[lbo-talk] Sexpresso coffee shops take Seattle by storm

[Miles Jackson]

B. wrote:
> I was about to say that this "Sexpresso" thing should
> go in the Idiocracy since, as both you and Carl Rmick
> mentioned, in the future Starbucks has evolved into a
> sex shop.
> 
> However, unlike you, I think it's a good movie, albeit
> with some unfortunate b-movie trappings that make it
> see dumber than it really is.
> 
> Also on the news tonight: teens and young adults
> filming themselves barreling into fences to knock them
> over has become a kind of recreational sport for kids
> in New York. They videotape themselves ramming bodily
> into wooden fences and toppling them over, and post
> them to YouTube. Pure Idiocracy stuff.

I'll reserve judgment on the movie (I've not seen it yet), but I 
question the underlying premise.  This cultural "degeneration" trope 
implies that there is a Noble Tradition that has been sullied by the 
crudities of modern life.  When I look in the past, I see plenty of 
misery, cruelty, and stupidity.  --Less than 100 years ago Southern 
papers were advertising Sunday lynchings as a proper, Christian family 
outing! (Bring the kids!  Buy some souvenirs!)

This "everything's going to hell" trope is more or less like some 
crotchety old geezers on a porch complaining that things were better 
in "the good old days".  Sure, there's plenty of stuff we need to 
change in our society (e.g., our pathetic health care system); 
however, there's plenty to be proud of too (open source software, 
public libraries, the community college system).  You can find 
anecdotes of stupid or mean behavior in any society at any time; to 
extrapolate from those anecdotes to some meaningful historical trend 
is, to put it bluntly, sloppy reasoning.

Miles