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Doubtful. Here's Hesiod around 800 BC: "I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth a
by j-g-faustus 16y ago
Doubtful. Here's Hesiod around 800 BC:
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint"
Between the two hypotheses a) "society has been declining for thousands of years" and b) "older people tend towards grumpiness" I know which one sounds more likely :)
Although Hesiod's "I see no hope for the future of our people" may be vindicated by the fact that his culture no longer exists.
Perhaps cultures stagnate and corrupt over time, and complaints about youth is a symptom rather than a cause? Perhaps the collapse of a civilization every now and then is one of the mechanisms that keep human societies sustainable in the long run?
There are interesting questions here, but I don't think the older generation complaining about the younger generation is one of them. Not in and of itself, at least.
- pg 16y agoI wouldn't say that society has been declining for thousands of years, but there have definitely been long periods of consistent decline in things like toughness, respect for elders, and so on. Hesiod's time would have been one of them, because Greece was then in transition between the tough, impoverished warrior culture of Homeric times and the comparatively easy, luxurious city life of Plato's time. Among English speaking peoples, toughness has on average (i.e. not including people who hit restart by moving to frontier areas) probably declined monotonically since around 1000 AD.
- vidar 16y agoThis seems to be a function of rising living standards, so that the population is never tougher than they need to be. If we assume that toughness is a desirable attribute, is there a way to toughen people up, even if they don't "need it".
- _delirium 16y agoThat's one of the classic (Gibbon, I think) explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire: as their living standards rose, they got softer until a bunch of lower-living-standards barbarians could overrun them. Not sure of a solution, though. (It's probably also worth noting that that hypothesis isn't as popular among modern historians.)
- pg 16y agoSure, military training tends to do that.
- _delirium 16y agoWealthy societies tend to resist military training, though. I can't imagine a proposal to reinstitute the draft would be very popular in the US, and much of Europe is slowly phasing out their mandatory military service.