Why is life suddenly so cheap?

So many years on from starting this thread, it is so unfortunate to realise that things have actually got worse
 
Life seems to have become so cheap in this new millenium, Sucide bombing have suddenly become part of our daily lives, it is now part of our daily lives to read about missing ppl esp girls being found dead , people getting killed by muggers and wierdos and even as a result of road rage. Reading that soldiers are killed in various wars around the world is now not as shocking as it would have been in the past.............i can go on and on with various examples but what has really changed in our society to make life so CHEAP!!!.

Why are we so naive that we think that life is cheaper now that it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago. On the contrary. What you now have is a world of 6 Billion to sample from and a media capable of bringing you whatever will sell the most newspaper, tv adverts etc. Death and Destruction, Sex and Sexual killing, all sell.

Why do more people die in disasters this decade than back in the 70s? Because twice as many people live in those locations - because modern science reduced the death rate.

If you'd been alive to experience the hun or the spanish inquisition or been a jew in a concentration camp --- you'd be surprised by how soft and warm it all is now (as long as you didn't watch the "news").

IMHO
 
life is cheap
but to live it is expensive ,
we spend our lives running around trying to make enought money to pay the bills and to live
every thing keeps going and up and we are all running faster to make the money to pay the bills
 
I do think that life is getting cheaper in the Western cultures. I don't think that it used to be so bad as it is today. I put the blame on the media, especially cinema and television. I can remember when ,in the sixties, the brutality and foul language was kept under more control. Now, foul language is not foul language any more (only on T2W).

I saw an oldish film this week about a love affair between two Scots. One a white music teacher and the other with a Pakistani background. "It Started with a Kiss", or something similar. This girl was very attractive, but her vocabulary would have put a trooper to shame, believe me! The same brutalising standards are being expressed all the time, these days, all in the name of realism.

I'm not getting into the argument of what is right or wrong. Just stating what is. It is a fact that we are, as ordinary people in the street, becoming more accustomed and exposed to violence.

Split
 
The fact that we have become so immune to news of despicable acts like kids killing each other, suicide bombings, mass genocide in some parts of the world is enough evidence, imho, of life becoming cheap. These types of stories used to be very shocking but they have become part of our daily lives.
 
It's not evidence of anything more than the ability of the human brain to discount that which it sees repeatedly. Well perhaps its also evidence of the ability of the news media to keep escalating as we become used to what was shocking last year (and, thus, no longer entertained by it).

Life isn't any cheaper; remote death and destruction are just displayed to us more frequently and thus discounted. When its close then the equation changes.

Look at how upset Americans became on 911. If a few thousand people had died in bombings in Poland or the Ukraine or better still, Chad, what do you think the reaction would have been. I'll give you a hint ... its a long way away from us ... poor people ... hmm, whats for dinner?


Remember that social mores move in cycles perhaps in part for the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph. We're probably at an extreme of this particular cycle. It'll be interesting to see how it all is in 2020 assuming the reason we're noticing this isn't that we're so old that we feel disconnected from current cultural norms and will be dead before the next swing.
 
Last edited:
Too many people, too little room for humans . Plus pace of life is crazy.... I opted out a long time ago and fortunately live at the pace I want, trading when I want.

I may not be rich but I'm not poor nor am I stressed.
 
It's not evidence of anything more than the ability of the human brain to discount that which it sees repeatedly. Well perhaps its also evidence of the ability of the news media to keep escalating as we become used to what was shocking last year (and, thus, no longer entertained by it).

Life isn't any cheaper; remote death and destruction are just displayed to us more frequently and thus discounted. When its close then the equation changes.

Look at how upset Americans became on 911. If a few thousand people had died in bombings in Poland or the Ukraine or better still, Chad, what do you think the reaction would have been. I'll give you a hint ... its a long way away from us ... poor people ... hmm, whats for dinner?


Remember that social mores move in cycles perhaps in part for the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph. We're probably at an extreme of this particular cycle. It'll be interesting to see how it all is in 2020 assuming the reason we're noticing this isn't that we're so old that we feel disconnected from current cultural norms and will be dead before the next swing.

Do you think that the cycles follow an improving tendency or a declining one? I was born in the thirties. In those days, I do not remember anyone getting into trouble with the police. One or two got caned at school. Some teachers had a knucklerapping pastime but most kept their hands to themselves. The fear that some teachers had of getting thumped by their pupils certainly never arose as it does, in some inner cities, today.

The cycles, of which you speak, change because of public outrage for a while, but they never go back to where they were. There is too much money involved. We, simply, cannot afford the money to improve the police, education, health, pension and other services. Acute shortages of water, etc will not bring out the best in people who have been brought up to grab what they can. There will be wars over what is left of the world's resources and they will happen in the most unexpected manner. Countries that we never dreamed of instigating a war will become involved in quarrels over water supplies. Under these circumstances, human life is going to get cheaper because of the human instinct for trying to stay on top of the heap and this will spread from national interests to more and more street crime.

This paints a very gloomy picture of the future but, let's face it, in a world of shortages there are not going to be any improvements in man's inhumanity to man.
 
Too many people, too little room for humans . Plus pace of life is crazy.... I opted out a long time ago and fortunately live at the pace I want, trading when I want.

I may not be rich but I'm not poor nor am I stressed.

But we do live in the West and have a good quality of life, still.

We are, though, living beyond our means. UK credit card debt is 33% of the whole of Europe.

I admit that I am being a misery today but, as I see it, foreign immigration into Europe,
as a whole, is going to be the great equaliser.
 
Good question split.

Ultimately the "cycles" are not concerned with good or bad. And maybe cycle implies to much of a circle where something goes back to something else. Perhaps wavelike buildups followed, like the markets, by an overshoot. And overlapping different waves at the same time.

Our memories lie to us to some extent too. In England pre 1930s (don't recall the date) girls could be married off at 13; my grandmother went into service because her mother felt that she shouldn't take the scholarship she won because it would put her "beyond her station." So there were different forms of injustice (including the build up to and the slaughter of jews) and people got into wars back then about things less important than water supplies --- or maybe equally important.

I suspect that with each generation and as each wave builds, ebbs, falls, gets swamped by a new and different one then different things look good and bad. There is greater understanding of man now than 100 years ago but I wouldn't forecast the future - because if you study past forecasts you find that people were rarely correct about what would be the crux points of the next 10 years let alone the next 50.

Personally, I try to be a little kinder to the planet but am keenly aware that the science is very fuzzy about some of these areas and we may have to back peddle very fast (look how agri-fuels were going to be the solution and have now become the problem) when we discover new things. Population pressure does seem likely to be a continuing problem and yet we have the ********s in the Australian Govt creating "Baby Bonus's" and encouraging people to have more babies -f'ing morons.

Life was only ever easy in the past for "brief" periods so I expect there will be some tough times in the future - a big recession is overdue and probably won't be pleasant.
 
I know the press sensationalise alot of the news but I still believe there is far less regard for the human life at this moment in history based on the way people of all ages are being killed for the most trivial of reasons
 
allow me, if you will, to put a Thai-Buddhist slant on this question/answer -


"who gives a ****, it's everyman for himself"
 
Life hasn't suddenly become cheap - it's always been that way for some people. Just look at history - from biblical times right up to today. At the last resort it comes down to survival instinct, tribal allegiance and plain old-fashioned evil. People will use or be susceptible to all sorts of political / economic / tyrannical justification: eg Nazis / African continent / Balkans / Cold War - list is almost endless.

We're going through a bad phase in Uk at present - so many factors contribute that it can't be attributed to just one cause. And if there was an easy solution, then even today's politicians would have fixed it. I was a baby-boomer - very little violence in the 50s compared with today: but then, the people had just undergone at first hand, enough violence and "cheap life" during WW2 to last them a lifetime. They were also shagged out from 6 years of fighting.

Technology progresses & human nature never changes. Understand these 2 facts and survive.
 
0007,

I also wonder if some of the "low violence" in the 50s was caused because quite a few who would have contributed were dead.

I say this seriously. Although the police in NY claim to have reduced crime their in the 2000s vs the early 1990s there is more evidence that it was reduced because a change in abortion laws back in the 1970s prevented the babies being born who would have fueled that US crimewave --- so maybe WWII had a similar effect on 50s violence?
 
0007,

I also wonder if some of the "low violence" in the 50s was caused because quite a few who would have contributed were dead.

I say this seriously. Although the police in NY claim to have reduced crime their in the 2000s vs the early 1990s there is more evidence that it was reduced because a change in abortion laws back in the 1970s prevented the babies being born who would have fueled that US crimewave --- so maybe WWII had a similar effect on 50s violence?

nine,
That's a very interesting point, which had not occurred to me. War always attracts the adventurous and violent - and many of them come to grief. Interesting idea well worthy of further thought and discussion ......................
 
Top