This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Also, America sucks and always will.
Comment on Make America Great!
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 3 days ago
As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the cloud and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.
Now I'm the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:
When you're a kid, the world belongs to the grown ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.
When you reach teenager years, the world starts being yours: you've developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.
When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You're not a powerless kid and you're not weaker old guy/gall yet. You're fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it's yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed.
And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shift below your feet, but it's happening very slowly, year after year, until...
You reach an age at which you're very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.
And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledged that it's not your world anymore, but it's younger people's now. People who are now the age you once were: it's their turn to have a go at owning the world. You're just in it for the ride.
Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you've liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It's not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It's easier to reject the world around you than admit it's just not how you like it anymore, but it's poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.
I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past - from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they're not from my world: they're from today's youth's world, and I have no say in it.
If you're old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.
chloroken@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 2 days ago
This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Did I claim otherwise?
Of course we gen-Xers had it easier. And our boomer parents before us even more so. This is totally unrelated to what I said, which is older folks tend to think the world was better in the past than it truly was.
Also, America sucks and always will.
That is what I said. There is no better America in the past.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I can say with certainty that I had it way easier than my son.
theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think the meme is more about reflection about nationalism and its ties to history…
While for some countries like Hungary to be nationalistic is just funny (I am hungarian); while other countries say Germany, Britain explicitly outline their crimes against humanity in their education; but some countries who are not revolting dictatorships like Japan or US are explicitly proud of it… The last group is very concerning…
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Welcome to conservatism!
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Yeah OP is delusional. “Oh well I turned {{age}}, guess I’ll just stop caring about anything.”
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The only problem I see with that is, even though I’m 40, the government and corporations are all still run by people older than me.
Hell, some of the folks in Congress are older than my parents.
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 3 days ago
That's the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise, but age also disconnects them from the needs of the world of today.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
No, they don’t. Under a representative democracy (what most of The West is at this point) your “rulers” are not meant to be kings who duck into their study to decide what is most Just.
Their responsibility is to surround themselves with experts and to listen to them. Your representative should not need to study economics and computer science to understand what Google is. They just need to be able to understand a wikipedia level overview so that they can communicate with the scientists and economists on staff.
Similarly, your representative should not be sitting and deliberating on what is Right. They should instead be communicating with their constituents to do what is right by them. Which works better when they aren’t lugging around a canister of oxygen everywhere they go.
Which is why we tend to not use the word “rulers” anymore and instead focus on “civil servants”.
There IS an argument that the President/Prime Minister needs “wisdom” because they may need to make very quick decisions. But even that is mostly about listening to the domain experts who just happen to be generals in that case.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That is actually a good reason to have a wide variety of ages in government, so that there is a mix of those connected to the world today and those that have more wisdom.
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 3 days ago
That's not a bad idea. But then you have to outlaw money in politics, because as soon as money is in the picture, it invariably favors rich old dudes, or people with connections that can only be formed over time.
In other words, nothing like this will happen in America in my grandchildren's lifetime, let alone my children's or mine.
AlexLost@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And they’ve been running it since your parents were younger than you now. This has got to change, get our parents politicians out of office!