My personal experience with the BSA was that it taught me principles of personal responsibility, a love of and responsibility for nature and the need to protect it, the value of being a member of a community and putting the community ahead of your own selfish interests.  The leaders of the troop were not high falutin' but just regular working dads who liked kids and shared their values.  

Sadly, my son's experience in scouting did not turn out well.  The troop leaders allowed nearly uncontrolled hazing, they were arrogant and conceited with no sense of community spirit.  He didn't stay long.  My daughter, until her move to CRLA (a California legal aid group) was chief fund raiser for GSA in the Alameda County Council.  My granddaughters are all girl scouts.  I have to say I was wowed by the quality of their program.  The have done incredible things and are having an experience much more similar to what I experienced as a child, only better.  

So, like with any organization, the character of its membership and, more importantly, leadership will make it what it is, for better or worse.  We're all humans.

Like every other large organization made up of actual humans, it's a mixed bag. After my extremely negative experience with the first scout troop (I won't describe in a public forum the things they did) in my group camp I expected the worst and recall being astounded at how well behaved the next troop was. That just points out the fallacy in lumping categories of people together based on limited experience. 

That was in the '70's. Some people trashed the parks back then, most didn't. Today some people trash the parks, most don't. Overall I think park visitors' behavior is better these days. 

And the bad actors weren't necessarily who you might think. Sorry if this offends any of you who are into Scouting, but the very worst experiences I had back then were with maintaining group camps used by the Boy Scouts. And some of the best experiences. It all depended on their troop leaders (there's that pesky leadership and respect again). 

I will also say this, if I kept my bathrooms and campgrounds clean they tended to stay clean. If I didn't keep on top of them they went downhill really quickly. Folks don't seem to feel very responsible for increasing an existing mess. Oh well, everyone else is doing it... Again, leadership and respect. Or call it social pressure. 

And the campgrounds never took care of themselves, I can assure you, unless there were no campers there.

+1 lostagain .... very well said.

Unfortunately I have found in my life that most people are "sheep" and they tend to often to follow the "lions" that are on top be it the business world or in politics. Which is why its important we all pick wisely those who shall lead and the masses follow. Which IMHO has sadly been very absent recently. 

I also don't want to get into an immigration debate here but lostagain last paragraph of his post struck a cord with me. The family dynamics he found in South America are not just relegated to people from Latin America. I am just a second generation American on my paternal side and remember the same family structure among my own family and their friends who also emigrated. I find it very disturbing for some Americans to denigrate and try to make scapegoats of newly arrived immigrants for doing the same now.    

I've noticed in dealing with all kinds of businesses recently, often major companies, that there has been a shift to grift.  Whether it's the cable company, a cell phone company, medical insurers, etc. etc., they all seem to have a scam they are playing on their customers.  As to why, I have my opinions, but to venture into that area that can get pretty political/religious, so I'll keep my fingers off the keyboard.

I don't agree that the it's necessarily the segment of society that lives at home with their parents that is causing the problem, though there are certainly anecdotal examples of uber-selfishness on the part of some in that category.  Most of the vandalism and willful destruction of our parks, private and public lands, and natural resources seems to be related to people who are disassociated with their communities and feel no sense of personal responsibility for their conduct.  This is a phenomena that crosses all age lines.  Undirected anger at some imaginary enemy seems to be a major element.  I have in mind, as an example, an azzhole who drives a diesel pick-up in the area where I live who put a device on it to flood the engine with fuel and belch out horrible black smoke whenever he wants.  What could possibly be the motive for such conduct?  I speculate that this person has serious anger problems and is basically flipping off everyone else in our community.

I have lived, traveled, and worked in Lat. Am. where it is common for extended families to live together spanning 3 or 4 generations.  More often than not, kids don't leave home until marriage, and later mom and dad come to live with them as they get old.  There is a strong sense of family and generational cohesion.  People tend to think of the future in generational terms, not just their own present moment.  They think more in terms of "we" than "I."  Where these strong families exist, we don't see the anger that has become such a strong element in our culture.  Maybe if we learn to think more in terms of "we" and 'us" instead of "I" and "me" we would find a lot less of the wanton destruction of our public treasures.  Again, as I suggested in the other Human's thread, it's a matter of following the "Golden Rule."

I don't think that age really has much to do with it. If anything I think most of the younger generation is more respectful of our parks and open lands than in the past. I used to see a lot more garbage dumped over the sides of back roads 20-30 years ago than I do today. 

We have had a few folks here on the OBX that have deliberately destroyed protected turtle nest sites apparently because they're angry that they don't get to drive their trucks anywhere they want on "their" beach like they used to do way back when they were kids. Or something. 

I come back to leadership. If we continue to allow our leaders to set bad examples we will continue to reap the "rewards".

In science we try to discover "how things work" and often get it right, but often we don't.  (I still don't understand why science abandoned the exquisite and simple theories of alchemy. )  The more we understand how things are put together and how they work, the more we won't mess things up quite so badly.  But, the bottom line is that in matters of "improving" in what our Creator made, sadly we are rarely honest about our motives and conclusions.

Bottom line, we are animals who try to survive and we make up the rules to promote what we think is in our interest.  But like all animals, we overgraze, over predate, and piss in our drinking water.  We're not, in the last analysis, any different from the elephant that destroy its own habitat for for one more meal.  If we were truly honest with ourselves about living in a world as God created it, we'd have a very different way of living.  But that isn't going to change, because, after all, we're humans.

Like Jato, I agree (as I similarly stated in the other Humans thread) that we are caretakers of the gifts we've received from our Creator and it is our individual and collective responsibility to leave the world better than we arrived.  I don't feel so successful as member of the human race.

I used to patrol our neighborhood for bottles too.  Indeed, when you scored a large bottle it was worth a whole 5¢, enough for a candy bar, while the smaller bottles were worth 2¢.  I have recently seen in Colombia the return of refillable bottles on a big scale.  They are phasing out plastic bottles along with plastic bags over the entire country.

40 UFO sightings in Howard County, MD ... Oh My ..... I wonder how many there have been across the Potomac River in Fairfax County? I shutter to think!

Sadly as my late father use to say and I have found true "people are pigs" is being proven now with what is happening in our National Parks due to the shut down. Hopefully this will change very soon and who knows in the future we all might be complaining not only the UFO's passing overhead but the trash we find while camping at the Great Wall of America!

We up here in Canada have a deposit on just about everything, however we still have a long way to go. You talk about garbage, we have 1 kitchen catcher a week and 1 blue bag a month. People across the lane in the last 3 weeks 10 blue bags and 12 garbage bags. my wife and I always say, there can't be anything left in the house to throw out.

Having traveled to a few countries around the world I have to conclude that unless there are some kind of decency laws enacted, people tend to be slobs.  As a Jesus follower I answer to a higher authority and know that I am a steward of His creation, so we tend to recycle as much as possible and pick up trash along our road when we take walks or ride bicycles.  By making judicious purchases at stores and recycling as much as possible we generate a total of 4 bags of garbage/year.  Now when I look at how much trash is generated across the street from me, about 12 + bags/week for 1 family of 5, I gasp.

In countries like Kosova and Albania I have seen huge piles of human waste and trash dumped into pristine lakes and rivers.  In Nicaragua, Lake Nicaragua, near the capital is so bad it is hard to breathe w/o almost getting sick to your stomach.  The country of Guyana, in South America is cleaner than most but still has a long way to go.  Probably the cleanest country I have seen is to our neighbors to the North, in Canada.  Overall, I am quite impressed with how the citizens treat and pick up after themselves.  Here, at home, the adopt-a-highway is a good thing, but it shouldn't be necessary.  People ought to be able to take their trash home instead of flinging out the window expecting someone "less important than they on the food chain" will take care of it.  Where we live, along Torch Lake, we get an added bonus when we walk or ride in that we have a 10 cent return on beer, soda, cans.  Sometimes we do quite well after a ride or walk, othertimes we just add more plastic or metal to the recycling bins.