Generation X Is Sick of Your Bullshit (2011)
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Good times breed weak people
Weak people bring bad times
Bad times breed strong people
So it goes
The multi-generational mindset shifts of work vs leisure come in waves.
Sometimes you get all three in quick succession like the early 20th century.
The capitalist class.
> Do they meet over brunch to plan it?
Sometimes. Sometimes dinner. Sometimes drinks. Sometimes, at meetings of the global institutions they and their paid agents run.
Not, like, in one unified, organized group, just a disproportionately powerful class, with many members aggressively pursuing their own self-interest, and coordinating on that where they recognize the opportunity.
The same way they overthrew the feudal order and established the capitalist order in the first place. (And also the same way that the larger but less disproportionately powerful classes beneath them have weakened the capitalist system in favor of modern mixed economy as the dominant system of the last century. Which has a lot of the first group irritated.)
My kids are being raised on a diet of learn to compute and be kind, not a conqueror.
Rather than stories of Davids and Goliath, or it has to work this way because it did work this way.
Mirror neurons can start blinking on and off to less specific story, constrained to build and tend kingdom or flock.
The toughness humanity has rewarded belongs to conquerors of others. The toughness we need is conquering self.
I don’t owe billionaires validation, or politicians allegiance. They can tough out having their figurative identity suffocated.
To the flames…
This is a silly way to look at things I think. Without a solid definition of time, its just the tautology of the good times and bad times being the only states and then blaming the people of those times.
1. Hard times (e.g. the Depression and WWII) bred the strong people of the Greatest Generation.
2. These strong people brought the prosperity that let to the good times of the Baby Boomer generation.
Leave it up to you to determine what kind of times Baby Boomers have brought.
I understand the context of the quote and I'm pointing out it immediately breaks down.
I don't think you understand the context of the quote at all, this is also the exact opposite of what the quote implies.
And to say those were the hard times conversely states that prior to that were the so-called 'good times.' This might be generalized as the roaring 20s in the US (and similarly for Weimar Germany.) However, this generalization fails in two regards: 1) contrary to popular belief, the roaring 20s weren't roaring for most people in the US (or Germany). 2nd) the members of both eras were primarily composed of the same individuals; there is no distinct line of generations divided by 'good times/bad times.'
Lastly it implies that by definition all 'good times' are predicated upon holocaust.
EDIT: And that strength can only be continually cultivated through perpetual war.
weak people with WMDs bring end times!
On the other side, strong people brought destruction, oppression, international shame, broken nations, and sometimes the disappearance of entire cultures.
Should the entire system change on a dime because of someone's writing? No.
Should the writing be rejected because they complained? No.
Survival bias is so strong, there are more billionaires than ever and the system is strongly favoring them because they lobby it to be so.
Complaining is the first step in problem resolution, to yourself or to your peers or on a blog post.
Why? Opposition to war in general? As wars go, the Gulf War was pretty close to ideal. One country invades another, invaded country requests help, US expels invader, US goes home. I wish every other US war was as clean.
While there was no land invasion of Iraq, I'm not sure "goes home" is completely accurate:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_no-fly_zones_conflict
US bases in Saudi Arabia was one of the 'grievances' of al Qaeda:
> 3. One of the principal goals of al Qaeda was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) and Somalia by violence. Members of al Qaeda issued fatwahs (rulings on Islamic law) indicating that such attacks were both proper and necessary.
* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/alqae...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials...
And Y-Combinator, together with hacker news. Thank Gen X for that.
[EDIT] I think there's a tendency to have a bunch of names for that set specifically because the latter ~half of Millennials had a very different experience than the early ~half—the early half did have a childhood more similar to Gen X, and they grew up immersed in Gen X media on top of it—so lumping them together doesn't seem right to a lot of people.
I like that. My gaming started with Repton, Qwak, Vertigo and Elite on a BBC Micro but I spent a lot of time playing Dig Dug and Rick Dangerous on green screens. I graduated highschool just as we got dialup and started realising that combined 2D/3D graphics cards might actually be alright after all. (We got one from a little company called nVidia, you probably haven't heard of them though. :P )
I feel like that should be obvious. But generations do have some commonalities based on the societal changes at the time, and that is what this "generations" talk is all about.
As a Gen Xer, I feel like the defining characteristic of my generation was parental divorce. It was really the first generation whose mothers entered the workforce in droves, and due to a widespread societal change of the roles and possibilities of women, this caused a ton of marital strife and divorce (in no way putting a judgment on this, it's just what happened).
My parents did not divorce, but my mom did work full time since I was in kindergarten, and we were pretty much all on our own until late in the evening, at a time before cell phones where parents could easily contact us.
Thus, this "shmuck" may not speak for me, but I see where he's coming from.
The kids who were really invested in the difference between Disco and KISS and AC/DC; and have yet to forge any closer connection to reality even though they're the people in charge of shit now?
The folks writing paeans to the Quaalude and taking full advantage of the modern pharmacopeia to make sure those pesky pains of reailty biting them dont actually affect their groove.
Them bastards are to blame, yeah thats it.
Stands to reason I guess.
Lost Generation: 1883 to 1900
Greatest Generation: 1901 to 1924
Silent Generation: 1924 to 1945
Me Generation (Baby Boomers): 1945 to 1965
Generation X (Thirteeners): 1965 to 1980
Generation Y (Millennials): 1980 to 1997
Generation Z (Centennials): 1997 to 20xx?
Isn't this true of most generations? It seems like a pretty universal human attribute from what I can tell, at least to some degree. Is the idea that it's a stronger pull in Gen X?
Which leaves the Boomers, and while there's certainly a lot of nostalgia in that community, I've known more that were looking forward to their retirement than would go on about the good old days.
But of course, this is all anecdotal.
How am I supposed to NOT feel "stuck in the past", when the The Matrix is coming out next month? When there's a bunch of Star Wars and Star Trek and Indiana Jones (!) next year. We're on our third or fourth Spiderman franchise, and every other teenager that I walk past is wearing an Iron Maiden or Metallica t-shirt? The most exciting new video game on the horizon is Knights of the Old Republic. Geeze, Tom Brady is the defending Super Bowl MVP!
Sure, somehow I went from "liberal" to "bigot" without actually changing my social views, and somehow we determined that comic book movies never exist before Robert Downey Jr. But otherwise, I look around... and this really DOESN'T look all that different from the 90's, you know?
On the plus side at least we got '90s rock instead of '80s hair bands. (Though I find U2's 1980s music better than their 1990s stuff.)
> only awarded for victories, not participation.
I don't want to read another glamorous blog post about how well someone tried--without hearing about what could have been done differently and what will be done differently next time.
Tired of people trying to pit us against each other because we're in different stages of life.
But when the cold war suddenly ended, Gen X was left a bit adrift with its nihilism. You can still hear echoes of those fearful days in everything that Gen X does and says to this day.
Absurd? As if, did the ballistic missiles suddenly disappear? It's only absurd if you lack imagination.
That is the problem. It should take over the reins now. Gen X has the problem that it was educated by ex-hippies with massive egos and personalities, who later sold out the West to China.
Gen X has major confidence issues and should get rid of them. It is under a two-pronged attack from the last boomers and woke millenials. Well, fight!
>The Three Generation Rule of Space Colonies states that space colonies have an average life-span of three generations until the life-support and other technical system decay to a point where the colony cannot sustain life. As Rick Robinson puts it "the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to survive indefinitely is beyond the capability of "normal" human societies. The human tendency to favor short-term expediency. will, over time, make the habitat ecosystem more and more precarious." See the link for more details.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/glossary.php
Here's the thing, that didn't come out of nowhere. There're actually earlier references I've stumbled across from various veins of engineer or policymaker with regards to how difficult it is to get funding for proper maintenance of civil engineering projects.
The meme formulation of hard times, strong people, yada yada, is a glib restatement of a rule that to me seems to be at the very heart of information theory:
If you ain't lived it, you don't get it. I can tell you stories til I am blue in the face, but until people [start dropping dead from cholera in the streets], [get trapped in elevators due to widespread power failure], [start suffocating in the mal-maintained subway tunnels], [having their homes blow up because of long deferred natural gas pipe maintenance], you will not give me the resources to get done what needs to get done.
To generation n-1 it's theory, generation n-2, they paid for it in blood, to generation n, it's the crazy ramblings of old people and the world don't work that way anymore grampa.
Except it do. And it will continue to. This the cycle continues. Even the creation of an ennui consumed generation is predicted in the sense that a generation sees the problems, but isn't in touch with history enough to figure out how far to roll back thinking to safely start retraversing a new path.
You either get an extremely luck person who stumbled on it randomly, or you get hard times when the next demagogue wrecking ball's shit and everyone has to figure out how to pick up the pieces.
...and that's where we get back to tech. Younger techies tend to act as though none of the hard-won knowledge about how to store/move/act on data, how to write robust software, etc. applies any more. The fact is that some does and some doesn't. Time after time after time, things that we once knew about (for example) network congestion or storage failure modes are ignored or forgotten because "the world don't work that way anymore" then come back to the fore very suddenly and painfully because yes it does. A large part of the reason I retired is that I got tired of over-promoted kids ignoring warnings about things I had lived through once and could see coming again. "I told you so" is no substitute for being allowed to contribute in the first place.
P.S. I'm not a Boomer; I'm very early GenX, and way more attuned to those experiences/attitudes.
I caught the end of Gen X, so I get some of the gripe, but I've always been a technology native, so in that regard I'm closer to a Millennial in life experience.
Many people in tech are a bit like this, perhaps ahead of their time because they caught the wave earlier.
With Millenials having kids, being married, etc now, I don't think Boomers can continue being the boogeyman holding us down. It might be time to actually start fixing things.
And in a two party system, even a majority won't help. Biden got elected thanks to young voters, but look how little climate action the new administration has taken.
Sad that you're looking to assign blame rather than problem-solve for future generations.
Seeing how these discussions go today, however, and looking forward - I fully expect the millennials to be an easy target before long. Gen X isn't big enough to shoulder the blame after boomers die out.
You're right of course, I should have said plurality. I'm currently reading a biography of Hitler so you'd think I'd be particularly sensitive to the difference.
People look at everything trump did and think "why can't Biden do the same, but for good?" and the problem is, the government is built to be torn down, not built up.
Biden has no power to take climate action. The EPA doesn't have the ability to just subsidize solar panels or enact taxes on CO2 emissions. They've actually tried to do that for CO2 and that was struck down by the supreme court. [1]
That leaves congressional action to force climate action and, unfortunately we have a 50/50 split in the senate with 2 democrat senators that are weak on climate issues. (50 republican senators that will not support any climate action).
Once you realize this, you understand the solution is voting for democrats to the senate in 2022/2024 so those 2 holdouts don't matter as much. Move the balance of the senate by 2 more democrat senators and you might see some climate action.
Stop being disappointed in biden for not doing what he can't do. Start being mad at the 2 democrat senators and the 50 republican senators who stand in the way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_Air_Regulatory_Group_v...
If Biden cared, he could shame these "Democrat" senators and prevent them from getting re-elected. If he uses his platform to inhibit their campaign fundraising, they will surely change positions out of fear of loosing their seat.
And something to keep in mind before we make campaign contributions for 2022, remember that some votes are way more valuable than others. Each vote for a Senator in Arizona counts more than 5x than in California.
It's hard to do that when you are unpopular nationwide[1] and downright loathed in Arizona[2]. Independents approval/disapproval is 30-60.
Sinema is much more popular than Biden, but not so popular among her base. A democrat can't win in Arizona just on the basis of the Democratic vote. They have to win the independent vote and hope for low turnout in the GOP. So Biden is already a drag on Sinema's re-election. If he publicly attacked her, her popularity would go up. Why do you think she is opposing these policies? Because it increases her political capital and support at home. The more the media focuses on her as the one blocking these unpopular policies, the more Arizona voters rally to her side.
[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
[2] https://nypost.com/2021/09/08/bidens-approval-rating-down-in...
Manchin is more popular than Biden in WV, and his positions do more to support his fundraising than Biden’s opposition would do to hurt it. Biden can't meaningfully hurt Manchin.
Sinema presents the opposite problem: she's already completely alienated the Democratic primary electorate. She clearly isn't interested in being reelected (or, if she does care, its not as a Democrat), so there's no leverage there.
But honestly, Manchin is a democrat senator in a red state. Manchin pissing off Biden and the rest of the Democrats is likely GOOD for him there.
Sinema has no excuse and should be primaried in AZ.
> I will readily admit that the Democratic party deserves more blame than Biden himself.
I don't agree with either Democrats or Biden being blamed here. Democrats do not have a filibuster proof majority. Why blame them when Republicans are filibustering nearly every single bill put forward? This isn't an example of a party failing, this is an example of simply not having enough votes to make a change.
> remember that some votes are way more valuable than others.
Definitely agree, but also remember to never say never. Georgia, of all states, put in 2 democrat senators. I would have never predicted that would happen.
And to that point, I don't think a single bill would have passed had that not happened. I think Democrats take way too much blame for Republican obstruction. They've been shockingly unified throughout this legislative session. They've finally started playing some harder ball. Don't blame them because it's still incredibly tight margins.
"If". This isn't a new problem, the young people never show up to vote. They are given a million messages that they can't make a difference, that they shouldn't bother. They should wonder who is sending those messages.
What do you say to me?
However those whose votes are meaningful don't know it.
Let's say that if do you vote, you are 99.999% sure your vote is meaningless. If you don't vote, you'll be 100% sure. That .001% is a larger difference than it might seem.
What's stopping you?
Sure they do. They live in Minnesota, Wisconson, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Nebraka's weird second district, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Maine's weird second district, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Montana, South Carolina, Alaska, or Missouri; give or take a few.
> Let's say that if do you vote, you are 99.999% sure your vote is meaningless. If you don't vote, you'll be 100% sure. That .001% is a larger difference than it might seem.
> What's stopping you?
Do you use the same logic for the lottery? Because I'd reckon you have better odds of winning the powerball than the odds of massachusetts turning red.
Your 0.001% chance is made up and too large.
The marginal cost of marking a candidate in the Presidential race is a lot lower than the price of a lottery ticket, especially if you are already voting in any of the other races that are usually on the same ballot and where your chance of impact is usually much higher.
OTOH, maybe generations are just astrology for journalists.
I agree that the solution is for millennials to get more politically active. But the cards are sort of stacked against us. We have less money over all than prior generations which means any representative we want is likely going to be outspent by older representatives (for not being whiny or whatever).
On top of that, the political landscape has changed somewhat significantly. What changed is we have computers to draw congressional maps that remove political competition. There are few "swing" districts in the US and that has a lot to do with computer aided gerrymandering. That sort of system makes it easier for an old fart to stay in power for far too long, because they've picked constituency that won't remove them from office for bad behavior.
Of course, the only solution is to be less apathetic than the boomers and gen xers. To vote in very large numbers that are hard to ignore. That, however, is a hard thing to pull off. It's hard to convince people that their vote matters and will make a difference or that participation matters.
I work in tech, I have debt, I live frugally, and I've seen how easily it would be to wipe out my entire family's savings with a medical emergency - my dad worked himself to the edge of death.
He's a boomer. We millenials grew up believing that things would always be the idealistic world it was of our childhoods, but that was a really really unique spot in history. We still are some of the most privileged people in history.
I am feeling old enough to miss the "good old day". Even as I sit here typing message on a social forum, I can't help but feel that the internet has been a net negative. We weren't as unhappy as the current generation seems. Among other factors, I think its because we weren't constantly bombarded with the message that we should be unhappy.