What do you think are the major pros/cons of each current generation?

[JasonBlack]

(06-03-2022, 01:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are probably not a stereotypical right winger.

I should hope not. Shallow stereotypes have never been very useful for solving problems.

Quote:But you love your guns!

yes sir.

[JasonBlack]

If you thought the GIs were bad about witch hunts, millennials instituted nationwide witch hunts while comprising well under 10% of the entire Congress (something like 32 house members and 1 senator). Mark my words, when they get real institutional power, they will instigate a 1st Turning purge that will make McCarthyism look like a middle school mock trial.

While we're at it, the GIs were overrated. Like the millennials, they were also a generation of witch hunters who believed in using the state to enforce autocratic social controls on people (even if there's had a more masculine polarity and were less whingy). I admire their stoic dignity and pragmatic builder mentality, but....y'all boomers rebelled for a reason.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard a single boomer go into detail about their childhood. It's like trying to ask a combat vet about Vietnam or WWII. They kinda just brush it off like "oh yeah, that...", as if they weren't even born yet until the 2T.

[David Horn]

(06-03-2022, 10:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: If you thought the GIs were bad about witch hunts, millennials instituted nationwide witch hunts while comprising well under 10% of the entire Congress (something like 32 house members and 1 senator). Mark my words, when they get real institutional power, they will instigate a 1st Turning purge that will make McCarthyism look like a middle school mock trial.

While we're at it, the GIs were overrated. Like the millennials, they were also a generation of witch hunters who believed in using the state to enforce autocratic social controls on people (even if there's had a more masculine polarity and were less whingy). I admire their stoic dignity and pragmatic builder mentality, but....y'all boomers rebelled for a reason.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard a single boomer go into detail about their childhood. It's like trying to ask a combat vet about Vietnam or WWII. They kinda just brush it off like "oh yeah, that...", as if they weren't even born yet until the 2T.

I’m not sure what you’re thinking here. The witch hunting GIs were all on the right: McCarthy, Welch, and the rest of the Birchers, among many others.  Think of Donald Trump’s ideal lawyer: Roy Cohn.  What do you see today that’s even slightly similar?  I see a lot of tail-end Boomers and Xers forming “militias”, but where are the dreaded Millennials?

[beechnut79]

(06-04-2022, 08:33 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-03-2022, 10:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: If you thought the GIs were bad about witch hunts, millennials instituted nationwide witch hunts while comprising well under 10% of the entire Congress (something like 32 house members and 1 senator). Mark my words, when they get real institutional power, they will instigate a 1st Turning purge that will make McCarthyism look like a middle school mock trial.

While we're at it, the GIs were overrated. Like the millennials, they were also a generation of witch hunters who believed in using the state to enforce autocratic social controls on people (even if there's had a more masculine polarity and were less whingy). I admire their stoic dignity and pragmatic builder mentality, but....y'all boomers rebelled for a reason.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard a single boomer go into detail about their childhood. It's like trying to ask a combat vet about Vietnam or WWII. They kinda just brush it off like "oh yeah, that...", as if they weren't even born yet until the 2T.

I’m not sure what you’re thinking here. The witch hunting GIs were all on the right: McCarthy, Welch, and the rest of the Birchers, among many others.  Think of Donald Trump’s ideal lawyer: Roy Cohn.  What do you see today that’s even slightly similar?  I see a lot of tail-end Boomers and Xers forming “militias”, but where are the dreaded Millennials?

It may just not be time for them yet. The McCarthy witch hunts didn't take place until we were about halfway through that saeculum's 1T.

If the current crisis produces enough of a backlash to undo the extreme corporate power of the past four decades, then during the coming 1T those who want to return us to the "bad old days" of extreme corporate dominance, then those folks may up being to this 1T what Communists and their sympathizers were to the last one. Then it would be in effect the opposite of what the last series of witch hunts were, thus being instigated by the left rather than the right. Under the current paradigm I would put the possibility of it as possible but definitely not probable.

Have you noticed that coming of age Millennials were not either the hotheads nor the party goes that Boomers tended to be at like age?

[Eric the Green]

(06-03-2022, 10:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: If you thought the GIs were bad about witch hunts, millennials instituted nationwide witch hunts while comprising well under 10% of the entire Congress (something like 32 house members and 1 senator). Mark my words, when they get real institutional power, they will instigate a 1st Turning purge that will make McCarthyism look like a middle school mock trial.

While we're at it, the GIs were overrated. Like the millennials, they were also a generation of witch hunters who believed in using the state to enforce autocratic social controls on people (even if there's had a more masculine polarity and were less whingy). I admire their stoic dignity and pragmatic builder mentality, but....y'all boomers rebelled for a reason.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard a single boomer go into detail about their childhood. It's like trying to ask a combat vet about Vietnam or WWII. They kinda just brush it off like "oh yeah, that...", as if they weren't even born yet until the 2T.

In some ways I am nostalgic for a relatively stable time that transpired in my Boomer childhood. I was thankful to be smart and talented in ways that were a bit harder to unfold and develop later. In other ways, I was thankful to awaken to a broader and deeper consciousness and aliveness and to greater aspirations once the 2T began and I moved into youth, and into a time when I felt more accepted or even admired, in contrast to the previous time. I literally did feel and say I had been born again in 1966.

I am interested nowadays in debunking the grandaddy of conspiracy theories, about the event on Nov.22, 1963 that ended the 1T. I am aware of a certain nostalgia for those times, when one turning ended and another began, but I was still in childhood then. Along with much that was positive, I can also see that 1966 was when we made a turn into the irrational (it was the year when the conspiracy theory got really going and became popular)-- again, for better, and for worse at the same time. It was a time when trust in and acceptance of our government and society was replaced with increasing irrational fantasy, as well as well-justified protest, criticism and cynicism, which I guess could also be called an end of innocence.



That's my 1T self on the right. I didn't always get along with my brother on my right (your left).

[JasonBlack]

(06-04-2022, 10:06 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: Have you noticed that coming of age Millennials were not either the hotheads nor the party goes that Boomers tended to be at like age?

Credit where credit is due. Yes, the majority of us are a little more sober and lack the impulsive passions of a generation that tended to take stability, functional institutions and relatively high wages for granted. Even so, there is also an emotionally immature petulance to a lot of millennials that I have never observed in boomers. I'm sure plenty of them were a little spoiled, but it seemed to be more like things didn't go their way, so they threw a tantrum, then forgot about it in a few days and jumped right in to try something else. Millennials may throw slightly less spectacular tantrums, but they're also a lot more likely to just give up and opt out of the game altogether in various ways. While this may initially be more understandable under present circumstance, it's still weak and broken, and it keeps a lot of them from making much real progress.

[JasonBlack]

disclaimer: keep in mind I'm being relatively conservative with blame here, as I didn't think it was fair to lump them in with the current woke nonsense, as that is primarily the doing of Gen X and Millennials.

imo, boomers get a lot of blame for things that millennials need to blame themselves for. Be that as it may, there is one area in which boomers as a whole were an absolute fucking disgrace: education
1) Teaching us to view the stable, loving nuclear households they grew up in with contempt 
2) Not only did they fail to prepare us for the real world, they flippantly made excuses about how that wasn't their job in the first place 
3) Utter nonsense rhetoric like "follow your passion", "if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life" 
4) Virtually no education on budgeting, credit, planning for living arrangements after college. as with their views on nuclear families, the very concept of focusing on money was held in contempt by most of them. 
5) Lots of talk about "compassion", very little gut level understanding of what it is or how to practice it. Correspondingly, millennials picked up on the bleeding heart sing-around-the-campfire side of compassion, but they learned little of the more quiet compassion and decency that help people in your community with whom you have face to face interactions get along. 
6) Irresponsibly pushing expensive degree programs on confused late teens who where never educated about other options like military, trades or just something as simple as...spending a year or two in the workforce before you make such an important decision
7) Worse yet, many of those degrees would have obviously failed to produce jobs to anyone 30+ with even a modicum of ability to research
8) Anyone remember job training programs? ...yeah, not many of those around these days. 
9) An attitude about relationships which was similar to point 3: utterly selfish, irresponsible and all centered around "passion", as if relationships were meant as nothing more than an amorous dalliance, rather than a family structure necessary to provide healthy environments for children and ensure that society had more stable, well-adjusted citizens. 


Whether it was the more conservative "because I said so" boomers, or the more liberal "he needs to find his own path" boomers, both my parents and about 80-90% of my teachers can only be accused of intellectual laziness and sheer neglect of duty with regards to giving millennials (and Gen X, and, to a lesser extent, Zoomers) the tools to deal with reality as it is, rather than as it should be. 


I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've always been an intensely cynical person who wants people to put their money where their mouth is, but even so, knowing what not to do doesn't automatically mean you know what to do instead. At 30, I'm just figuring out all kinds of things someone could have easily told me 15 years ago, but I was let down by a host of elders during a time when I actively sought out guidance, and my 20s were a lot harder than they needed to be as a result. Meanwhile, several of my other friends are much poorer than me with a smaller network of stable contacts. Many more are in ten (even hundreds!) of thousands of dollars in debt, and a few have even killed themselves. Millennial women, who are rapidly leaving their last fertile years, have even more reason to be angry about this than I do, because you can recover from poverty or a bad economy. You cannot recover your lost window to have a child. I'm not being dramatic when I say that a huge percentage of boomers have blood on their hands. 


PS: by and large, I'm grateful to have the parents I do, and in most other areas, I would give them high marks in terms of performance, but with regards to this topic in particular....hell no. A D+ is generous, and they were far from the worst offenders.

[Eric the Green]

I don't know what your basis is for your views on "education" or who the "teachers" are. Where or which of this "education" of millennials by boomers (presumably) is coming from?

Teachers would not have taught much of this. I assume you mean parents. But parents cannot be expected to teach much of anything, really. Public education, past or present, does not include "follow your passions", or budgeting, or relationships, or whether to pursue a college degree or not, or virtually anything on your list. #2 is right; parents cannot really be expected to teach anything. Nor can children be expected to listen to what the parents DO teach.

As for what is "woke", which you attributed to younger generations, that is such a general term that it means nothing. There's lots of things we the people ALL ages need to be awake to today, like the issues of today such as climate change, inequality, racism and xenophobia, etc., and some things touted that we do NOT need to be "awake" to (like QAnon and other conspiracy theories) but they also use the term "woke" or "awaken".

[David Horn]

(06-05-2022, 08:59 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: imo, boomers get a lot of blame for things that millennials need to blame themselves for. Be that as it may, there is one area in which boomers as a whole were an absolute fucking disgrace: education
1) Teaching us to view the stable, loving nuclear households they grew up in with contempt 
2) Not only did they fail to prepare us for the real world, they flippantly made excuses about how that wasn't their job in the first place 
3) Utter nonsense rhetoric like "follow your passion", "if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life" 
4) Virtually no education on budgeting, credit, planning for living arrangements after college. as with their views on nuclear families, the very concept of focusing on money was held in contempt by most of them. 
5) Lots of talk about "compassion", very little gut level understanding of what it is or how to practice it. Correspondingly, millennials picked up on the bleeding heart sing-around-the-campfire side of compassion, but they learned little of the more quiet compassion and decency that help people in your community with whom you have face to face interactions get along. 
6) Irresponsibly pushing expensive degree programs on confused late teens who where never educated about other options like military, trades or just something as simple as...spending a year or two in the workforce before you make such an important decision
7) Worse yet, many of those degrees would have obviously failed to produce jobs to anyone 30+ with even a modicum of ability to research
8) Anyone remember job training programs? ...yeah, not many of those around these days. 
9) An attitude about relationships which was similar to point 3: utterly selfish, irresponsible and all centered around "passion", as if relationships were meant as nothing more than an amorous dalliance, rather than a family structure necessary to provide healthy environments for children and ensure that society had more stable, well-adjusted citizens. 

Rebuttal:

1. Just because the alternative you lived didn't meet your needs does not mean that bland and vacuous would either.  Most nuclear families were artificially ideal.
   
2. Not one I heard or espoused.
   
3. Not nonsense at all.  Unfortunately, the PTB have made it nearly impossible, but hitching your life to a grindstone job you hate is not a solution either.
   
4. This ones legitimate, but we didn't get any either, and were flailing away most of time ourselves.
   
5. If  your gripe is all talke and no action, i can't disagree.  Most of us lack whatever it takes to perform well in that, or any other challenging capacity.
   
6. OK, I tried that personally.  I finally got to college at 41.  I don't advocate that as a model.
   
7. So, pushing someone with no technical savvy into engineering or any of the other STEM fields is a good idea in your opinion?  And btw, trades onlyu recently became a viable avenue.  Apprenticeships disappeared for decades.
   
8. Employers ysed to train their own workers.  Now they expect the wowrkers to do that for them.  Maybe that will change now that employers no longer have the whip hand.
   
9. OK, great.  Try an arranged marriage if you find that wise.
   

[JasonBlack]

Quote:Just because the alternative you lived didn't meet your needs does not mean that bland and vacuous would either.  Most nuclear families were artificially ideal.

To the contrary, I did grow up in a stable, nuclear household, and every year that goes by, I consider it more of a privilege to have had that kind of a start. 

Quote:Not one I heard or espoused.

Glad to hear it, but I heard it several times growing up. 

Quote:Not nonsense at all.  Unfortunately, the PTB have made it nearly impossible, but hitching your life to a grindstone job you hate is not a solution either.

Following your passion is great so long as you have the patience, planning ability and discipline to make it work. The trouble is, a straightforward college-to-career conveyor belt simply isn't going to do that for most people. It usually means taking on jobs for 

Quote:This ones legitimate, but we didn't get any either, and were flailing away most of time ourselves.

I see. Either way, this is definitely an issue I will seek to remedy with my own children. 

Quote:If  your gripe is all talke and no action, i can't disagree.  Most of us lack whatever it takes to perform well in that, or any other challenging capacity.

It's not just "no action". It's "....do you have to be so loud about it?" and "just because you don't hear people screaming from the mountaintop about how compassionate they are doesn't mean they don't help people"

Quote:OK, I tried that personally.  I finally got to college at 41.  I don't advocate that as a model.

well, 20-ish vs 41 is a world of difference. I don't think most people would advocate waiting that long if at all possible. 

Quote:So, pushing someone with no technical savvy into engineering or any of the other STEM fields is a good idea in your opinion?

  Only if they're smart enough. Otherwise, trades, military or various less strenuous certification programs are all options.

Quote:And btw, trades onlyu recently became a viable avenue.  Apprenticeships disappeared for decades.

interesting

Quote:Employers ysed to train their own workers.  Now they expect the wowrkers to do that for them.  Maybe that will change now that employers no longer have the whip hand.

let us hope

Quote:OK, great. Try an arranged marriage if you find that wise.

strawman

[David Horn]

I'll try to fix my typos, too.

(06-07-2022, 05:53 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Just because the alternative you lived didn't meet your needs does not mean that bland and vacuous would either.  Most nuclear families were artificially ideal.

To the contrary, I did grow up in a stable, nuclear household, and every year that goes by, I consider it more of a privilege to have had that kind of a start. 

Obvioulsy not a Leave It To Beaver style 'nuclear' household then.

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:Not nonsense at all.  Unfortunately, the PTB have made it nearly impossible, but hitching your life to a grindstone job you hate is not a solution either.

Following your passion is great so long as you have the patience, planning ability and discipline to make it work. The trouble is, a straightforward college-to-career conveyor belt simply isn't going to do that for most people. It usually means taking on jobs for [????]

Not sure what's missing here, but assuming you mean temporary, sometimes it isn't so temporary.  Life often intrudes.

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:If  your gripe is all talk and no action, i can't disagree.  Most of us lack whatever it takes to perform well in that, or any other challenging capacity.

It's not just "no action". It's "....do you have to be so loud about it?" and "just because you don't hear people screaming from the mountaintop about how compassionate they are doesn't mean they don't help people"

Okay

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:OK, I tried that personally.  I finally got to college at 41.  I don't advocate that as a model.

well, 20-ish vs 41 is a world of difference. I don't think most people would advocate waiting that long if at all possible. 

The best laid plans of mice and men ...

Again, life often intrudes.

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:So, pushing someone with no technical savvy into engineering or any of the other STEM fields is a good idea in your opinion?

 
Only if they're smart enough. Otherwise, trades, military or various less strenuous certification programs are all options.

Okay.  

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:And btw, trades only recently became a viable avenue [again].  Apprenticeships disappeared for decades.

interesting

Worse, actually.  As an early Boomer, we were seen as fresh meet by the employers then, and that never changed.  There were too many of us replacing too few retirees.  Employers had a field day -- actually 50 decades worth.  You should fare better.

Jason Wrote:

David Wrote:Employers used to train their own workers.  Now they expect the workers to do that for them.  Maybe that will change now that employers no longer have the whip hand.

let us hope

We Boomers were a dual demographic anomoly -- the product of massive catch-up from WW-II.  Millennials, on the other hand, are just what should be and were expected.  We were ready for you, but they were certainly not ready for us.

[JasonBlack]

(06-08-2022, 10:03 AM)David Horn Wrote: I'll try to fix my typos, too.

No worries. Trying to quote people properly and break up different sections without also including quotes from like 3 answers back is kind of a pain in the ass on this site. I get it hahaha.