My own boy's high school in 1970 had a school armoury which sported 100 Lee Enfield rifles and four Bren light machine guns. This was because my school was part of the school cadet program in which most private and about a third of public schools participated.

Teenage boys in school or cadet uniforms were routinely seen boarding buses and trains with military rifles on their shoulders, and nobody batted an eye.

Not only was the legal age to purchase a firearm 16 years of age, firearm licences did not exist and guns could be bought from the local men's hairdresser. There were even "boy's rifles" like the popular "Steven's favourite" which sported shortened stocks and barrels.

But there were no schools shootings, no school stabbings, and 100 teachers were not being assaulted every week by pupils, like in NSW schools today.

The reason for this difference was that a strict censorship regime prevented the media from submitting the ideas to immature kids that Real Men were violent men who took bloody revenge for any imagined grievance or slight, or that violent criminals were heroes to be admired and emulated.

If we as a society can understand that "incidental" smoking scenes in movies by movie stars can influence thousands of gullible young people who are desperate to present themselves with a positive adult self image, to take up smoking a cancer causing addictive drug, how can we not make the same conclusion about movies glamorising violence, sadism, and criminality?

"Incoherent's" (singularly appropriate name) little rant in which claims that society is all to blame for being cruel to teenagers is laughable. Got news for you bub. There is no Great Depression going on, our nation is not fighting a desperate war of survival, and we have never had it so good. If teenagers today are getting "depressed" today, it is because of the ingestion of expensive ilegal drugs. This is also being promoted by movies and the pop music industry, along with Hermes handbags, Ipod's, and Glocks.

Well done, Redneck, I couldn't have made the point better myself. In the 'olden days', people could turn out either way, no matter what their upbringing or trauma experiences. Its too easy now to blame society and childhood wrongs for the psycho element amongst us.

mjbp, what has Martin Lucifer Koon got to do with it? This is not a race-related issue (anyone can go on a shooting spree), so bringing that covert communist's name up is puzzling. If you want to mention influential good people, there are many better examples. But that's not the subject of this thread so I'll leave it there.

Jack,

I have never heard of any association between Martin Luther King and communism. Indeed communist leaders typically hate Christians so I don't expect a Christian to be a communist. One example of this hatred was when 14.5 million Ukranian Orthodox Christians were slaughtered by communists in the Soviet Union. Martin Luther King was a reverend so you can see why the idea would never crossed my mind.

That said I cited his example as in a sea of bad influential people he appeared to be a good one. He was apparently highly effectual in catalysing some of the problems of racism in his part of the world.

There may be better examples if (surprisingly) he is communist but he was one that came to mind.

Redneck: it wasn’t my rant, it was quoted. But I’m pleased you like the name. This is my rant. The claim was not that society is being ‘cruel’ to teenagers. But it is horrifically dysfunctional & does produce fatalistic offspring.

Look at Auvinen’s ‘Manifesto’ - http://atlantis.dreamland.org/~mnc/temp/jokela/ (note English was not his first language). He was frustrated with the design of society.

This is not a question of drugs. Most of the intelligent youth I know get down because they’re inheriting a disaster, & it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to put it back on track & adapt to the already fixed consequences.

They live in a society obsessed with ‘growth’ and 'progression', with economics the indicator. But what if we judge our societies in terms of what they create, preserve, and how the populace feels? Does your suggestion that most kids today are depressed because of drugs not beg the question – why would most kids resort to drugs?

They notice the type of person our society tends to reward - concerned with little more than their own immediate distorted hedonism, whereby they gain what they are told is fulfilling and then, realising that it isn't, fill the void with large quantities of consumer goods, alcohol, work, 'new age spirituality', or holidays away from the society they hate.

They hear phrases like ‘live & let live’, but realise that the behaviour of each of us impact on the living of others. Some have to freedom, for instance, to mutilate the natural world provided they can play the bureaucratic game. Others have the freedom to leave it be. Everyone is exercising their freedom. See how the system is perfect? Live and let live!

With this attitude we get the obnoxious collage of mediocre creations that signify modern society: the onslaught of advertising in every sphere of life; the time and effort that goes into the manufacture of ridiculous products and the accompanying campaigns; the hideous, mammoth billboards that adorn public places; the turning of these spaces into ugly, cheap housing developments; books, covers loud and irrelevant, are lucky to last a week in tact; music - inferior, disposable. We have sacrificed quality because the profitable masses have few standards. They are told that stuff signifies status (liberal populations are conditioned to follow a particular model of the good life while being assured they have done so 'freely'), and so they just want stuff.

They see morons and fools free to exercise their purchasing power in whatever way they ‘choose’. And the freedom to vote, thereby determining what portions of the population are rewarded here and now, not the way in which the nation shall develop into a greater living entity. And what is democracy but a cathartic system for an inevitably divided society? Lacking a basis on which to gauge the value of ideas we find a government that can only profess the simplest ones, so as to not offend sections of its populace. As a secure democratic regime must be supported by a majority of its politically active citizens what is desired by most is proposed and followed, but this may bear no relation to what is in the interests of the country.

They see a mass of largely unintelligent, uneducated, irrational, and self-interested voters select which egotistical lawyer or economist advances their own political ‘career’. They see politicians jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon but utterly ignoring the greatest factors, such as population growth.

They see the quality of their fellow man plummeting, & realise that most people need to be told what to do & that popularity should never determine what is a good creation or a good idea. With some shiny things, television, and drugs to squander many are happy to 'kill time' until something kills them.

Individualism gets the government off the hook; the individual is now 'free', no longer constrained by community or cultural standards. If civilians do naughty things it is because they are selfish; if they do pointless things it is because they have found meaning in them; if they are unhappy it is because they are not utilising the plethora of cool opportunities and products that their society provides for them (or are druggies, apparently).

We have achieved in growing and in consuming more than ever. People are earning more money. People are spending more money. People are surrounded by more 'stuff'. Yet why do we want more of these things, if not for the good of the individual, the community or the environment? Have these things made happier citizens, or psychotically mediocre self-obsessed idiots and the odd genius suffering from adequate perception of their social surroundings? Have we produced functional, rewarding communities, or enforced fundamental division on a people, denied them the right to preserve a way of life away from fashions and social pretence and limited their perceptions of success to actions which contribute to brutal individualism? Have we preserved the environment that spawned us, sustains us and inspires us?

We have been screwed. Buildings reflect what trend prevailed the week they were planned. We are blasted with phenomenally crappy music while those who pretended to make it have 'succeeded'. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into our thoroughly overpopulated cities despite the obvious impact on sustainability & quality of life. We live in increasingly violent and senseless suburbs with little chance for community. The next generation appears not to give a damn about much at all. Is this surprising? They're living amongst the same utter shyt and waste of time that inspires an alcoholic culture amongst their elders. This is what happens when we allow people to pursue their own conception of 'the good' - they self-destruct, for we are social beings and surround one another with distasteful alternatives to our own model.