Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a four-term U.S. Senator, had some very provocative thoughts when it came to fatherhood: "From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families ... never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future – that community asks for and gets chaos." [my emphasis added]
Thinking about the asynchronous, anywhere anytime mobile lifestyle of our Internet times, the old boundaries about who to communicate with, where, when and how are dissolving. What then remains firmly fixed? If family definition is fluid and social obligations and supports likewise are fluid and flexible, then does the observation above merely compound and magnify the effects? Is the age of "easy come, easy go" and "whatever" drowning our dignity and humanity, substituting new rudeness for old humility, and swapping new shockvalue for old humor?
Thinking about the asynchronous, anywhere anytime mobile lifestyle of our Internet times, the old boundaries about who to communicate with, where, when and how are dissolving. What then remains firmly fixed? If family definition is fluid and social obligations and supports likewise are fluid and flexible, then does the observation above merely compound and magnify the effects? Is the age of "easy come, easy go" and "whatever" drowning our dignity and humanity, substituting new rudeness for old humility, and swapping new shockvalue for old humor?
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