The Younger Generation

That's really interesting E.D. I'm changing my perceptions minute by minute with this thread. :)

To you young-uns, (meaning anybody under 30), do you think you are typical among your generation? Or maybe those of you who would be drawn to a political discussion board might have different perspectives than most of your peers?

I honestly don't know, but I do know that most of my peers DON'T do things like political message boards and really can't understand the fascination. Yet here are many of you considerably my junior who do. So I'm now wondering how typical any of us are here. :)
 
That's really interesting E.D. I'm changing my perceptions minute by minute with this thread. :)

To you young-uns, (meaning anybody under 30), do you think you are typical among your generation? Or maybe those of you who would be drawn to a political discussion board might have different perspectives than most of your peers?

I honestly don't know, but I do know that most of my peers DON'T do things like political message boards and really can't understand the fascination. Yet here are many of you considerably my junior who do. So I'm now wondering how typical any of us are here. :)

Not very typical at all in my opinion.

If we were typical we would be texting, twittering and facebooking instead.
 
I'm 62 and I've seen a lot of changes and have embraced many of them as real improvements to our lives. Many simple things--like the gas stove of today--how many of you remember having to light the pilot light each time you wanted to use the stove--I was always a bit afraid of that. And the self-cleaning function--priceless! Add to that, frost-free refrigerators--how did we do without them?

Air conditioning was only found in the drug stores or movie theatres when I was growing up. How much we take it for granted now, but it does provide much better living conditions.

I also remember how my son used to tell me around 7:30 pm that he had a report on something (one time it was Chaucer!) which was due the next day. It would be a mad scramble to either get to the library, which wasn't always open, or look for limited information in our encyclopedias. With the internet you can put together a whole book on Chaucer without leaving your home.

I always made our own bread each week, with the kneading, rising, baking, etc. before bread machines came out. Since then, I have worn out three bread machines over the years. The microwave has also been a great aid--all leftovers get used up since it is much easier to heat things up. I have also perfected hollandaise sauce using the microwave, and discovered that you can bake nice and moist brownies and cornbread in it. And you're not heating the whole kitchen by using the oven.

I have used an SLR camera for years, but the advances of the digital SLR can't be beat, especially for amateur photography. You get to select the shots you want to keep, without the expense of having a whole role of film developed.

I've regretted that my Dad didn't live long enough to use some of the things we have today. He would have loved the internet and email, digital photography and even the bread machine, along with so many other things I haven't even mentioned.
 
I would have loved to have had the internet and cell phones as a kid. But in return, I feel sorry for the many young people today who were always chauffered around due to the world being a dangerous place. In my generation, we'd take off on our bikes and head out all over town and into the country. We were very free. Here in the Bay Area, I think that freedom has been lost.
 
I would have loved to have had the internet and cell phones as a kid. But in return, I feel sorry for the many young people today who were always chauffered around due to the world being a dangerous place. In my generation, we'd take off on our bikes and head out all over town and into the country. We were very free. Here in the Bay Area, I think that freedom has been lost.

I think it's harder on the parents these days too. It used to be that you would just pile all of the kids in the car and just go. Now you have to secure everyone in their car seat. And don't even think of leaving them in the car while you run into the store. Our parents did that all of the time. Even grocery shopping. Now you would probably get arrested for that. And we were left alone in the house at an earlier age, with an older child in charge.
 
Everything you say is absolutely spot on Judy and Boe and everybody else actually. The days of having to walk 30 miles (uphill both ways) barefoot in the snow to get to school are definitely over. And I don't (cough) miss them at all. :)

There is a downside. Many of the younger generation take complete advantage of quick and ready information on the internet and have never known the pure pleasure of sitting by the fire or curled up on your bed on a rainy day absolutely savoring a truly great book and closing it finally wishing there was more of it to read. They've never experienced small town America where kids could run free through the neighborhood so long as they were withn sight of the house by dark. They've never known a time when there weren't school lockdowns and nobody worried about somebody gunning down their kids or snatching them off a street corner.

I suppose the modern generation has much less need to memorize multiplication tables or learn the Dewey decimal system or how to do serious research and footnote their work.

The computer has opened up a whole new world for so many of us and it is so much easier now to educate oneself on almost any subject. The problem is telling the difference between being educated and being indoctrinated though because ideological distortion and bias is not always easy to discern. And it sometimes requires considerable effort to differentiate between the poorly researched and notated material versus that which is trustworthy. There is something to say still for dedicated focused education in the classroom using real books.

But yeah I enjoy all the modern conveniences of today for sure. And I love my computer. And I love video games. And all sorts of things that were not available to me when I was a kid.
 
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Everything you say is absolutely spot on Judy and Boe and everybody else actually. The days of having to walk 30 miles (uphill both ways) barefoot in the snow to get to school are definitely over. And I don't (cough) miss them at all. :)

There is a downside. Many of the younger generation take complete advantage of quick and ready information on the internet and have never known the pure pleasure of sitting by the fire or curled up on your bed on a rainy day absolutely savoring a truly great book and closing it finally wishing there was more of it to read. They've never experienced small town America where kids could run free through the neighborhood so long as they were withn sight of the house by dark. They've never known a time when there weren't school lockdowns and nobody worried about somebody gunning down their kids or snatching them off a street corner.

I suppose the modern generation has much less need to memorize multiplication tables or learn the Dewey decimal system or how to do serious research and footnote their work.

The computer has opened up a whole new world for so many of us and it is so much easier now to educate oneself on almost any subject. The problem is telling the difference between being educated and being indoctrinated though because ideological distortion and bias is not always easy to discern. And it sometimes requires considerable effort to differentiate between the poorly researched and notated material versus that which is trustworthy. There is something to say still for dedicated focused education in the classroom using real books.

But yeah I enjoy all the modern conveniences of today for sure. And I love my computer. And I love video games. And all sorts of things that were not available to me when I was a kid.



There are a lot of countries where children have had to contend with much worse, government uprisings, riots, bombings, etc. And they come out pretty strong as a result. The kids today might surprise us. Maybe the fears they have to contend with on a daily basis just might make them stronger than we were. It's just so different than what we experienced, it is frightening. But the kids don't seem bothered by the atmosphere in their schools today.
 
They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them.

That's the scariest part of the whole article. Most professors are so locked into the theoretical human condition, removed almost completely from reality. Yeah, that's scary.
 
Everything you say is absolutely spot on Judy and Boe and everybody else actually. The days of having to walk 30 miles (uphill both ways) barefoot in the snow to get to school are definitely over. And I don't (cough) miss them at all. :)

There is a downside. Many of the younger generation take complete advantage of quick and ready information on the internet and have never known the pure pleasure of sitting by the fire or curled up on your bed on a rainy day absolutely savoring a truly great book and closing it finally wishing there was more of it to read. They've never experienced small town America where kids could run free through the neighborhood so long as they were withn sight of the house by dark. They've never known a time when there weren't school lockdowns and nobody worried about somebody gunning down their kids or snatching them off a street corner.

I suppose the modern generation has much less need to memorize multiplication tables or learn the Dewey decimal system or how to do serious research and footnote their work.

The computer has opened up a whole new world for so many of us and it is so much easier now to educate oneself on almost any subject. The problem is telling the difference between being educated and being indoctrinated though because ideological distortion and bias is not always easy to discern. And it sometimes requires considerable effort to differentiate between the poorly researched and notated material versus that which is trustworthy. There is something to say still for dedicated focused education in the classroom using real books.

But yeah I enjoy all the modern conveniences of today for sure. And I love my computer. And I love video games. And all sorts of things that were not available to me when I was a kid.

I think what you say is true. Then again, instead of lockdown drills we had air raid drills. Instead of Muslim terrorists we had the Soviets. We had so much more freedom to explore our world physically, but they have so much more opportunity to explore it virtually and mentally if they choose to use their tools wisely. We lived with one kind of fear, they live with another. I think the more things change, really the more they stay the same - just in a different form.

I don't worry too much about "kids these days". Every generation seems to have enough members capable of not only surviving but moving forward that they don't let us down. I'm interested to see where they'll take us next.
 
There is one area about which we should be concerned for the present generation: the overwhelming amount of debt and entitlement obligations for which they will bear the taxes.

But that is a topic for another area of the forum.
 
I don't disagree Boedicca, but so far everybody is offering really good perspectives on this and I really can't quarrel with anybody. You're all giving me stuff to think about that I wasn't thinking about.

But I do think that each generation is responsible for its own destiny. There is junk and hardship and difficulty and tragedy and problems sometime in everybody's life and sometimes such is on a large scale and is the entire generation's cross to bear. So while I think good people do not mortgage the future of their children, neither can we design their destiny for them. And we can't decide everything that will be right and beneficial for them. I'm already seeing that some of the young-uns are way ahead of me on some of this stuff. :)

I can't resist posting this that came in my e-mail today though, because it so speaks to some of the themes already posted here. So bear with us of the 'older generation' if you were born later. Those born and growing up from 1970 on will have their own legacy to post for the next 'younger generation':

WE OF THE OLDER GENERATION ARE AWESOME PEOPLE

No matter what our kids and the new generation think about us, WE ARE AWESOME !!!
OUR Lives are LIVING PROOF !!!

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE
1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered
with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes..

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren't overweight.

WHY?

Because we were always outside playing...that's why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day.
--And, we were OKAY..

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS you could hug and hit and giggle with, and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents..

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We waded barefoot in mud puddles and ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and
the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and -although we were told it would happen- we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn
to deal with disappointment. And most of those went on to accomplish great things.

The idea of a parent criticizing a teacher for disciplining us or bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the teachers! And with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever.

The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas..

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

If YOU are one of those born between 1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!
 
I barely missed your cutoff there, so I guess I'm the "younger generation" after all.

Thanks for posting, you just made my day! :woohoo:
 
I barely missed your cutoff there, so I guess I'm the "younger generation" after all.

Thanks for posting, you just made my day! :woohoo:

Well yanno Goldcatt, I'm just hoping that those of us in the older generation will help you get hold of things and put things on a course so that the legacy of YOUR generation will be even better when you post it for the next. :)
 

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