Is Human Civilization In Decline?

When young people commit suicide there is something wrong. There is despair. What we aspire to is set by consumerist motives by the profit machine. For most humans on the planet survival is the only hope; but, that's not enough in their minds. Always, there is something more they need for which they must struggle, often in vain, to attain whether it be the second new car, the dream home of television makeover fame or the health insurance with the best perks. When some see that their dreams are unattainable, impossible they lash out at a system which sets most up to fail. The recent spate of suicide massacres in the US isn't over. We will see more of it. The despair is laced with anger and those who might well have snuffed out their own lives are taking others with them in a death-rage. "If I can't have mine, you're not gonna' get yours either!"

The 20 year old man in India who killed himself in front of his girlfriend on a live webcam chat tells us that the sickness is spreading. India is rapidly moving into the same type of modern society we have been growing here in the United States. This is just one of several suicides of young people there in recent months.

Suicide Wave Continues Amongst Young in India
3-10-8

"An 18-year-old Class 11 student allegedly hanged herself in her north Delhi home Monday, the police said. This is the fourth case of a student committing suicide, reportedly due to examination stress, in the capital in the past five days."

Is human civilization on the decline?

Sociologist Melvin H. Tumin and anthropologist John W. Bennett have highlighted "prerequisites for survival," needs that must be met in order for a society to continue:

• Every society must be able to answer the basic biological needs of its members: food, drink, shelter, and medical care.

• Every society must provide for the production and distribution of goods and services (perhaps through a division of labor, rules concerning property and trade, or ideas about the role of work).

• Every society must provide for the reproduction of new members and consider laws and issues related to reproduction (regulation, marriageable age, number of children, and so on).

• Every society must provide for the training (education, apprenticeship, passing on of values) of an individual so that he or she can become a functioning adult in the society.

• Every society must provide for the maintenance of internal and external order (laws, courts, police, wars, diplomacy).

• Every society must provide meaning and motivation to its members.

This last prerequisite is more important than it may seem. No societal activity is possible unless people are motivated to participate. Why do we get up in the morning? How do we see ourselves in relation to other members of society? Why do we follow a society's rules? Without a sense of meaning and motivation, people will become apathetic. If this happens, a society may be threatened with decline.

Source.