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Interesting article and ideas. I wonder how well we can truly know how the thoughts and motivations of “our generation” compares to “past generations” though. H
by burlesona 5y ago
Interesting article and ideas. I wonder how well we can truly know how the thoughts and motivations of “our generation” compares to “past generations” though. How would we _know_ that people today are more worried about status than people in the past? How would we _know_ that in the past merit carried more weight than “noble blood.” That doesn’t seem to me like something that can be quantified, so I don’t see how we can confidently make comparisons over time in any scientific sense, only in an anecdotal and philosophical sense.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIn the past, "noble blood" was the metric of merit.
- krastanov 5y agoEdit: Regrettably, the entertaining quote I copied below seems to be completely misattributed, as seen in the comment below. This is a quote that I put in a sibling comment that might entertain you. The "kids these days" complaints have been a consistent claim made by each adult generation since antiquity https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love...
- osipov 5y agoKeep telling that yourself you loser, you hired slave.
- stkdump 5y agohttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/
- watwut 5y agoYet another problem with that quote is that generations are in fact different. Some of them are more violent then others. Some of them drink more then others. Some of them are more submissive then others. Sometimes, kids are raised to be assertive, other times they are raised to obey. This quote is used to devalue anyone who points out some difference between now and then. But, it does not prove that such person is wrong.
- watwut 5y agoHistory studies do deal with that sort of thing. But, one would have to deep down into it and go on reading it in order to learn it. The big problem there is that real historians never talk about "past generations" as a whole which is nonsense concept anyway. Historians talk about "1735 English aristocracy" or "1865 lower class women in American north" and so on. Because how the society is organized constantly changes.