Ask HN: What can today's youth learn from young people of the 80s? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What can today's youth learn from young people of the 80s?

4 pointsp5v17 comments

This is something I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. When you look at the 80s, particularly in Europe, you see much of the same conflict between generations, a Cold War threatening to wipe out the world at the push of a button, Chernobyl, the beginning of people’s realization that yeah, maybe the climate is not doing well.

So, the youth protested. Much like it does today, but it seemed more hopeful about the future.

So, I’m wondering what parallels and lessons a young person from the 80s can draw to a Gen-Z-er.

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- You can survive without electronic devices and the Internet. In fact, you should, some of the time.

- You should spend a lot more time outside.

- You should spend a lot more time being bored and left to your own thoughts.

- Read more books. Especially fiction. It's not a waste to grow your imagination.

- Your children will be fine.

- From a US viewpoint: Conservatives want a world that never was. Liberals want a world that will never be.

- The world isn't getting worse, the challenges are only changing. The current set of challenges doesn't have global thermonuclear war in the list, so that's good.

- On the back of that last point: everything ebbs and flows in cycles. There is no "happily ever after"/"miserable forever".

- Despite what other "old people" would tell you, you younger people have it way harder than we did. You have so many more inputs to deal with, society and tech is changing at unprecedented paces, and in virtually every aspect of your life, you are surveilled and influenced by those who don't have your best interests in mind.

"- The world isn't getting worse"

Bad stuff has always happened, but when something bad happens now, more people are made aware of it.

For example, when I was in high school in the the early '80s there was a shooting at a high school in my Midwestern US city. A kid brought a gun to school and shot two kids who said something about his brother. The shooter then turned the gun on himself. One of the other kids died too.

This was big news locally, I don't remember national TV coverage of it. There was no internet so if someone was 500 miles away, they never knew about it. It didn't spur a national debate about gun control, kid's mental health or school safety.

Although I agree with most points, I'm not sure about this one:

> The world isn't getting worse, the challenges are only changing.

Let me offer a different, less optimistic view.

The current generation, known as the Millennials, is the first to be born into a time of abundance, where they are constantly reassured that their future will not be as prosperous as that of their parents.

The majority of Millennials will never be able to purchase a home through a traditional 9-5 job, a feat that was easily achievable for their parents. Nowadays, one must either be fortunate enough to work in a highly lucrative field, inherit wealth, or simply "survive."

The most crucial aspect to consider is that Millennials are the first generation to be aware of the high likelihood that large portions of the earth will become uninhabitable within the next 50 years, unless significant changes are made. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that these changes will occur, leading to a sense of impending doom for our species. The idea that we may not exist in 50, 100, or even 200 years due to our relentless exploitation of the planet's resources is a unique burden carried by this generation and the next.

> Millennials are the first generation to be aware of the high likelihood that large portions of the earth will become uninhabitable within the next 50 years...

Not the first. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we all thought there was a very high chance there would be global nuclear war, followed by nuclear winter, within a decade.

> Not the first. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we all thought there was a very high chance there would be global nuclear war, followed by nuclear winter, within a decade.

I wasn't aware. Thanks for sharing.

Well, thank you!

In the 80s we were worried about the bomb and US-USSR relations deteriorating into a nuclear war.

Now it turns out our worries about Russia were correct, with the exception of nukes. Nukes are to have, not to use. Russia must be stopped, because they've taken the place of Germany in the 1930s and 40s, and the only way to stop an imperialist is with force.

As much as the US wants to stop Russia's advances we (the world) also don't want a failed Russian country/military (not the people) selling off assets in a giant nuclear yard sale to nation states/terrorist organizations that might consider nukes as something to use.

We may not like dictators like the one in charge there and what they are doing but there is a level of diplomacy achieved that may disappear with a massive leadership change.

Much of the success of post WW2 led from things like the Bretton Woods conf: https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/98681.htm Of note, I believe the US shocked everyone at that (or another) conference when we didn't want any land. All of the other "winners" of wars for all of human history took some spoils. The US held that "belief that free trade not only promoted international prosperity, but also international peace". That is a large reason why US military bases exist across the globe - to promote free trade by protecting trade routes.

  > don't want a failed Russian country/military (not the people) selling off assets in a giant nuclear yard sale to nation states/terrorist organizations

Again. It should be pointed out that anti-proliferation elements were kept quite busy after the fall of the Soviet Union, and nonetheless, massive troves of munitions made their way into "bad guys'" hands.

or maybe NATO should have stopped expanding aggressively after the breakup of USSR. We have a historic precedence: A set of alliances between imperial powers caused World War 1.

> So, the youth protested. Much like it does today, but it seemed more hopeful about the future.

Protests happen more and more online now. Angry about something? Make a humorous meme about it and watch the whole world laugh at it, dissolving & disarming the power of the thing you're angry about has.

How does laughing at thing online dissolve/disarm the problems?

I'd say the opposite - it dissipates the anger and make people feel like they accomplished something, all the while the problem still exists and is getting formally entrenched via policy and legislation. But hey, we joked about it online, so all is well?

I don't have a specific problem in mind, BTW, just observing that the actual impact of online content is minimal. "Actions speak louder than words" is doubly true with online content.

Based on my parents… young American people of the 80’s didn’t care about any of that stuff at all. That was for the boomers. They just wanted their MTV.

Words aren't violence.

did the protests work?

Well, as a child of the mid-80s and 90s, it seems to me like the Cold War has warmed up into an actual proxy war with Russia, the climate is quite a bit worse now and widespread floods and fires are normal, the protests are still ongoing but people have less faith that anything can improve, wealth and housing inequality are getting worse, the economy is even more concentrated at the top, abortion is illegal again... oh, and music is long past its peak :P

But hey, we Millennials griped and screamed and absolutely nothing got better, then we kinda just gave up and left the world even worse off for our kids. Gen Z was born into the multipocalypses, but to them, it's all they've ever known, and in a way they seem way more at peace with it than my generation was. Less "oh noes, everything is dying, we must save all of it!" and more "whelps, everything is broken, what can I do to survive and still find moments of joy?"

I don't envy the kids born this decade, growing up into a post-peak-capitalism world where robots and dictators are the new norm, instead of liberal democracies... but I suspect they'll adapt, as kids do. It's always the parents who worry about the future, especially when there's a drastic values shift (like there have been over the past few decades). To the kids, it's just everyday life.

The eternal lesson of politics hasn't changed: "Money Talks"

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