"Get off my lawn!" I find it rather ironic that this would be posted on HN; this is essentially a straw man argument generalizing a narrow perception of societ

"Get off my lawn!" I find it rather ironic that this would be posted on HN; this is essentially a straw man argument generalizing a narrow perception of society, which is a little worrying coming from a University Professor. It's pretty amazing that after a couple of centuries of fighting against the culture of "Generation (n+1) can only aspire to be as good as Generation (n), but can never be better", we still see articles like this, over and over again. This is not to say a lot of people are not incapable of fixing things, but I'd argue this has always been true, in one way or another. Culture and technology move on, the breadth of our knowledge has expanded so far and so deep that it has become near-impossible (and it is only getting harder) for any given person to be generalistic enough - whether this is good or bad is a different question. My parents can do things I'd be unable to do, but the opposite is true as well. This doesn't we belittle each other, it simply means we respect and value what each other can achieve, as individuals and members of society. This cross-generation bashing (in both directions) is toxic, as toxic as other kinds of discriminations (gender, race, sexual preference, ...). I suspect the Professor in question was originally upset about our culture of waste, which, again, is a different question.