would an average white men, and the zero-sum, Social Darwinistic beleif system of the older upper-middle class and the rich combined with their horrible management of the system.