This is just an observation. YMMV, of course. But I've noticed this with increasing frequency in recent years...
It's not necessarily a "new" thing. Lying certainly isn't new. But I imagine there must have been a time when, hypothetically, you could make plans with someone, or discuss something, and they would damn well hold to it/keep their word...
Like, in my observation, this happens all the damn time: people flake, people change their mind at the last minute, people ghost (and I do it, too), people, worst of all, change plans, or change their mind, and don't even tell you...
I'm not talking just with women, either. My male "friends" do this. My family does this. Constantly. Randoms I meet, and plan to meet up with later, do this too. And sure, I'm a common factor, but I see this happening more generally, to all manner of people I know, too.
I really, really wish that we "as a society" hadn't normalised this... "Flaky", noncommittal, "my needs come first, always" bullshit...
I really, really do.
If there's a culture where keeping your word and actually committing is still the default, I look forward to one day finding it. Because I am yet to really... Ever experience that. And I've travelled fairly widely and met a lot of people.
It's strange how the one redeemable thing that is so pushed within the programming of modern society, the power of friendship, family, and generally the power of keeping your word is seen more as a negligiable guideline or something that is so unimportant that it comes second to an almost ubiquitous urge to just lie, no matter how important your word was to the person you gave it to.
At times it seems like we don't even speak a common language, we communicate with a surface level facade with confused, idiosyncratic babble underneath - connect at enough points of the molecule and you might hold together briefly, but the factor of cohesion through collective values just isn't in the pudding. Cohesion through manipulation and emotional or hierarchal blackmail seems to be much more successful.
I think that the main ingredient that is missing is the concept of self, the deeper kind. The self-concept is lacking in that we don't abstract these things as a part of ourselves anymore where we ought to and the unseen part that promulgates lies is a much more important faculty than the one that tells the truth. We value our word superficially because we live in a very superficial world, and are not equipped to think of our ability to keep our word as an extension of our character - and whenever you do, you are seen as autistic or get taken advantage of.
I think it is noble to atleast try and think of it as your own arm or leg, but that is just lost on most. How can anyone preach self-love if they let such a thing rot?
Good post. Knowledge of and love of self is an important building block in everything. It's a complex and difficult process, but in many ways you can boil it down to 'pride', an often maligned value. That is to say, pride as a concept of self-belief, not the kind of pride that you adopt as a surface level set of behaviours to cover deep insecurity. The trust that's lacking in society is a reflection of how many people have no real pride in themselves, since how can you expect anyone to trust you if you don't trust yourself? And what value can there be in obtaining other people's trust at that stage, except as a means of manipulating them?
Think of the word 'demoralisation' as Bezmenov used it. The most frequent usage of it in everyday society tends to refer to people's morale, their spirit, their courage. Someone with no courage has no trust in himself or other people to withstand negative outcomes. No pride, no trust. But such a person becomes 'demoralised' in an extra sense: they get divorced from any concept of moral values - because they lose all firm foundation of self, upon which to ground any of their ideals.
Being bereft of self-belief in this way, it really does seem like we've cultivated a generation or several generations of people who perform the surface level functions of real human behaviour but only in a spiritless, scared, shortsighted and treacherous way. From a deeper moral analysis, they seem hollow and they make for a brittle and seemingly soulless society.