Monday, Jul 06, 2009 at 11:59
I don't think Trev was accusing any particular 'group' of people of being rude... His thread was simply asking the question why two people were rude to him. Since he'd noticed that both people were city-dwellers, both were 'new Aussies' he questioned whether either of these 'observations' might be significant?
I'm sure that not too many people would argue with someone who observed that the inhabitants of
Australia, in general, are becoming more and more selfish, having less and less regard for their fellow man (and that includes respect for their fellow man's property).
Now, what's causing this decline in respect for others? First, I would suggest it's a generation of baby-boomers who failed to teach respect to the following generation (ie. their children). Instead, they (& again, in general terms - not everybody) pampered their children so they wouldn't have it 'as tough as we did' and treated them.
Spending some time in Jakarta has shocked me at just how unselfish most of the people in Austraila are when compared to those elsewhere. It seems to me that in this city of around 20 million people, most of them appear completely oblivious to the presence of the other 19,999,999 people! Just yesterday, we were stuck in a traffic jam on a major arterial road - the cause? Someone had TRIPLE-parked blocking the LH lane and was sitting in his car with the four-ways flashing. The irony was that had he moved forward just one car length, he could have actually pulled out of the lane and let the traffic flow smoothly.
Seeing things like that leads me to question: are we also importing a lot of selfishness?! Don't get me wrong, I'm not against immigration (many of my closest friends (or their parents) were not born in
Australia) but I think we all need to acknowledge that many of these cultures have some traits that are not desirable/pleasing to us Aussies (and I'm sure that Aussies have some traits that are not desirable/pleasing to them!).
So to summarise, and in line with Trev's original question: The selfishness/rudeness/violence that we are seeing more and more - is it a result of parents not teaching their children to respect others, or is it because we are 'importing' some of these attitudes from abroad? Personally, I believe it's both of those causes.
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