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Comment by kortex | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure if we dig deep enough, we can probably find clay tablets impressed with gripes about lazy workers and insolent children. Socrates famously groused about "kids these days".

> Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs.

- Socrates, ~400 BCE [1]

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/?amp=1

[2] previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161426

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That quote is clearly not from Socrates, or even claimed to have been from Socrates by any ancient author, as the source you link to notes.

However, it does show up frequently, and my view of it has generally been that it could have originated as a loose translation of the Superior/Right Argument character from Aristophanes' Clouds, who does make similar claims:

>And so, young man, that’s why you should choose me, the Better Argument. Be resolute. You’ll find out how to hate the market place, to shun the public baths, to feel ashamed of shameful things, to fire up your heart when someone mocks you, to give up your chair when older men come near, not to insult your parents, nor act in any other way which brings disgrace or which could mutilate your image as an honourable man.

This is very problematic in that, first, Clouds is a comedy mocking Socrates, second, Socrates' views at that point in the play are supposed to be represented by the Inferior/Wrong Argument character, not the Superior Argument character, and third, Aristophanes is mocking the claims of both characters.

In a fashion typical of Aristophanes, the Inferior Argument wins the debate with a joke about the audience's sexual proclivities that convinces the Superior Argument that its cause is hopeless.

There was the recent article posted on hacker news that had a tablet from Egypt recording people's excuses why they didn't come to work. It was very relatable,some things they were sick, but there were other reasons too that looked like weak excuses. It was no different than showing up at your factory job and explaining why you weren't there to be on the sofa line yesterday.

"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.

It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907."

From your link.

Nobody wants to read a full article anymore...

Nobody wants to write a full comment anymore and leaves trailing sentences.

Kids these days...

GOML

Nobody wants to make them anymore...

Nobody wants to remember if anymore should be any more or anymore anymore.

Pretty uncharacteristic quote for him considering how he pretty much died for the kids! There was one group of people Socrates surely had a problem with, and it was not "insolent children." No offense, but it would be people like you he would hate these days, those that appeal to ambiguous authority and precedence to argue that static values override actual interrogation in the present.

For sure. At the same time, reading Socrates, he comes across as a pompous know-it-all, the sort you wouldn't want to spend an evening with. When adolescents take on that hectoring attitude, it's kinda cute and adorable, look at Young Jimmy there, such an idealistic kid, and going to college! On an adult man it's just exhausting. Anyway, but yeah, very principled man, until death, commendable really.

He only comes across that way because he really did know it all relative to his peers. The things he talks about may be obvious now exactly because of him, but weren't in his day.

There is a reason they called him a gadfly!

I think the error with using these quotes as a sort of rebuttal to the sentiment is that it’s totally possible for the quotes to be accurate, relative to other recent times in those areas. A local decline in physical productivity versus, say, 50 years ago. And the productivity 50 years ago might’ve been lower than 50 years prior to that. Especially in particular fields that might’ve once pulled in a high percentage of ambitious people, but don’t anymore, for whatever reason. And many believe that successful societies generally become more decadent.

Sure, we have experience with thousands of years of children degenerating and elders being even more true statesmen, right?

"decadent" is a pejorative word for "growing respect for the rights and dignity of workers."

What does it say about us that we look back 150 years and say that it's unacceptable that children were engaged in dangerous work and that people worked pretty much as long as there was daylight six days a week, but we look back 30 years and say that people back then had a strong work ethic because they worked unpaid overtime?

Are you sure that’s what people mean when they say “decadent”? I would, for example, include things like hedonism, living beyond one’s means, decreases in frugality, increases in conspicuous consumption, decrease in self-reliance skills. That’s not to blame the people involved, they’re responses to the environment that people find themselves in, and the culture that has developed.

What if the "kids these days" is not constant, but periodical? People say "kids these days" when kids get lazier, and don't say nothing, when parents get stricter.

If you measure laziness by counting the angry shouts of a parent, then a stricter parent will sound the same as a lazier kid.

I wonder if the famous survivorship bias plays a role here? The people writing this are those whose writings survived generations so they may have been good and motivated and could complain about the young ones, but eh slackers who may see the young ones as more motivated maybe never wrote anything to influence the society's opinions.

I'm sure everyone felt like they were overworked by their parents when they were younger and parents can readily identify chores that they were responsible for as kids which are not omitted from their children's current regime.

Just had the same thought! Parents and kids is an asymmetric relationship. Parents have experience and practical control, kids have more energy and burn warmer. When there's real shit to do, everyone listens up. When everything's easy, the opposite.

For at least the past 500 years in the Western world, each successive generation of kids has surpassed their parents in wealth, education, and standard of living. Why is "kids these days" still a thing?

That's the reason - each generation has it easier than the previous and doesn't need to work as hard. So the older generation sees the younger generation not working as hard as they did and complain.

If the kids are't working hard, how are they beating the pants off their ancestors' achievements?

by not starting over. their ancestors gave them all them all their foundational knowledge

Why does it matter how hard people work if they're happy and paying the bills?

God knows most jobs out there are hardly of earth shattering importance.

Did the lost generation complain about their kids(the ones that shot the bullets in WWII)?

I know that there's a passage in the "Hagakure", which was written from 1710-1716, where the author complains about how the youth is degenerating, not working like they should and not interested in the old values anymore.

So, no clay tablets from me, but that as a datapoint on how long the youth is terrible.

That link says the quote isn't from him...

> [...] committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs.

By Zeus! Kids these days...

I wonder of that was an euphemism for something? Seems like the antiques version of putting your elbows on the table otherwise.

Now that you mentioned it, I wonder as well!

Yes, but people learn the wrong lesson from this; it's not an indication that these complaints are therefore futile or useless. It's evidence that gripes of this kind are deeply functional and ineradicable. They're "lindy," as the kids say.

and then the power of greece waned, so...

Can you name anything that didn’t wane after several hundred years?

Good point, but challenge accepted:

The Papacy.

Protestant Reformation

The Roman Catholic Church had quite significant swings in power over time.

Certainly the Catholic Church has had significant swings, I take your point, but so far it has never waned into irrelevancy.

I counter your Protestant Reformantion point with the Catholicization of Latin America.

Compare the power the church had in Europe in say 1200 vs Latin America in 2022 and there is no contest it’s vastly weaker today.

Total membership is up, total wealth is up, actual power isn’t.

It's always an eye opener to see the crowds of people worldwide when the pope visits.

The propensity of things to wane.

In the case of Athens, it was only 61 years between Socrates being accused of "corrupting the youth" and Athens being conquered by the much more rural and conservative (small c) Macedonians.

And correlation does not imply causation, so...

We have this kinda, first chapter of history begins at Sumer.

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