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Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

Exactly this. Young people have plenty of outrage to go around, and they think they can change the world. Most of them don't do anything about it, though; they just get outraged, virtue signal on social media, change meaningless behaviors (but make sure everyone knows they did), and carry on exactly as their parents did.

Things in the world move slowly, and after a decade or two of caring (or at least aggressively claiming to care), young people turn into old, cynical, jaded realists.

I vote. I make small, pragmatic changes to how I interact with the world. I see what happens over the course of many decades and how slowly things move. In the end I'm glad I won't be around to see how terrible it's going to be in 100 years. Good luck.

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The end of your message is so much worse than whatever you imagine young people to be doing. "Good luck", really? Condescending much?

Also you're pretty damn wrong about those young people: they're way more active than you think. But you seem to be quite aware that it's going to be terrible in a few decades yet you're happy simply making small changes and seeing "what happens over the course of many decades". Wilful ignorance much?

The cognitive dissonance in your words is strong, and instead of actually looking inwards you're content thinking that the people who are barely out of their teenage years should bear the blame for being born with a smartphone in their pockets (thanks to which generations again?).

I sure am glad that they aren't learning from your attitude as they work towards being in a position to be directors or politicians or CEOs. You or I might not be there to see the worst of it, but I'd take their attitude over yours any day of the week.

edit to the person pointing out the word "decades": I replied to a message on their own terms. I'm fully aware that things are unravelling right now, but I don't even need to shift the point and start another debate in order to prove them logically wrong.

> in a few decades

decades?

Decade = 10 years.

I know what a decade is, however I believe that it will be bad in less time than decades, plural.

Ah. Sorry. In that case, agreed.

On the other hand, there’s the suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, etc. If less people made excuses and instead joined the youth, change might happen.

The young people may be the most passionate, but the ethos that puts saying the right thing ahead of doing the right thing, is a broader societal indictment that seems to have skyrocketed in the last decade, and it’s not tied to one generation.

Maybe it was social media. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way it’s shockingly counterproductive.

Uh not quite. History is full of examples where generations turned the world on its head over the course of a couple years (for good or bad... mostly worse, I concede)

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