4 ms·

I'm guessing you're pretty young, late twenties at the latest.

by ses1984 7y ago

arthurcolle 7y ago
You're absolutely right, I'm 27 - turning 28 in February. Do you care to comment on what gave you this impression, and, more specifically, why you feel it has any relevance on what I wrote? I understand that I made a pretty broad statement, but anecdotally, there are so many different instances of boomers denigrating choices of later generations across many different buckets of choices - social, technological, moral, cultural, political, psycho-sexual; and as I've lived my life, we've seen rapid chances in societal behaviors that just make me feel that as every successive generation comes into existence, you just get that bit-flip for that dimension of the 'collective consciousness' (not woo-woo collective consciousness, but just the aggregated set of behaviors and interactions manifested by the people that exist today, that came to pass based on the pre-existing cc from their parents and those that influenced them, etc). Psychologically, it's funny, because there is this commonly cited concept of 'teenage/adolescent rebellion' where, despite the love and adoration you feel for your parents, there develops a kind of rift in response to the rules imposed vs. what you immediately want to do/desire to explore the world without the parental control structure that was imposed previously. Perhaps the generational shifts that are seen are a consequence of this - maybe not, I'm just thinking out loud here. But yeah it is an interesting topic. Care to comment further on what gave you this impression? I'm intrigued.
- ses1984 7y ago
  Put yourself in the shoes of someone who was 30 in the year 1990 and they might have had the exact same outlook you have now. Try again for 1960. Society has changed in the 60 years for sure, but not always in the way you predict, or the way you want.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  You speak as though change moves in one direction, and that there is a mainly additive "correct" one. That speaks of the over-confidence of youth, sorry. I will try and answer as an enthusiastic reader of history rather than as of a particular generation as frankly, I see that as utterly irrelevant. Both your comments assign blame to boomers in a way that implies no other generation before or since has ever made an insulting denigration of those that follow. "Kid's these days" has probably been a universal comment of the parental generation of the kids, and "parents just don't get it" the comment of their kids since the stone age. The only thing that marks boomers as different is the technological leverage available to them. Meaning each and every succeeding generation since the industrial revolution can do more good and vastly more harm, than the one that went before. WW1 was so much worse than the Napoleonic war as technological leverage brought industrial slaughter. Similar comments were heard in Dickens day, in pre-WW1 Edwardian era, and I have no doubt will continue to be heard in 30 when it'll be the ageing Millennials being denigrated, and 300 years, etc. Just to put your "only divisive because boomers" issues into context, ALL of them were divisive in the eras they were restricted, except the pendulum was swinging the other way. There were moral panics and outrages over all these in Elizabethan, Victorian, Edwardian times and still today. So that's 400 years. You'll find similar going back to ancient Rome and Greece. We are going through a pendulum swing of relaxing attitudes to all of these, and decline of regulation. Regulation declines due to the rise of the cargo cult of neoliberalism 1980 on, attitudes due to the rise of individual consumerism 1960 on. Give it fifty or a hundred years and there will be a "universal" clamour for greater restriction, perhaps with a new spin, perhaps in forms of regulation commonly tried across the millennia. Perhaps religion or abstinence will see a revival. Perhaps something completely new, whether environmentalism or something we can't yet conceive. At some point in the swing to relaxed, low regulation, rebelling against parents will necessarily spawn a more community, collective, or restrictive reaction.

I'm guessing you're pretty young, late twenties at the latest.

You're absolutely right, I'm 27 - turning 28 in February. Do you care to comment on what gave you this impression, and, more specifically, why you feel it has any relevance on what I wrote? I understand that I made a pretty broad statement, but anecdotally, there are so many different instances of boomers denigrating choices of later generations across many different buckets of choices - social, technological, moral, cultural, political, psycho-sexual; and as I've lived my life, we've seen rapid chances in societal behaviors that just make me feel that as every successive generation comes into existence, you just get that bit-flip for that dimension of the 'collective consciousness' (not woo-woo collective consciousness, but just the aggregated set of behaviors and interactions manifested by the people that exist today, that came to pass based on the pre-existing cc from their parents and those that influenced them, etc). Psychologically, it's funny, because there is this commonly cited concept of 'teenage/adolescent rebellion' where, despite the love and adoration you feel for your parents, there develops a kind of rift in response to the rules imposed vs. what you immediately want to do/desire to explore the world without the parental control structure that was imposed previously. Perhaps the generational shifts that are seen are a consequence of this - maybe not, I'm just thinking out loud here. But yeah it is an interesting topic. Care to comment further on what gave you this impression? I'm intrigued.

ses1984 7y ago
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who was 30 in the year 1990 and they might have had the exact same outlook you have now. Try again for 1960. Society has changed in the 60 years for sure, but not always in the way you predict, or the way you want.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
You speak as though change moves in one direction, and that there is a mainly additive "correct" one. That speaks of the over-confidence of youth, sorry. I will try and answer as an enthusiastic reader of history rather than as of a particular generation as frankly, I see that as utterly irrelevant. Both your comments assign blame to boomers in a way that implies no other generation before or since has ever made an insulting denigration of those that follow. "Kid's these days" has probably been a universal comment of the parental generation of the kids, and "parents just don't get it" the comment of their kids since the stone age. The only thing that marks boomers as different is the technological leverage available to them. Meaning each and every succeeding generation since the industrial revolution can do more good and vastly more harm, than the one that went before. WW1 was so much worse than the Napoleonic war as technological leverage brought industrial slaughter. Similar comments were heard in Dickens day, in pre-WW1 Edwardian era, and I have no doubt will continue to be heard in 30 when it'll be the ageing Millennials being denigrated, and 300 years, etc. Just to put your "only divisive because boomers" issues into context, ALL of them were divisive in the eras they were restricted, except the pendulum was swinging the other way. There were moral panics and outrages over all these in Elizabethan, Victorian, Edwardian times and still today. So that's 400 years. You'll find similar going back to ancient Rome and Greece. We are going through a pendulum swing of relaxing attitudes to all of these, and decline of regulation. Regulation declines due to the rise of the cargo cult of neoliberalism 1980 on, attitudes due to the rise of individual consumerism 1960 on. Give it fifty or a hundred years and there will be a "universal" clamour for greater restriction, perhaps with a new spin, perhaps in forms of regulation commonly tried across the millennia. Perhaps religion or abstinence will see a revival. Perhaps something completely new, whether environmentalism or something we can't yet conceive. At some point in the swing to relaxed, low regulation, rebelling against parents will necessarily spawn a more community, collective, or restrictive reaction.