4 ms·

There is a catasrophic level of disrespect for the younger generation. It is clear by looking at the tone in the media, the derision with which issues that affe

There is a catasrophic level of disrespect for the younger generation. It is clear by looking at the tone in the media, the derision with which issues that affect them are treated and the level of devastation we are leaving for them to handle, both in financial debt and climate change. I don't know if it's envy, if they oldies are uncomfortable with change, or they just feel incomplete if there isn't someone lower down on the foodchain. Arguing with them is of little use, they already decided their position, and what they are giving you are their justifications and confabulations for why it's okay to do so. That's why there are articles about how Millenials have destroyed the economy and the housing market because they eat too many avocados and are all turning gay and genderfluid. Millenials even broke politics, but all the politicans are like 80 It's okay for a senile 90 year old to vote even if he never finished school and voted for the same party his entire life, but a 17 year old just isn't mature enough. However it's okay to draft them into the army just 1 year later and send them off to die in a foreign land, without them ever having had a chance to vote on the issue. It's also okay to send them to prison.

kzrdude 4y ago
Maybe they look at kids and think that kids could do things better/smarter. Because everything gets easier with experience. I think everyone has thought at some time what they would do differently if they were kids again or back to school again. Some things we'd do better and have a handle on because as an adult you have some school and life experience. If they then without empathy look at schoolkids they don't understand how they think and what they struggle with.
radley 4y ago
FWIW, Boomers were a very entitled generation. They have the post-war benefits of their previous generation and ran up a huge deficit for the following generations to pay back.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Boomers were a very entitled generation. They have the post-war benefits of their previous generation and ran up a huge deficit for the following generations to pay back That's a better description of the Silent Generation than the Boomers.
  - pc86 4y ago
    I've literally never heard the silent generation described in that way.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      That's because the dominance of analysis of named generations for anything besides marketing labels pretty much always ignores everything before the Boomers, and 90% of the time also skips GenX, too, limping everything before Millenials into “Boomers”, and ignores things like Clinton being not only the first Boomer President, but also pretty close to the early boundary of Boomer political dominance.
  - radley 4y ago
    The generation who grew up during the Great Depression and WWII were very entitled???
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      I was more referring to the concrete description in the second sentence than the personality-based explanation in the first. (But, now that you mention it, a lot of the Silent Generation would have no memory of the Depression and little to none of the war, and the main formation of their adult expectations would be the immediate post-War period whereas Boomers either missed that entirely or were infants/toddlers, so...)
- SlightlyLeftPad 4y ago
  I actually agree with you and millennials are, rightfully, somewhat bitter about it. It’s not just post-war benefits. It was the era of 9-5 jobs, pensions, union jobs that paid nearly 6 figures in rural America…in the 90s…with no education, fully paid medical benefits for the family, and cheap homes. What do we have now? Self managed 401k which you have pour a life savings and second mortgage into in order to beat inflation, overpopulated suburbs, record levels of pollution, rising temperatures, impossibly expensive homes, their kids getting shot in schools, their rights being stripped away, skyrocketing college tuition costs… I actually believe a lot of millennials don’t know how bad they have it comparatively and somewhat ironically, boomers also don’t know how good they had it.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
There seem to be 3 attitudes to kids: 1 - Adults that get some kind of power trip out of tyrany and justify it by 'toughening them up'. They demand respect and dicipline they never had themselves. They will have endless stories about how their childhood was tough, and they had to talk to school and home 10 miles, alone, thorugh the snow, and it was uphill both ways 2 - Adults that 'care', by helicoptering over kids and try to shape them into a career they wish they pursued themselves. In practice they rob kids of all agency and don;t let them gow. These guys are like a 'left-wing' version of the above, for lack fo a better metaphor. 3 - Adults that actually respect children as people with independant thoughts and emotional needs - seem to be a minority.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  - sdf4j 4y ago
    Can't tell if it's sarcasm or not.
  - derekp7 4y ago
    I can't say if your opinion is supported or refuted by biological science facts, but I can give you a piece of anecdata. I tended towards being a night owl in my teens up through maybe mid 30's. In high school I'd stay up late reading, or watching episodes of Dr. Who on PBS, or pounding away on my PCjr figuring out 8088 assembly language programming. I guess that you can say that was about as useless as "staying up late playing video games", however it did lead to a successful computer career. But the reason for working into the night was that my brain would start to kick into high gear after the day's activities. I would get into a "flow" state, and want to keep going. In the mornings I could barely think straight enough to tie my shoes, and was always tired. Even if I went to bed early I couldn't fall asleep because my mind kept racing. Now I did fairly poorly in high school, but things turned around dramatically when I started community college. Two reasons -- first, I was treated like an adult. Didn't have to ask for the teacher's blessing so that I may use the washroom. Could set my own class schedule, where taking evening courses allowed me to work during the day and got me out of the TV habit at night (that is where I learned that "Prime Time Fall Lineup" really didn't mater if I missed it). But the biggest change for me (that really doesn't work for kids these days) is that my job paid enough that I could pay my school tuition. And let me tell you something, when it was my hard earned money paying for the classes you can bet your bottom dollar that I worked my posterior off to get good grades.

kzrdude 4y ago

Maybe they look at kids and think that kids could do things better/smarter. Because everything gets easier with experience. I think everyone has thought at some time what they would do differently if they were kids again or back to school again. Some things we'd do better and have a handle on because as an adult you have some school and life experience. If they then without empathy look at schoolkids they don't understand how they think and what they struggle with.

radley 4y ago

FWIW, Boomers were a very entitled generation. They have the post-war benefits of their previous generation and ran up a huge deficit for the following generations to pay back.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Boomers were a very entitled generation. They have the post-war benefits of their previous generation and ran up a huge deficit for the following generations to pay back That's a better description of the Silent Generation than the Boomers.
- pc86 4y ago
  I've literally never heard the silent generation described in that way.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    That's because the dominance of analysis of named generations for anything besides marketing labels pretty much always ignores everything before the Boomers, and 90% of the time also skips GenX, too, limping everything before Millenials into “Boomers”, and ignores things like Clinton being not only the first Boomer President, but also pretty close to the early boundary of Boomer political dominance.
- radley 4y ago
  The generation who grew up during the Great Depression and WWII were very entitled???
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    I was more referring to the concrete description in the second sentence than the personality-based explanation in the first. (But, now that you mention it, a lot of the Silent Generation would have no memory of the Depression and little to none of the war, and the main formation of their adult expectations would be the immediate post-War period whereas Boomers either missed that entirely or were infants/toddlers, so...)
SlightlyLeftPad 4y ago
I actually agree with you and millennials are, rightfully, somewhat bitter about it. It’s not just post-war benefits. It was the era of 9-5 jobs, pensions, union jobs that paid nearly 6 figures in rural America…in the 90s…with no education, fully paid medical benefits for the family, and cheap homes. What do we have now? Self managed 401k which you have pour a life savings and second mortgage into in order to beat inflation, overpopulated suburbs, record levels of pollution, rising temperatures, impossibly expensive homes, their kids getting shot in schools, their rights being stripped away, skyrocketing college tuition costs… I actually believe a lot of millennials don’t know how bad they have it comparatively and somewhat ironically, boomers also don’t know how good they had it.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

There seem to be 3 attitudes to kids: 1 - Adults that get some kind of power trip out of tyrany and justify it by 'toughening them up'. They demand respect and dicipline they never had themselves. They will have endless stories about how their childhood was tough, and they had to talk to school and home 10 miles, alone, thorugh the snow, and it was uphill both ways 2 - Adults that 'care', by helicoptering over kids and try to shape them into a career they wish they pursued themselves. In practice they rob kids of all agency and don;t let them gow. These guys are like a 'left-wing' version of the above, for lack fo a better metaphor. 3 - Adults that actually respect children as people with independant thoughts and emotional needs - seem to be a minority.

collegeburner 4y ago
- sdf4j 4y ago
  Can't tell if it's sarcasm or not.
- derekp7 4y ago
  I can't say if your opinion is supported or refuted by biological science facts, but I can give you a piece of anecdata. I tended towards being a night owl in my teens up through maybe mid 30's. In high school I'd stay up late reading, or watching episodes of Dr. Who on PBS, or pounding away on my PCjr figuring out 8088 assembly language programming. I guess that you can say that was about as useless as "staying up late playing video games", however it did lead to a successful computer career. But the reason for working into the night was that my brain would start to kick into high gear after the day's activities. I would get into a "flow" state, and want to keep going. In the mornings I could barely think straight enough to tie my shoes, and was always tired. Even if I went to bed early I couldn't fall asleep because my mind kept racing. Now I did fairly poorly in high school, but things turned around dramatically when I started community college. Two reasons -- first, I was treated like an adult. Didn't have to ask for the teacher's blessing so that I may use the washroom. Could set my own class schedule, where taking evening courses allowed me to work during the day and got me out of the TV habit at night (that is where I learned that "Prime Time Fall Lineup" really didn't mater if I missed it). But the biggest change for me (that really doesn't work for kids these days) is that my job paid enough that I could pay my school tuition. And let me tell you something, when it was my hard earned money paying for the classes you can bet your bottom dollar that I worked my posterior off to get good grades.