kaythecurler
societal changes
Posted on: 12/10/2013 10:59
We have talked a lot about the changes in churches, especially the UC since WC opened for business. Is anyone interested in talking about other changes in our society - comunities - over the years?
My partner popped into the Senior Citizen Centre to put up a poster for an event. Usually that is something I would do so he really noticed that the Centre had changed since he was in there last. We talked about it a lot last night.
Thirty years ago the Senior Centre bustled with activities. There were always people there - visiting, quilting, playing cards and board games, carpet bowling, darts and pool (or was it billiards? I don't play either). They organised picnics and had trips to the park and city occasionally. Sometimes someone would show their slides about a trip they had taken (often to do volunteer work overseas).
Now it is mostly quiet, the Seniors who used it back then have died or become disabled. The generation we are in are either busy or not interested in hanging out with a group made up of old fogies.
Some of the Service Clubs have died completely, others are slowly becoming smaller, like the mainline churches. There are fewer parents putting thir children in hockey, figure skating, ball, the Scouts aren't active any more (the Guides though are thriving). There is very little enthusiasm for choirs, just one that we could think of when there used to be five, (even the church based ones are fading away), there's no band, very few clubs based around creativity and they are struggling to find active members..
I'm wondering just how far this will go. What sort of community are we leaving for our children and grandchildren? Should/could we do something about it?
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chemgal
Posted on: 12/10/2013 11:23
Kay, that's really broad.
I don't see the same thing about hockey, figure skating, etc. Ice time is competitive. Like the US, where parents will do crazy things, move, have 2 residents, etc. to get their kids in to a good school district, here parents will do that to get their kids on the right hockey team. Some even call it investing in their kids' futures. I don't think it was that excessive when I was a kid.
Growing up, my parents mostly lived near family. I think that was the general trend for their generation. Maybe they lived in the city instead of rurally, but it was typically the closest major city and relatives has moved too.
My parents generation was the one that moved away. Especially in Calgary. It became very common for Christmas and summer vacations to be spent visiting relatives. Community didn't revolve around the church anymore. Neighbours were important (I don't know how true this was of my grandparents), they helped each other the way families used to. I did see a bit of a divide, when people had family nearby, they didn't get to know their neighbours as well. In less affluent neighbourhoods people weren't as close, but both people in the couple tended to work. In affluent neighbourhoods there were a few where both worked, but one person (usually a Mom) tended to still be fairly flexible.
In my generation it is much more common to see both parents working. In the neighbourhood here with the most kids, there is also the most number of women working. People get to know their neighbours, but from what I have seen the same degree of connections aren't there. People are more likely to be friends with coworkers, and women are more likely to stay working after having kids. Being a stay at home dad or a work at home dad is more acceptable. There's more of an expectation that young people will move away.
Mendalla
Posted on: 12/10/2013 11:33
Keep in mind that part of the reason there are fewer kids in various activities is that there are fewer kids, period. The boomers, gen X, and even gen Y are pretty much finished having families. Our school board is condolidating like crazy right now. My son's last school before he started high school underwent major renovations so they could take some of the kids from another catchment where there weren't enough kids to sustain that school (basically, they reorganized catchment areas to change three schools into two).
So, the real question is not whether there are fewer kids. Of course there are because there are fewer kids overall. The question is whether the proportion of kids involved in activity x or activity y has gone down.
Also, keep in mind that a significant proportion of the families who do have kids are immigrants and their priorities are different. They may be more likely to play soccer or even sports like cricket and rugby than hockey. They may prefer Cadets to Scouts (my son's air cadet squadron has lots of Hispanics, for instance) or have their own youth programs. They may go to the mosque (which don't have choirs) instead of the church .
Our children and grandchildren will definitely have a different world from us. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
I grew up in a fairly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, hope we're still allowed to use that term) neighbourhood in a fairly WASP community and I'm a WASP myself.
My son is mixed race (Anglo-Canadian and Chinese) and his current circle of friends includes another mixed race boy (Dutch and Pakistani), a Persian(Iranian), and an Indian. HIs high school has large South Asian, Hispanic, and Korean populations. I think (or at least hope) that this will actually give him a richer, more diverse community to live in than I had.
Other thing to keep in mind that as the current wave of immigrants assimilate, there's a good chance the next generation or two (their kids and grandkids) may well start becoming "more Canadian" and take up things like hockey and Scouts. So this may be a dip rather than demise.
Mendalla
kaythecurler
Posted on: 12/10/2013 11:31
Good point about the activities for kids, chemgal. I neglected to factor in that we have less kids nowadays! Once the High School only held the Grade 10-12 students. Now it holds all of the kids from Grade 7 and up and there is an empty wing.
waterfall
Posted on: 12/10/2013 11:41
Kay, I remember when the word "cocooning" became popular. The social trends were suggesting that society would become more secluded and social activities would become less important. It seems we do like to gather around our TV's more. And it appears we have become more isolated as a whole. My work involves an aging population and a lot of their health problems, IMO, comes from isolation from others.
chemgal
Posted on: 12/10/2013 11:49
Mendalla, I don't know if there are less kids here now than my generation (part of the echo). I would have to check census data or something, but the population is growing. In my area, there are numerous kids. The new school is looking at how to change boundaries, or whether K & 1 should go to a different school. This is true of various schools in the suburbs.
People are having kids at an older age. My friends are just starting to have kids now. I'm at the older end of the echo. Give it time, and maybe better economic growth and the kids are going to take off again I think. Even when couples don't choose to have children, there are also immigrants moving here with their kids.
I agree about the diversity. In older areas, ethnic groups tended to lump together. While that still exists, it isn't to the same degree and I mostly see it from the generation before and their kids if they still live at home.
graeme
Posted on: 12/11/2013 14:03
My family almost lived at the church. It was common for me to meet my friends there, and to join in church activities several nights a week.
TV, of course, has had the effect of isolating us from each other. But the trend began earlier. The tipping point was, perhaps, around 1950.
That was when radio destroyed the church on Sunday evenings. Sunday night was the peak evening with all the stars - Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Charlie McCarthy. Evening church attendance dropped - and then was simply ended by many churches.
There's also the reality that we now live in a world that doesn't even pretend to have moral values. A Christian is now an outsider, even in "Christian" societies. (and no, I don't consider fundamentalist churches to have Christian values.)
lastpointe
Posted on: 12/11/2013 14:55
I think it depends where you live perhaps. Our neighbourhood community centre is busy all the time. Kids activities, adults, ESL,, drop in centers for elderly.......
Kids activities here fill up the day they take registration. Parents line up overnight. They had to add a new baseball league to accommodate the kids.
Our local park has a tennis court that is busy all the time. It's ice now and has a busy schedule of Shinny and free skate. I never go by it during the day that it isn't being used.
At our farm the local Rotary is very busy, huge, raises a ton of money.
The local hospital foundation has raised $10,000,000 over the past eight years. In a town of 35,000 plus weekenders.
Our church choir is huge, good, popular. Our church also has a casual adult choir, a teen choir, a kids choir. Toronto has a cool drop in choir downtown where they sing mainly show tunes and. Pop songs. Lots of university students participate. I think my daughter told me it was $2 or $5 to drop in.
Both my kids high schools had orchestras, jazz bands, senior bands, junior bands,, rock bands, blues bands. One kids was private school so not surprising. It's one of the things you get with private schools, the arts , but the other child was a public school.
Our neighbourhood had its own Santa Claus parade last Saturday. Street was packed. It was sort of cheesy and cute but well attended.
Community can be developed and nurtured, like anything else
stardust
Posted on: 12/11/2013 21:34
kaythecurler
The Star did a series on today's lifestyles and thoughts of the under age 35 group. Here are some of the comments. Its a very long read. Some people say its the same as in the 50's or 60's? I don't think so. I think technology has made a huge difference in the lives of us all. Is it a paradox or a contradiction of sorts that in one sense we are communicating more with each other but on the other hand we are being more occupied with what they are calling "selfie"......??...I think..?...meaning ourselves or being more selfish? I really don't know. Of course this article is in reference to under age 35.
Quote:
Quote:
The Spectators, so-called because its members aren’t engaged — at least in traditional ways — with the society around them, and see little point in trying to influence the course of events unfolding in their country and the world.
Mass media, built on the assumption of shared values and aspirations in society, don’t reach them.
Civic engagement, which assumes that people working together can change society for the better, doesn’t attract them.
Their engagement has been branded “clicktivism” — social involvement confined to the click of a mouse or the tap of a track pad.
They are inclined to see mainstream Canadian society as alien. A pack of cards. A sham. According to Herle’s research, they share few if any of the life goals or aspirations as their fellow citizens.
They have little sense of belonging to a community. Says James Edward Lee, 27, a liquor-store clerk who feels detached from the greater Vancouver community of New Westminster where he lives: “You go to your block and every house is the same, everyone has the same yard, the same coloured house ... it’s just depressing seeing rows and rows of blue wooden houses.”
They tend to dislike their work and do it only for the money.
At the core of the Spectators’ alienation, says Herle, is a feeling of a lack of control over the direction of their lives. They do not think that life has offered them many opportunities, and they do not feel they can influence their financial or personal direction. “They see themselves as corks bobbing in the water, pushed and pulled where the tides take them,” Herle wrote in Policy Options last fall.
The Spectators — who comprise as much as 25 per cent of the population — are the extreme end of a profound faultline in Canadian society defined by age and education.
Research reflects that these are not the rantings of isolated social misfits.
The values and goals of mainstream Canada do not intuitively appeal to Spectators. They are not generally happy. They don’t feel particularly optimistic about their own lives or the lives of future generations. If they worry less than others about falling behind, it is because they do not expect to get ahead. Their lives have not been filled with opportunity.
According to Herle’s study, Spectators are under 35, mainly male, mainly living in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas and mainly third-generation Canadian or beyond (Mihailescu is in the so-called 1.5 generation but otherwise fits the template rather well).
What’s truly interesting — and even spooky — about them is that, for the most part, it is not apathy, not ignorance, not the generational aberrations that accompany being young, that shape their beliefs and values but a concrete rejection of established social institutions coupled with fear that the Western idealized dream of progress forever is dead and that what’s coming down the road toward them, economically and socially, is not nice.
(Young Canadians’ unemployment rate is resolutely stuck at more than twice the national average, they’re humiliated with unpaid internships, they’re told on a regular basis they have the wrong skills and education for the jobs they seek and many increasingly fear they’ll never be able to afford to live in the cities where they grew up.)
Herle asks: “What does it mean for democracy when so many people believe any attempt at making a difference is pointless and lack faith that political change can create meaningful outcomes?”
Herle found that Spectators — the Clicktivists — spent more time than the average Canadian online. “(But) our research showed that ... they are not using that time to connect to causes or organize for change. Many of those online remain stubbornly beyond the lure of politics or social activism.”
A case in point: David Speare, 23, who lives in Barrie and has a college computer-programming degree but works as a janitor in a resort, plays video games four hours a day on weekdays and all day on the weekends.
The actions that Mihailescu and Speare and others like them take over the next two decades will shape the country’s state of mind, its political stability and the future of its democratic behaviour in ways Canada almost certainly hasn’t experienced before.
The purpose of Herle’s project was to poke into Canadians’ values and aspirations and segment them into groups that would help marketers shape their selling pitches: “Much of marketing communications,” wrote Herle in Policy Options, “is based on aspirations considered to be universal. If a group doesn’t share those aspirations, how can we create advertising that finds affinity with them?”
Which was precisely the problem with the Spectators. They don’t believe in status buying. Or consuming for the sake of consuming. They also don’t believe in many of the touchstones of Canadian society — like democracy. And Parliament.
And so Herle lamented: “Where are we headed when a quarter of our population, whose incomes are roughly in line with those of the rest, tell us that the Western ideal of progress is not making them happy or satisfied?” (They don’t believe in progress, either.)
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/12/09/young_people_are_lazy_or_victims_the_debate_in_9_reader_comments.html
chemgal
Posted on: 12/11/2013 22:07
The Star did a series on today's lifestyles and thoughts of the under age 35 group.
Is that what it was about? To me, it sounded like it was about a group who are mostly under 35. Not about the under 35 age group as a whole.
It was so poorly written though, I'm not certain I understood the point.
waterfall
Posted on: 12/11/2013 23:54
This is good: