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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (20392)	6/7/2000 4:31:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

, you too are pointing to moral decline as a factor, Changes in behavior, which you may interpret as moral decline, are due I believe to increasing population. There are different strategies for coping sociologicly with different sized communities. As towns of 2500 grow into towns of 15000, or cities of 250,000 grow to a million or more, the culture and connectivity will change. In a town of 2500 you can say hi to everyone you meet, and you would want to because you are going to meet them again and again. It doesn't work in a large city. The loss of connectivity forces a change in behavior which you describe as moral decline but is a natural adaptation to the surroundings. Problems arise when institutions, laws, and infrastructure all remain geared to the earlier size. The second big change is the increased communication available today. You could get a TIVO system and tell it to extract shows like "Touched by an Angel", "Early Edition", and Laurence Welk reruns, and easily get three networks worth of programming all as morally straight as any found in the 1950s. The difference now is that there are 100 other channels with programs which would likely have been popular in the 1950s if only they were available. Now they are. The morals didn't change, only the technology to express different positions. The Romans only allowed a few cities. All other communities were limited in size, and if they exceeded the optimal level (I think it was 5000 inhabitants) the town was divided into two groups and one built a new town. They might have been on to something. TP