One can see this trend starting at primary school where everyone in class knows everyone else because everyone's equal. This situation largely remains until people leave high school and join the big wide world of university or work.

It's at about this time that people discover what they have to do that's in their best interest career-wise. They also learn that not everthing is for them and that too many people doing the same thing doesn't differentiate themselves sufficiently to warrant a better salary (or to forge their own identity). On top of that, people discover they are really quite different from the people they went to school with. They then start pairing up with people that are more like them.

Providing there is the opportunity to expand (which Western scociety provides in abundance), people fill the possible universe of activities. As I see it, all the above factors lead toward atomisation.

However, too much of anything is bad, ranging from excessive atomisation to a paucity of opportunity.

Solution to the modern world's problems: The West donates some of its excess opportunity to the developing world and, in the process, redresses some of the big imbalances that make the world operate dysfunctionally and/or asymmetrically. At least that's the ideal.

I am not as well versed as others on this forum but it would seem to me that we have lost the plot. I lead what I would describe as a fairly minimalistic lifestyle in as much as I have what I need.
The economic structures we have built up around ourselves coupled with clever and subliminal advertising forces many to become materialistic and rampant consumers.
We and our children are told that we must have the latest car, ipod,plasma screen,lounge suite,computer,etc,etc!!and if we dont have them we are not living in the real world!!
What is wrong with a $300 second hand lounge suite as opposed to a $3000 dollar one brought on a credit card,you are only meant to sit on it not live in it!

BOAZ_David posted:

“-pornograpy and lust [substituted] for love and compassion..”

Song for a Pornograph Record

The red rose breathes of passion
And the white rose breathes of love
For the red rose is a falcon
And the white rose is a dove.
So let me send you a cream white rose
With a flush at its petaled tips.
Even the purest and sweetest of loves
Bears the blush of desire on its lips.

Love and lust are intertwined. I have greatly appreciated women who have returned my lust even though it may have been compassion rather than love on their part. Come to think of it they might have lusted also. The above poem sometimes helped set the mood.

He also posted:

“-When men and women exchange natural relations for un-natural...”

If you can do it it’s not unnatural. As long as the acts are between consenting adults and nobody suffers physical injury it’s nobody else’s business what people do with each other during orifice hours. What business is it of yours?

BOAZ_David, you weren’t always an old fogy. I believe that at some earlier date you must have been a young fogy.

Dear david f,

The poem works for me...
Tenderness is the rarest of qualities in a man.

Speaking as a female, I can almost guarantee
that all of your lady 'loves' felt much more
than compassion towards you.

I suppost plot means, goal, direction, a plan to reach the goal.(my dictionary does not help me)
Which plan, which goal, which direction, every person, every man, every woman. every young, every old person has diferent plan, different goals, different directions.
The governments, the leaders do not promote, realise equaly the plot from each individual BUT ONLY THE PLOT FROM THE VERY STRONG PERSONS OF THE SOCIETY, THE SO CALLED ELITE OF A SOCIETY.
For the mass majorioty of individuals, their plot have ignored from the society, and it exists only as a dream, only as a hope, only as a sweet pain and nothing else.
If the role for a worker, for a migrant for a woman, for a muslim, for a child or for a retired person in their society is under the zero then under the zero is the plot of these groups in their society. If a huge part of our society have ignored from the governmend and the elite of a society and if the public opinion have created from the persons who control the mass media, then even on the election day we vote what they say us to vote, and ALWAYS THEY SAY US THAT THEIR BENEFITS ARE BENEFITS FOR THE WHOLE SOCIETY AND FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL SEPARATE'
OUR DEMOCRACY IS VERY WEAK, OUR ROLE IN OUR SOCIETY IS EXTREMELY WEAK. THERE IS NOT PLOT FOR THE MOST PEOPLE, WE ARE BLIND FOLLOWERS!!
It is an other story if we want to change it and how to change it.

Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Dear Antonios Symeonakis,

You have a compassionate attitude. Dostoyevskii judged a society by the way they treat people at the bottom. So do you.

Many ignore the people on the bottom. If they don't ignore them they find reasons to justify them being there. The 2,000,000 population of US prisons are at the bottom. The US has a much higher ratio of its people in prison than any other developed country. Somehow I can’t believe that the US has a more depraved population than other countries. Hopefully, that is one of the problems that Obama will tackle.

Plato postulated governments into aristocracy (rule by the best), timarchy (rule by honour), oligarchy (rule by the few), democracy (rule by the people) and tyranny . The children of the aristocracy would control by force and have a sense of honour. Then a few would gather the wealth and power to form an oligarchy. People would feel oppressed by the oligarchy and would revolt to form a democracy. Inevitably a demagogue would appear and become a tyrant. That has happened in the past.

My belief is that in the current world there is really nothing but oligarchy. Political structures are too big and complex for one person to control so even if there is a dictator he must rely on a party and its bureaucracy. In the democracies we have the class of professional politicians. In theocracies we have the ecclesiastical hierarchies. In military dictatorships we have the high commands etc. The difference between the oligarchies consists of the methods of selecting its members. The most stable oligarchies are those that manage to convince the public that they really are democracies.

They could consider those at the bottom but rarely do.