For decades, I’ve said that American arrogance (due to being the only super power), run-away consumerism and growing debt of all kinds coupled with how the average American child is being raised by parents obsessed with the child’s self-esteem above all else would lead to the inevitable end of the American experiment in personal freedoms and a rapid decline in living standards followed by chaos and anarchy.
Then I had an e-mail this week from an American friend and expatriate living in China, who recently returned to teaching English to Chinese children.
I asked him in an E-mail how it was going.
He replied, “You’ll be interested to know the kids are WAY fatter and noisier than they were in 2004. I asked some other teachers about this. They attribute it to McDonalds (3 all on the same 3-kilometer street in this very small city). In 2004 there were none (in that city), and Chinese parents spoiling their kids more and more; that sense of entitlement carries over into the classroom….”
After teaching American children and teens for thirty years and experiencing the same decline in child health and behavior, I understood what he meant.
Could this cultural decay be a sign of the pending collapse of civilization?
To be continued on April 13, 2011 in Part 2 or discover Super Power Dawn
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse