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Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why anyone feels they have a right to say these sorts of things to anyone.

Why should I listen to an old Dean of Admissions speak condescendingly about what I deserve or not? He lost all respect from me, and reverberated the silly "us older generations are wise and have made a beautiful fairy-tale world for you. We look at you youths and think you're incapable idiots who are going to destroy the world, who don't know how to work".

STFU older generations! We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before. We work fucking hard for what's right, and will make the world a better place for our kids. I know when I'm old I'm not going to tell my kids they're worrisome morons who deserve nothing. They will work hard, they will be more capable than me, I will inevitable worry, but I will support them unlike these occasional airheads of my parents generation.

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Reminds me of a situation I had around a decade back. I get into a bus, slowly the bus gets crowdy and then it was totally packed. I was busy reading my Physics text book, to notice how many people gotten into the bus.

Then I saw a man, may be in 50's was standing right next to my seat. Realizing he was a little aged and might be tired after the day's work, I just got up and offered the man my seat. What happens next? This guy doesn't even offer a 'Thank you', he just goes on and on about bashing the younger generation in general and me about values and stuff for not offering him the seat a little early.

After a while I had it enough, and asked the man to give me my seat back. He put up a puzzled look, I told him he didn't deserve any courtesy from anyone.

Some people just can't stop showing their 'holier than thou' attitude.

Did he get up?

How did he react?

> We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before.

I hope you're speaking for yourself because I don't believe that's true for me one bit.

It's true, but sadly only for a subset of the generation.

Every generation has their successes and their masses of lackies, their good-doers and their wrong-doers, but every generation will be more powerful than the one before. If my experience with all living generations tells me anything, it's that the world is becoming a better and more accepting place. Media may grow by showing idiotic things, but the people themselves are only getting smarter and more capable, and are doing a great job of working for good things in the world and supporting good people.

If this were actually true, then you should really be doing nothing more than reproducing hurriedly so that your kids can be better than you.

Are you aware of how many homophobes there are in the older generations compared to the millennials? Or ignorance in general? It doesn't even compare.

It's possible that, as enlightened as you may justifiably feel you are, your grandchildren will find you embarrassingly ignorant and closed-minded about something, too.

God willing. It would be pretty freakish and embarrassing to get old and find that nobody has improved on any of our stupidity.

Improvement implies progress toward an objective moral standard. I believe in one, so that's a fine statement by me, but then I also believe that each generation has moral strong spots and moral blind spots.

>> Are you aware of how many homophobes there are in the older generations compared to the millennials? Or ignorance in general? It doesn't even compare.

Judging older generations by today's standards isn't really any different then them judging you by their standards.

I'd say Thomas Jefferson was wrong for having slaves. Granted, that was bad. But if he had a time machine, he'd probably point out all kinds of moral blind spots in my generation.

You are forgetting that morality is not absolute. It fluctuates over time.

It's possible that in the future, homophobia may become the norm again in developed countries. People in that era will look down on us as permissive degenerates, just like we look at 19th century people as intolerant bigots.

I didn't specify how big the subset was (I happen to think it's actually quite large).

Your comment implies you don't think wisdom is useful or needed unless you in your post pubescent hubris deign to ask. However America is obsessed with youth, and culturally the older generation is undervalued, so on balance I value the OA's message more than yours.

There are two ways to respond to "I'm better than you."

1. "No, I'm better than you!"

2. "No, we are equal."

If you want to establish mutual respect and equality, only one choice has a chance of working.

  We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before.

This makes me so nostalgic. :)

How can there be this much hubris in a single post?

Do you really think our generation is better than the 25,000 before it? Do you really think you are making the world a better place? We don't even know what the future will be like so we have no way of determining whether today's choices will be right for our descendants.

You don't even know what your kids will be like. How can you be sure you will support them?

The world will judge our generation once we have lived long lives and done much. Until then, it's incredibly arrogant to claim ourselves to be the best out of countless past lives.

Shut up and stop revealing the Plan for World Domination to the older generations! And bring beer to the next meeting of the Gen Y Conspiracy; John's turn was last week!

Or in English: yes, that's how I feel a lot of the time too, but such claims are worth nothing if we spout them on the internet and everything only if we realize them. So it's better to claim little and do a lot rather than wasting our effort on empty claims or even justified complaints about our elders. Just get back to work.

I've never understood why anyone feels they have a right to say these sorts of things to anyone.

...and yet.

Right, there is the tacit assumption that he and his generation have earned it. This read like a cross between a monologue from "The Newsroom" and a very poorly thought out commencement address.

Do you really believe that yours is the first generation that will not repeat the mistakes of previous generations?

Well of course. We're going to make new and different mistakes.

I would presume "we'll" make old and forgotten ones.

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