Sep/ Chapter 1: Individuality, good or bad?

The other day I started wondering if we’re better off or worse since society dramatically liberalized in the 1960’s, and people followed the rigid rules of society a lot less. These days there is greater emphasis on individualism and doing what we feel like doing.

In the past there were certain standards for behavior which fewer people follow now. But those standards wheren't necessarily creating the best results. Fewer people had sex before marriage back then so it was common for people to end up with someone they were not sexually compatible with. Also, people felt obligated to marry for the sake of marrying, marrying someone to please their parents and also sticking with unhappy marriages rather than divorce.

More liberal thinking allowed people to avoid messy marriages. People could now date many people before marriage, have a lot more fun in the process and also figure out what they wanted out of a partner. People now know what they want, and would rather stay single than get into an unhappy marriage.

But have we now swung over to the other extreme? Are people worse off than about 20 years ago? More than one people has complained that the dating scene has gotten a lot worse, and both guys and girls are a lot more selfish, and manipulative. Gone are the days when people seemed to respect each other, now people will do whatever is best for themselves, without worrying whether it was going to hurt the person they’ve been with.

The reason it’s gotten really bad is simply because we now follow our instincts more and more, and do what we feel like doing. But as I’ve discussed many times on this blog previously, our instincts are probably harmful to us. At least in a modern society with morals, doing exactly what we want is going to create a slippery slope downwards.

People these days don’t want to be told what to do, they don’t want to feel any sort of guilt or be judged in any way. They just want to do what feels best, and that to an extent is sad. Sad because although we’ve progressed as a society, in terms of the dating scene we’re more animal like than we were 50 years ago. More promiscuous as a society, less faithful, and have no concern on the affect our actions have on others.

I was having drinks with a friend the other night, and she told me out of 10 married expat couples she knew that got married in Hong Kong, in all cases the men had asked prior to proposing to be given a few months to split up and enjoy their single life. Which means basically go crazy and fuck around prior to getting married.

I explained to her that’s just guys getting scared they will lose their freedom forever, and following their instinctive needs to go sleep with multiple women. We are after all just smart animals, and still have our instincts that have taken millions of years to evolve. Even girls are the same except they have different needs from men. But then she came up with a good counter arguement:

“Isn’t it sad that in this day and age, we can’t even trust the one we want to spend the rest of our lives with? That the institution of marriage is no longer sacred, and women are just marrying ‘smart animals?’ “

Yeah, how very sad indeed………Maybe our society has gone to the other wrong extreme and people should control themselves a little more.