It Changed; Did You Notice?

Time changes things. That also means it changes values. There are things we do today and accept today that our parents would have been horrified to see accepted. Now this isn't going to be an article all about moral values, modesty and what not. That article would not be an article but a 20 volume set and it would be read less than any current 20 volume set of anything anyway. This article is going to take a broad look at the things you actually might not be thinking about or may know about but haven’t seen how much things have changed. Everyone is aware you wouldn't show nudity, drugs, graphic violence, or profanity on TV 40 years ago. That's old news. This, however, might actually be new news and hopefully entertaining for all of you modern information highway sleuths out there like myself. 

Scammers

So, even at my age I remember never being quite so cautious about scam artists or identity thieves as I have in the last few years. In fact, it really wasn't a concern at all as you just didn't expect someone to do that sort of thing. If you are going to steal my money or take advantage of me, then burglarize or extort me the good old fashion way, right?

Yup, good ol' fashioned.

But being serious, with the advent of the digital age, there are literally so many ways to take money from someone else you have to pay professional investigative organizations just to have a fighting chance if your number comes up. The list of daily threats include virus laden texts or calls sent to your smartphone that steal your account information, phishing scams that collect your personal data used to open accounts in your name, or the passing on of contraband goods or even simple data sent to your computer without you knowing like illegal files or images.

Honestly the list of scams is terrifyingly long and for a lot of people not equipped to guard against them its a little like playing the lottery. You don't have any real control over whether or not you get selected, your number just might be up.

However, even in this atmosphere people have simply adjusted in order to deal with the new order of things. Practices that seemed paranoid and would get you mocked a decade ago are commonplace now. Don't give out personal information to anyone calling you, let all unknown calls go to voicemail, don't respond to unknown texts, don't visit unknown websites, don't respond to any spam, don't fill out any web forms not from a well-known institution...etc. And yes, it's probably not a good idea to send that money by Western Union to Prince Ali Khoumana in Africa. 

Poor, poor, Prince.

With crime so up front and personal everyone has to develop inner city street smarts, or face the consequences. Sheesh.

Big Brother 

I am being honest when I say that 10 years ago everyone was afraid of Big Brother watching them. The thought of having the government know who you called was frightening to most people. Fast forward to 2015 and everyone just accepts the government has your text, pictures, emails, social media posts, bank account numbers, pin codes, and coming soon the capability to disconnect you from the world completely so no one notices when you go missing...yeah.

The line between crazy and genius is often circumstance

It's amazing how quickly things develop, and without so much as a peep it seems. But ask anyone how they feel about the government collecting their web traffic, texts, and transaction history and they'll just respond with a mild disapproval all the time not really feeling any ability to do anything about it. Well, you could vote, start an organization, or write letters, but you know, ain't nobody got time for that.

And besides, they're all corrupt anyway. Even if your best friend was suddenly elected to a government office, admit it, you'd start doubting their integrity. Unless it's you in the seat, you just can't trust anyone, right? So deep down inside people have started to trust only themselves...

Aaaand...que the quick escalation.

Well...that made way too much sense for its own good.

But in any case, your personal info is up for grabs and if the government wanted you to disappear, it could literally cut your communication off, fake an accident and no one would be any the wiser. And as our lives move more and more to the digital platform instead of the "word of mouth" platform, it just becomes that much easier. Until you get to the point where it's just like the Matrix. I bet no one even knew Mr. Anderson was gone.

CYOA

          By now everyone is familiar with going to the doctor and being pulled into tests for things that may seem entirely unnecessary. It’s so standard now that we all have adopted the thinking for our own good. Why wouldn’t you go to the doctor and get a routine cat-scan or colonoscopy? No one wants to be that one person in 1000. But the reason for the development of such activities has come about from a different kind of concern.

 In the new world a .01% possibility of something happening is enough to ensure a whole new tier of policies or laws to protect the government or organizations involved from lawsuits should that occur. Ever since the courts have decided that definitively anyone on the premise or under the influence of an organization is that organization’s responsibility, lawsuits have abounded from the .01% of humanity that loves to ruin any good faith in society by turning any wiggle room at all into a cash grab.

At the same time, it is very hard to discern these incidences from the ones that actually raise awareness of something that hasn’t been commonly considered before. Still, the effect is a whole culture built on policies, procedures, and social norms that would be considered, CYOA, or “Cover Your Own Assets.” For those already too young to remember the term before it was just common culture, this means laws, procedures, or rules put in place for no practical purpose other than to protect the organization or business from a liability lawsuit should any harm come to those involved. It’s the reason you save all your emails and records now. The reason you treat every new person like a criminal ready to take advantage of you, and verify everything up front. Make sense? No?

Let me explain to the millennials. There once was a time people didn’t expect a new sweeping regulation, mountain of paperwork, or loss of freedom because of a 1 in 10000 chance of something happening. For instance, there once was a time parents could pick their kids up at anytime from schools and even have extended family do it. Why? Because they are their parents. If some weird goof up occurred on that 1 in 100,000 chance, it was the parent’s responsibility to keep it from happening. Now there are schools where even registered parents can’t pick up their kids until school is dismissed. Just in case…you know…mom and dad had a disagreement about who picked up the kid and mom sued the school for letting the kid go early? I guess. Or maybe the school is afraid the parent’s will find a way to blame the school for letting their kid out of 2 hours of class when they earn a D in Chemistry that semester.

Everyone’s got to be a winner.

 In any case, its not even the 1 in 1000 chance anymore, it’s the 1 in 1000 chance of something happening that can open the door for a 1 in 1000 chance of something occurring that harms someone that creates new social norms. It’s even normal to make laws that punish people extra for statistically being associated to other crimes, even though they have never been convicted, or accused, of them.

And some of those are quite popular just to drive the point home. For instance, my neighbor leaves his pet outside. Therefore, since statistically an unexpected number of people relate some treatment of their animals to their kids, there is a chance he could leave his children outside or dismiss their comfort. Even if there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever, and the animal is perfectly healthy, society would almost unanimously approve punishing your neighbor for being guilty by association. Just so long as that 1 in 100,000 chance is eliminated. And honestly, I expect that last sentence to be dated. In 5 years people will read that sentence and think, “how barbaric of him to question that. Throw your neighbor in jail already.” Because that’s how strong CYOA sentiments can be because they tap into our psychological demand for security and survival.

And that is the very reason for this extreme change in society. It has shifted so rapidly as the core value of society has changed. The core value of the western world was once something like “greatness” “legacy” or “productivity”; now its “security” and “comfort”. We are at a point now where it doesn’t seem strange at all that parents might get arrested for letting their kids play outside unsupervised. We are so onboard with the crusade against ending the 1 in 100,000 chance of a violation of safety, that someone could be held liable for, that we will prosecute people that take those odds. Not that breaking up a family and throwing kids into foster care as wards of the state is somehow a solution, but I digress.

Well, glad we solved that problem.

Believe it or not there once was a time people joked about society locking them up and restricting their entire lives from cradle to grave; thought to diet, just to keep them safe from miniscule harms. We even told stories like Ferenheit 451, The Matrix, and iRobot to warn us of the dangers of withdrawing from the world ourselves to let the system take over to be comfortable. Now years after those warnings we seemed poised to push for it.

The Matrix. Safe in a pod, cradle to grave as a threatless and productive battery.

Wow that’s eerily close to home.

Lock you up in your house for your own good? Not too far off. Remember all those places you used to be able to go and things you could do without a permit or permission? When security and comfort is the value of society, look at how we govern kids to see how we will govern adults in 10-20 years. That’s a frightening picture for a turn of Generation X guy like myself. But even more strange, in 20 years no one will even remember how much they valued that freedom as humans are adaptive and tend to justify their lifestyle with philosophy. So that “thought revolution” your waiting for? Probably not happening. At least not as long as the core value stays the same. Welcome to the brave new world!

Sex and crude material

          I know I said I wouldn’t talk about the obvious moral decay, but this is a different and necessary sub-category of this subject. It simultaneously affects how we do things and has grown out of our development chosen as a society. In any regards, back to crude material.

Believe it or not there was a time that sexual content was not freely accessible to 7 year olds. Or in the case of modern media; from music to network shows and cartoons, shoved in their faces. At one point in society’s history, these subjects were reserved as “personal”. One didn’t talk about how they had sex, show their private parts to the world, or even rudely and expletively express themselves to crowds. Now you can get stories about all of those out coming from elementary kids.

          It’s hard to blame the kids. It has been famously said that what you tolerate your kids will accept. Just take a look at all the music, movies, and accepted forms of influence adults tolerated in the 90’s and you’ll see why their kids have so quickly adopted these crude expressions.

Media, given over to adult’s guilty pleasures, has proven

society is a terrible raiser of children.

         

What’s more is that once again, these offenses are dated. There are even some reading this that would be confused to see anyone think someone’s sex organs are “personal” or “sacred” and should be kept private. In fact, to many, that would be an offensive thought itself. As if it’s a terrible restriction on freedom to guard these things as a community for a “special role.” In any case, it’s the new norm. So much so that you can be watching TV with your kids and suddenly see a lingerie commercial and not be affected by it. Look at TV 30 years ago and you’ll realize how quickly that escalated.

Political Correctness

          Okay, no matter what age group you are a part of you have probably heard the next one. Chances are that you have also heard someone talk about the affects of Political Correctness stifling our free speech. It is indeed true that what used be a practice for only the most sensitive people or around the most sensitive people, is now mainstream and just common language.

          Much of the cultural change is driven by the “public sphere”, which translates to the work environment or the business world where a single employee saying anything a member of a protected class finds offensive can cause a lawsuit or bad publicity. As companies in the modern era are hard-wired to care about only the bottom line, there is no line too far in protecting company assets. If that means you restrict your employees from talking about anything at all, then so be it. And training them not to express themselves is certainly justified to protect the assets that keep everyone employed.

A demanding authority’s favorite citizen.

          This is not only commonplace, but it is now entirely unusual for a company or public circle to tolerate discussion of topics that people tend to be offended over, such as religion, politics, morals, and such. Any of these topics could be considered contraband in the public sphere. What’s more, as the public sphere continues to encroach on the private with the world being brought into everyone’s living room (and vis-versa), any more its just wise to adopt political correctness to every day life.

          Even now, not just public figures, but private figures that work for a company of any size, must watch what they say in private lest word of it get out and somehow be associated with the organization. For this reason people can and do get fired or removed from positions based on personal opinions even expressed in their own home or among friends. Hey, it’s just that kind of world. Anything you say is starting to go on record. All it takes is the wrong person to find it offensive to make your life hell with a lawsuit that suddenly demands your life and capital. Don’t believe me? In an era where people have been bullied out of political office by having people tie them up in court week after week with machine-gun frivolous lawsuits, the system has pretty much let this whole thing run rampant.

…is mightier than the sword.

          The result is everyone being reduced to a social code controlled by the loudest and those with the money to force others into subjugation with legal capital. Laws aren’t even needed to regulate that, merely threats. In fact, most political correctness is enforced not by any law or actual legal action. It is still perfectly legal to say something entirely racist and bigoted. And not the modern kind that consists of stereotypes, the hard kind such as calling for actively reducing people to 2^nd class citizens and declaring certain people as inferior genetically or psychologically and what not. But say even the most remotely offensive things in public about the wrong people and the results can be catastrophic. Because all it takes is for someone to accuse you of harm by filing a lawsuit, you don’t even have to do anything to be targeted, to financially harm you. For that reason, government, companies, and public figures will demand precautions to prevent even possibilities of someone accidentally offending the wrong people. That’s how strong the sentiment is. It takes a strong legal team, a lot of capital, or fearlessness to truly have free speech in a society like that.

         

Pick one or go back.

And that is exactly what is so foreign about now. Obviously the same thing could not be said of society 30 years ago. How much of that is due to people being offended by more things and how much is due to the smallness of our world is still out for debate. Both at least, seem to be somewhat evident.

Disclaimers and Terms and Agreements

          Alright, so rolling right along to even more familiar territory. Our next subject is the all annoying Terms and Agreements. Yes, everything you sign or register to is going to have 30 pages of terms that you are reading cautiously and “agreeing” to…yeah, right.

          Would you believe there was a time when people actually read these things? Well, there was. Right before it got to the point where everything had them. In effect you can blame this one on lawsuits yet again. The good ol’ justice system determined that although what you did was extremely stupid and should have punished anyone with the consequences (the woman who spilled coffee on herself and didn’t know it was hot, the man who sued McDonald’s for getting fat), the dispenser of the said good or service was still responsible for making the consumer/beneficiary aware of any and all possible harm that could come to them and in many cases, the consequences regardless. What? Yes, in a shocking turn in history, you can get carjacked in the parking lot of a business (unarranged by them of course) and its neither the crook’s fault, nor yours; it’s the businesses for not hiring security to monitor the parking lot. Right.

Really he’s just the same as the sports star that dives or flops.

It’s the refs job to enforce rules, not his. He doesn’t catch him, its legit.

          Even now, what I just said to you sounds less ludicrous that it did 10 years ago and that is because we are getting accustom to it. In any regard, this ruling means that every precaution and warning possible must exist before you engage…anything. Buying something, entering a place, talking to someone, even giving something away, have now become full blow legal processes with legal documentation required to protect everyone in the event the .01% feel like making it a cash grab.

          Now don’t get me wrong. Requiring honest information up front is a far better alternative to not requiring it. Knowing a product contains peanuts can literally save the life of a someone allergic to them, as one example. This is generally a good innovation. (You thought all of these were pointless?). The consequences of having to draw a line that is “all or nothing”, however, has made for a more cumbersome and less productive society as every simple act is bogged down with litigation and verification. Still further, often these terms and agreements are a gateway into catching the consumer in a commitment they do not want to, nor can, fulfill. Such as customers of the British company GameStation, who unwittingly sold their souls to the company by not opting out in the Terms and Agreements.

“and to have these terms displayed in 6 foot letters of fire, etc, etc, blah, blah”.

Where do I sign?

          It is thus, in your best interest to read everything you come across. And you expect it to be there too. However, when even your weekly daily lunch purchase starts including lengthy terms to agree to or disclaimers, it gets overwhelming. Who can keep up with an overbloated system like that?

Now to be fair, society has always had these little, “agreements”. But most millennials would be shocked to learn that a great deal of these were “honor’s system”. That’s right. You just took in on good faith this person was going to do the “sensible” thing, even though it was never in writing. These agreements included vastly liable arrangements someone could be sued millions of dollars for. It was just left up to the parties involved to “work out any discrepencies.” That doesn’t happen anymore, at least not when that kind of capital is at stake.

As the world shrinks it brings the .01% that want to make you a cash box right up to your face. So how do you react? But changing your life so you assume everyone is that guy and we expect the government to step in and monitor that in case we need the assist. So be prepared for more paper and even more “terms and agreements” because they aren’t going away until people feel like they can trust people again. So maybe never.

Sales, Sales, Sales...Everyone is a Salesman 

          I actually recall a time when you could walk into a retail outlet or talk to a company representative on the phone and get any number of people NOT selling you something. A Customer Service Agent, Representative, Agent, Cashier, Host, Greeter, Stocker, Bagger, Clerk, Front Counter Associate, Receptionist, Floor Associate, Stock Associate, Runner, Order Specialist, Call Specialist, Support Specialist, etc. Nowadays you walk into anywhere and are greeted by a Sales Associate. When you call into a company line, unless you called a specific number, you get a Sales Associate. But its only certain industries, right? Surely not everyone is going to having nothing but Sales Associates talk to customers. You thought that until you went to your favorite sit down restaurant and were suddenly upsold on the margarita. Hm. How’d that happen?

“And we have a 2 for 1 special on Mojito’s. Can I interest you? Great, would you like to Super Size that Quarter Pounder also?”: Coming Soon

          In fact, the whole machine is moving to sales as a customer facing option. I am not joking and you know it. No matter what company you call you will get a sales rep. Well, at least if the company wants to succeed. You see, back in the day everyone began to see that sales associates got more sales when talking to customers and helped the company bottom line. The expense might be people being offended by the sales pitch. But not every industry flooded to sales models because they didn’t believe the people would accept that from everyone. No one wanted to walk into a department store, coffee shop, or bank and have someone deliver a sly sales pitch.

“New home, what? I just came in to make a deposit?”

          But as the people have gotten numb to these maneuvers and have come to expect them, the room for them has grown. In fact, anymore if you don’t have an excellent sales staff, your company is toast. There are lots of companies out there that are still relying on people coming to them for their product reputation instead of having to sell it, and that just doesn’t fly anymore. You can’t expect to get a call from someone, treat them with mild apathy, and make a sale. You have to earn it. Trust me, I know. I talk to vendors all day and the one’s that have the attitude that you are privileged to buy from them seem to go belly up.

I’m waiting to hear why I should sell to you.

          People expect this now. They expect you to “win” their money and get offended when you don’t try. But conversely they will allow you to do so more and more. It’s hard to imagine, but the world wasn’t always like that. Companies expected you to buy from them for more reasons than a sales pitch. The main factor was always convenience and accessibility. If all you have is a Wal-Mart in your town, you can’t buy from a Target. Well, in the internet age of global markets, you have to start fighting for sales in your own back yard. It’s a whole new world and as it gets more global and people transcend these traditional factors, it will only get more aggressive.

          So that’s it. No super deep tie-in or philosophical thought. Society changes, and with the dawn of modern technology, it changes more rapidly than it ever has before. Try to keep up and don’t forget how to be human.