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This article is a product of a culture so narcissistically in love with our own perceived greatness that we cannot conceive of anything of value being created o

by TrevorJ 17y ago

This article is a product of a culture so narcissistically in love with our own perceived greatness that we cannot conceive of anything of value being created outside that which we've built ourselves in the last five minutes. Have we really allowed out existences to become so abstracted from the reality of what we need as humans to survive and thrive that we really believe technology is the only sort of skill worth having? This article smacks of someone raised on MTV and happy meals. Also: Give me your average 30-something desk jockey and I'll send him out to work the farm with my 73 year old grandfather who's never spend a day of his life behind a desk. If the desk jockey can keep up, then we can talk.

jerf 17y ago
It is true that older people still have things to offer (if I may put it so crassly)... but that doesn't make it any less true that they have much less to offer than they used to. There isn't much you can do about that. After all, the article itself pointed out that older people still have stores of wisdom, but where a young person may want to hear about how to make his crops grow better from any source that has that info (especially after your first crop failure), young people in general aren't looking for moral guidance. (Again, until after it has failed them somehow, which tends to take more than one year. They'll learn such things just in time to be ignored by their own children.) There has been a fairly objective sea change here. It's not just narcissism, in fact I don't think it's narcissism at all.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  We perceive as a culture that they have less to offer because we have shifted our measure of value. Whether our perception proves accurate is going to have to be proven out by time. I say that it will not be proven correct.
  - jerf 17y ago
    What's "perceived" about the fact that we don't need them to give us typewriting tips? What's "perceived" about the fact that I really have no need to spend quality time with my grandparent fixing an engine from the 1930s? What's "perceived" about the fact that most people don't need to learn how to can food? It's not perception. It's fact. I say this as someone who in fact spends a lot of time with my grandparents, has spent the last three weekends canning applesauce and visiting my grandparents in the hospital, unlike all of my other several cousins. This is because I am a whacko that actually does value their wisdom, their life stories, and some of the store of "ancient wisdom" like how to preserve your own food and advice on gardening from people who have been doing it for half a century. I've walked the walk here. But this only further strengthens the observation I have that there isn't much else I need to go to them for, compared to what might have been useful 200 years ago. Their entire value isn't gone, but there are huge swathes of value that are. Bemoaning that fact won't change anything. I mention this because you need to look these facts in the eye if you're going to be able to do anything about it. Waxing rhapsodic about entirely hypothetical values isn't going to change anybody's mind on anything. The only way you're going to care is if you look the situation dead on, see the truth, and react to it. And many will still choose to not care about moral wisdom or how to preserve food or anything else like that. I disagree with them, but such is life.
    - TrevorJ 17y ago
      I'm confused about your point - you seem to be arguing against yourself here. Yes, there are huge swaths of knowledge that by certain, subjective metrics won't be useful to certain people, but the same could be said about a lot of things. I don't need to know the same stuff that an architect needs to know for example. I guess the basic fallacy I take issue with is that people are now measuring the value of a person based on the relevance of the knowledge that person has, and I feel that our value as people goes far beyond that.
      - jerf 17y ago
        You're being emotionally fuzzy, because you are refusing to make value judgments, a grave cognitive hazard of the current postmodern philosophical regime. I say instead that there's more than one relevant definition of "value". Are old people less "valuable" because we have no use for their wisdom? It does not diminish their dignity and "final worth" as human beings, but yes, there are useful and valid definitions by which their value is less. They are not all the value definitions, but the set is not empty. Jamming a single-dimensional definition of value on top of my posts will definitely make them look incoherent; that certainly doesn't surprise me much. Your way of thinking leaves you unable to understand why the 50-year-old in the article feels the way he does. Of course he's valuable, right, and you should tell him to buck up, right? Well, it's true that he's still valuable, but it is also true that he has identified a real problem that you can't solve by just telling him he's valuable. I don't know what the exact solution for this person is, but it's more than just trying to load up on empty self-esteem. Emotionally fuzzy thinking is a great social signal ("man, shouldn't we just love everybody?"), but it's a terrible way to solve problems like this guy's; indeed, take this tack and you'll just further alienate him. There's a real problem here.
        TrevorJ 17y ago
        I would argue that the problem with broad generalizations and fuzzy definitions comes not from me, but from the article in question. The logical fallacy in the article is that he seems to be equating perceived value in the modern workforce with human worth as a whole. I agree absolutely with what you are saying: there are different definitions of value depending on the arena in question. The issue is that we seem to be taking one area (technology) and equating it with all others, which as you say, isn't useful or valid. I've enjoyed our discussions :)

by TrevorJ 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

It is true that older people still have things to offer (if I may put it so crassly)... but that doesn't make it any less true that they have much less to offer than they used to. There isn't much you can do about that. After all, the article itself pointed out that older people still have stores of wisdom, but where a young person may want to hear about how to make his crops grow better from any source that has that info (especially after your first crop failure), young people in general aren't looking for moral guidance. (Again, until after it has failed them somehow, which tends to take more than one year. They'll learn such things just in time to be ignored by their own children.) There has been a fairly objective sea change here. It's not just narcissism, in fact I don't think it's narcissism at all.

TrevorJ 17y ago
We perceive as a culture that they have less to offer because we have shifted our measure of value. Whether our perception proves accurate is going to have to be proven out by time. I say that it will not be proven correct.
- jerf 17y ago
  What's "perceived" about the fact that we don't need them to give us typewriting tips? What's "perceived" about the fact that I really have no need to spend quality time with my grandparent fixing an engine from the 1930s? What's "perceived" about the fact that most people don't need to learn how to can food? It's not perception. It's fact. I say this as someone who in fact spends a lot of time with my grandparents, has spent the last three weekends canning applesauce and visiting my grandparents in the hospital, unlike all of my other several cousins. This is because I am a whacko that actually does value their wisdom, their life stories, and some of the store of "ancient wisdom" like how to preserve your own food and advice on gardening from people who have been doing it for half a century. I've walked the walk here. But this only further strengthens the observation I have that there isn't much else I need to go to them for, compared to what might have been useful 200 years ago. Their entire value isn't gone, but there are huge swathes of value that are. Bemoaning that fact won't change anything. I mention this because you need to look these facts in the eye if you're going to be able to do anything about it. Waxing rhapsodic about entirely hypothetical values isn't going to change anybody's mind on anything. The only way you're going to care is if you look the situation dead on, see the truth, and react to it. And many will still choose to not care about moral wisdom or how to preserve food or anything else like that. I disagree with them, but such is life.
  - TrevorJ 17y ago
    I'm confused about your point - you seem to be arguing against yourself here. Yes, there are huge swaths of knowledge that by certain, subjective metrics won't be useful to certain people, but the same could be said about a lot of things. I don't need to know the same stuff that an architect needs to know for example. I guess the basic fallacy I take issue with is that people are now measuring the value of a person based on the relevance of the knowledge that person has, and I feel that our value as people goes far beyond that.
    - jerf 17y ago
      You're being emotionally fuzzy, because you are refusing to make value judgments, a grave cognitive hazard of the current postmodern philosophical regime. I say instead that there's more than one relevant definition of "value". Are old people less "valuable" because we have no use for their wisdom? It does not diminish their dignity and "final worth" as human beings, but yes, there are useful and valid definitions by which their value is less. They are not all the value definitions, but the set is not empty. Jamming a single-dimensional definition of value on top of my posts will definitely make them look incoherent; that certainly doesn't surprise me much. Your way of thinking leaves you unable to understand why the 50-year-old in the article feels the way he does. Of course he's valuable, right, and you should tell him to buck up, right? Well, it's true that he's still valuable, but it is also true that he has identified a real problem that you can't solve by just telling him he's valuable. I don't know what the exact solution for this person is, but it's more than just trying to load up on empty self-esteem. Emotionally fuzzy thinking is a great social signal ("man, shouldn't we just love everybody?"), but it's a terrible way to solve problems like this guy's; indeed, take this tack and you'll just further alienate him. There's a real problem here.
      - TrevorJ 17y ago
        I would argue that the problem with broad generalizations and fuzzy definitions comes not from me, but from the article in question. The logical fallacy in the article is that he seems to be equating perceived value in the modern workforce with human worth as a whole. I agree absolutely with what you are saying: there are different definitions of value depending on the arena in question. The issue is that we seem to be taking one area (technology) and equating it with all others, which as you say, isn't useful or valid. I've enjoyed our discussions :)