Did the baby boomer generation ruin the world?

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leejosepho
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28 Feb 2011, 6:09 am

Cities preceded agriculture, I believe.


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28 Feb 2011, 8:44 am

ruveyn wrote:
It was agriculture that "ruined" the world. Once mankind got out of the hunter-gathering mode the sh*t hit the fan.

ruveyn

Agreed.


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28 Feb 2011, 11:57 am

insincere wrote:
The boom of economy and population that was associated with the baby boomer generation created an unprecedented period of affluency but also led to mass consumerist propaganda that in my mind has almost completely undermined any genuine cultural achievements. Art and culture like everything else has become a consumable, serving onlly to argrandise whoever "controls" the "merchandise" at that time. The effects of culture span centuries of time and when I try to imagine the long term consequences of commercialising it to a point of ruin, it is a very scary concept.

Imagine, a world where the only worthwhile pursuit that people are engaged in, is the pursuit of wealth and consumerism. This is a legacy of social currents that is beqeathed to the world by that egocentric muddlings of that generation and it is something I feel is completely hopeless in avoiding.


I guess by "world" you just mean "artistic culture". I see no evidence that cultural achievments have been undermined. What I see is that so much culture is being produced by so many people that it's easy to get distracted by the sheer quantity of crap and either not notice the good stuff or think that the good stuff is somehow degraded by having to share a world with the crap. The crap is more popular. The good stuff has not been ruined. Quality art, music, movies and writing is being produced. It has not been ruined merely because Jersey Shore is on TV and Justin Bieber is on the loudspeakers.

I also do not think that commercialization is either new or ruinous. Truly magnificent works of art have been produced for centuries because a wealthy patron commissioned them. That's art for commercial purposes and it is no less wonderful for having been commissioned. Some art that is done for money is good. Some is crap. And it was the same centuries ago too. There are plenty of ho-hum oil paintings of wealthy 17th century businessmen. But the mere fact that the artist got paid doesn't seem to make quality impossible.

In short. No ruination.


As to the world on a larger scale? Ruyven said it was ruined by the Agricultural Revolution and I have to agree to a certain point. The Agricultural Revolution made the human population expand hugely, to the point where really impacting the planet in a bad way became possible. But I think it was the Industrial Revolution that really caused the most damage. It made planetary damage possible on a scale that couldn't be accomplished before. You can't clear-cut forests with an axe or punch a hole in the ozone layer with wood stoves. But I'm no Luddite. I don't want to give up my computer or my bread. So I'm glad both revolutions happened. But the planet as a whole has sustained some damage that we need to fix. Culture I'm not worried about. My ipod is full of the finest music the world has to offer and the world keeps offering it even though Justin Bieber continues to record.



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28 Feb 2011, 3:09 pm

By world I mean culture, or cumulative combined experience and understanding that exists in the minds (and hearts) of the people of the world. Artistic culture is mereley one manifestation of this entity and naturally as there are 8 billion people on the planet now there should be more quality, and commercial enterprizes concerning this pursuit, but I could argue at least one way that it is showing malidy is with a lack of creativity. For example; there has not been a single creative musical development since the advent of grundge music 20 years ago.

Culture is way more than what the artistic community reflects that it is, and that is not what I am talking about. It can be a good indicator or litmus of healthy culture but when there are more direct and troublesome indicators it may loose some significance.

Indicators like political apathy, litterary rates, physical health are all more relevant to reflected the cultural crisis that I think we are walking into with our hands on our wallets.



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28 Feb 2011, 3:35 pm

I just found this and agree with it. I am not scapegoating boomers, partly because that would be defeatist and second they are not entirely to blame. I actually am concerned more with what there is to be done about it. As I mentioned, I believe this could be one of the gravest dangers to have ever faced people.The Baby Boomers simply continued what their parents had started - although jettisoning the full-employment culture in order to help maximize profits - whilst the recessions which occurred in this period were regarded as blips on the way to a continually brighter future until the present credit crunch made people question capitalism, at least in its present form. And - having grown up in a culture where unending growth was taken for granted - that was hardly surprising. If Baby Boomers are to blame it is, arguably, for not thinking about the consequences of the previous generations’ economic and social policies and allowing a culture to develop where the British economy became almost wholly dependent on financial services, shopping and property as sources of income

This book is not just about a supposed inter-generational conflict. It’s really about the state of the nation. This topic should not invite despair, but nor should it simply breed good - but insubstantial – intentions. Seventy years ago, when the nation faced far greater dangers than it does today, another Conservative politician did not hesitate to spell out a necessary future of blood, toil, tears and sweat: the outcome of this risky frankness was victory. Willetts may, one day be haunted by the unintended message of this book. And that is that opaqueness, however understandable, is no match for spelling-out hard truths

full article about a book concerning this topic is here http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php ... e_boomers/

Can anyone think of another culture in modern history that capitalized on narcissism and feelings of entitlement....how about your friendly neighborhood Nazi party....and look at how that turned out.



Last edited by insincere on 28 Feb 2011, 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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28 Feb 2011, 5:19 pm

Let's all point the finger at someone else and ignore three pointing straight back at us.....

Sure the development of agriculture was revolutionary and allowed the congregation of populations into towns then cities and the development of specialisation etc... but perhaps non of these contained any intrinsic flaw, perhaps it was the rate of unchallenged/unquestioned change that allowed things to tumble ever faster out of control?

I think perhaps insincere that the issues you are concerned about are to do with human conciousness, by this I mean it in a Buddhist sense of total awareness and connectedness to ones environment and the events therein.

John Ralston Saul addresses many points that you may find new thoughts on in his book 'The Unconscious Civilisation' other writings you may find of interest would be by the ecologist David Suzuki and the Biologist/Journalist George Monbiot.

A long time ago we abandoned an important folk wisdom,

Just because we can doesn't mean we should

In my opinion it is fairly safe to say that it is too late for anything to change fast enough to avert disaster for the human race - oh dear never mind - karma in effect - we really aren't that special in fact one could lay a lot of the blame on our current situation at the feet of the delusion that we are?

It is easy to look back with hindsight and find points in time, places and peoples to focus blame on, but this road to oblivion has been a long one and perhaps looking at how one lives ones own life is more useful?
No 'poor me' whining, no 'it's all their fault', just a calm and reasoned assessment of oneself and ones own life, the guts to observe those fingers pointing back and make some serious adjustments in how one lives in order to find just a little peace and consolation.

peace j


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28 Feb 2011, 6:36 pm

you're saying that baby boomers were born in the era of postwar prosperity and consumerism.
Therefore they are to blame for postwar prosperity and consumerism.
That doesnt make sense.

Logically that would be more the credit/fault of the parents of the Babyboomers.

Putting aside the irrelevent issue of what generation is to blame for what- much of the rest of what your saying does make sense.

When we achieved the post scarity society in the mid twentieth centurey - we had increadible prosperity and opportunity for an unprecdented numbers of poeple. But madison avenue took over in dictating what to do with that prosperity giving birth to our consumer society.

Decades later - we now all have Ipods with ten thousand songs, cars, and houses, are bigger than ever, and we all have access to all of the internet porn we could hope for. But we dont have affordable health care for most people, and half the population is overworked, and the other half is unemployed. And we have to pretend that we are bringing "freedom" to people on the otherside of the globe to justify keeping a military grip on their oil.

So did America take a wrong turn sometime in the lifetime of babyboomers ( since the midtwentieth centurey)?

Thats a good question.



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28 Feb 2011, 7:02 pm

insincere wrote:
I just found this and agree with it. I am not scapegoating boomers, partly because that would be defeatist and second they are not entirely to blame. I actually am concerned more with what there is to be done about it. As I mentioned, I believe this could be one of the gravest dangers to have ever faced people.The Baby Boomers simply continued what their parents had started - although jettisoning the full-employment culture in order to help maximize profits - whilst the recessions which occurred in this period were regarded as blips on the way to a continually brighter future until the present credit crunch made people question capitalism, at least in its present form. And - having grown up in a culture where unending growth was taken for granted - that was hardly surprising. If Baby Boomers are to blame it is, arguably, for not thinking about the consequences of the previous generations’ economic and social policies and allowing a culture to develop where the British economy became almost wholly dependent on financial services, shopping and property as sources of income

This book is not just about a supposed inter-generational conflict. It’s really about the state of the nation. This topic should not invite despair, but nor should it simply breed good - but insubstantial – intentions. Seventy years ago, when the nation faced far greater dangers than it does today, another Conservative politician did not hesitate to spell out a necessary future of blood, toil, tears and sweat: the outcome of this risky frankness was victory. Willetts may, one day be haunted by the unintended message of this book. And that is that opaqueness, however understandable, is no match for spelling-out hard truths

full article about a book concerning this topic is here http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php ... e_boomers/

Can anyone think of another culture in modern history that capitalized on narcissism and feelings of entitlement....how about your friendly neighborhood Nazi party....and look at how that turned out.


A Narcissistic culture makes it more likely that people will not want to pay taxes to increase social programs; why help we when there is only me. Our current social programs don't match what most other developed countries provide to their citizens.

Denmark, is one of the most successful mixed market Captilistic economies on the planet and also one that provides many social programs for their citizens. The difference between them and us is that they are a much smaller more homogenous country that are comprised of people that see similiarities in each other rather than the differences we focus on in our Heterogenous culture. These are inherent factors that we cannot easily change that contribute greatly to the direction our country is headed in.



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01 Mar 2011, 8:08 am

leejosepho wrote:
Cities preceded agriculture, I believe.


What textbooks are you reading?

That defies both the evidence and common sense.

You have to beable to produce surplus food before you can support a large enough population to have cities.



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12 Nov 2019, 5:41 pm

Why old people will always complain about young people

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The old and young are feuding — yet again.

It’s safe to assume this is an immortal aspect of human society: Young people always exist, and older people will always complain about them. Young people, in turn, always say, “Ugh, old people just don’t get it.”

Recently, that “Ugh, old people just don’t get it” has metastasized into the viral “OK boomer” meme.

Here’s a prediction: These “OK boomer” young people are going to get older and start complaining about the youth of the future. They’ll probably use the same insults, complaining the kids of the 2050s and ’60s are more entitled, more narcissistic, and less self-sufficient than those of generations past. They’ll pay a weird amount of attention to controversies on college campuses and write opinion columns for the New York Times on how those controversies are indicative of a looming societal collapse.

That’s because the “kids these days” is an ancient form of remonstration, going back to antiquity, and probably earlier. It’s a cycle we’re doomed to repeat.

But why? “It seems like there is a memory problem,” says John Protzko, a University of California Santa Barbara psychologist. “A memory tic that just keeps happening, generation after generation.”

Recently he and a colleagues published a paper in Science Advances attempting to figure out why a “kids these days” bias persists throughout the ages. Their new work contains an important lesson about how human memory works (and doesn’t), and what our negative evaluations of others reveal about ourselves.

Protzko became interested in the “kids these days effect” — the tendency for older people to say the youth of today are somehow worse than youth in the past — after surveying a few hundred of the top experts in developmental psychology.

In 2017, Protzko had been looking at a huge dataset of 60 years worth of kids’ test scores on a measure of patience and delaying gratification. With this pile of research, he was able to see if young people, overall, were getting better or worse at delaying gratification through the decades.

Before he crunched the data, he asked 260 developmental psychologists to make a prediction. Did these experts think kids, over time, were getting better, worse, or staying the same in their ability to sit tight in the face of temptation? These are the people who ought to have the best insight into trends in child behavior.

The vast majority — 84 percent — predicted kids would be getting worse over time, or stay the same. But they were dead wrong. Only 16 percent made the correct prediction: Kids today — if you believe in the validity of this particular measurement called the marshmallow test — are actually overall better today at delaying gratification than kids in decades past.

“Wow,” Protzko thought, “even world experts who study, specifically, cognitive development are still like ‘nope, kids are objectively worse.’”

The complaints adults make about kids through the ages are always the same: “They’re suggesting young people are lazy, they’re entitled, and they act in self serving ways,” said Cort Rudolph, a psychologist at Saint Louis University who has spent time tracking down the prevalence of adults complaining about the state of young people throughout history.

In light of his survey, Protzko wondered: Why? Why, millennia after millennia, do adults just assume the kids today are worse than kids in the past?

It’s not a trivial question. “This is a prejudice, this is a bias, and if people were to make the claims they currently make about young people and children, if instead, if they make the same claims about ethnic minorities, for example, people would be up in arms, saying ‘That’s ridiculous, you have no objective evidence of this,’” Protzko says.

Bias can be incredibly hard to stamp out. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be understood. And this particular bias starts to make some sense in light of memory science.

Human memory doesn’t work like you think it might. It’s not like a videotape. When we recall something, it’s not like our brains are rewinding a tape, and playing back events exactly as they unfolded.

Instead, as we’ve explained before at Vox, memory is constructed.

When we call up a memory, we have to piece it back together from disparate pieces of information in our minds. Some of what ends up in our recollection is the truth. But there’s a laziness to our recollections. In reconstructing our memories, our brains often grab the easiest bit of information to recall.

Memory is more like a video editor working on a millisecond deadline. In a rush, the editor splices in bits of truth with whatever filler is handy. What’s pernicious about all this: When the video editor makes cuts and additions to our memories, it’s really good at hiding the seams. “We have the illusion that we remember things as they happened,” Linda Levine, a University of California Irvine psychologist who studies memory for emotions, said in a 2018 interview.

One result of this memory system is a bias called presentism (as in present, like now). In trying to remember something, we take pieces of the present and fold them into our recollections of the past.

For instance: Our memories of past relationships are colored by how we feel about those people now. If the relationship has soured, you’re more likely to remember events unkindly, despite how you might have actually felt back then. Another example: “your memory for how much food you’ve eaten in the last two weeks can be colored by whether I’ve given you food to eat now, or if I make you go into the lab hungry,” Protzko says.

So what does memory have to do with how adults see young people? In order to make a judgment call about today’s youth, you have to try to remember how kids used to be. But that’s hard! Who has objective information on how kids used to be? Since we don’t have it all, we use information from the present to fill in the gaps.

But we don’t use information about present-day kids, we use information about ourselves. In a series of studies, Protzko and his co-author found some evidence this is going on.

If we use our current selves to make evaluations of kids today, then people who score higher on a trait like authoritarianism (i.e. respect for authority), literacy (as measured by being knowledgeable about authors), and intelligence should also judge kids more harshly on those categories. And that’s what they found, in their study of 3,458 adults in online surveys.

The study showed that adults who are more authoritarian are more likely to say kids today are a lot less respectful of elders than they used to be. Adults who are more well read say kids today are a lot less interested in reading than they used to be. And adults who are more intelligent (as approximated by a very short version of an IQ test) are more likely to say kids are less smart than they used to be.

“You don’t really have objective knowledge for how well-read kids were when you were a child, so, when I ask you to think about it, you only have a limited amount of data to go on,” Protzko says. “It’s just your memory. But that memory alone is colored by this presentism problem.”

The study even provided an experimental manipulation that led to adults judging kids these days more or less harshly. In the experiment, some adults took a test to assess how well read they are. Some were given false feedback, and were told they were less well read than they really were. These adults then judged the kids less harshly, becoming less likely to say kids these days don’t read as much. That is: When adults are led to think they’re not well read, they may recall a past where kids are less well read.

Protzko stresses that the presentism bias isn’t the only reason why adults think kids these days are worse than kids of the past. Even adults who scored low on authoritarianism, generally, felt kids these days are less respectful of elders than they used to be. “This memory bias is only a part of the story,” he says. “Everything has multiple causes.”

Other possible causes: “kids these days” is cultural trope that people are taught. Or, it could be linked to the belief that the past, overall, was better than the present.

Whatever the cause is, adults should cut the the youth some slack. If anything, data shows the rising Gen Z, at least, is better in many ways than generations past: They’re doing fewer drugs, drinking less alcohol, and having sex at older ages (they’re also more anxious and depressed, as are other age cohorts in society).

Yet the bias persists. And it persists, in part, because of how adults see themselves.

Adults are (hopefully) better behaved and more knowledgeable than they were as kids. Indeed, personality science finds that, generally, people become more conscientious (the personality trait of working diligently, and just generally having your s**t together) as they get older. Protzko didn’t study the trait of conscientiousness, but it seems reasonable that we tend to project that increased conscientiousness on our evaluations of kids’ pasts.

That standard may be a bit too high. We ought to give the kids a break.

Generations are always complaining about each other. Rudolph says this too often leads to “generationalism” — or just a general bias or prejudice against a group of people, based on when they were born.

“People tend to make these over-generalized statements about generations,” Rudolph says, “and try to build a narrative around the idea that there are differences that we observe among people that we can attribute to generations. But what we know about that is that it’s much more complicated.”

The differences we see in the generations, he argues, aren’t necessarily unique to those generations. They could just be more of a general reflection of age. Young people are always more self-centered and narcissistic. Older people are always a little more set in their ways. This is not to sweep away real complaints people have about the world. Young people are fed up with the adults in politics and industry who exacerbate inequality. It’s just, obviously, not all boomers.

There’s a spirited debate in psychology over whether generations matter beyond just age effects. But at the end of the day, there just isn’t great data on the question.

Answering the question “Do generations matter?” would take an enormous study tracking many people, born in many different times, over a long time. You’d need to separate out three distinct variables: cohort effects (i.e. being born in a certain year), period effects (i.e. the historical moments that affect everyone, regardless of age), and age effect (the natural changes that happen to people over time). And such a study just doesn’t exist. (“If you know of someone who has a $10 million budget to do that, let me know,” Rudolph says.)

Without the data, we talk about generations a bit like we talk about astrological signs. “The distinction between ‘my’ zodiac sign or generation and ‘their’ sign or generation gives people an opportunity to identify with a group while differentiating themselves from others,” Rudolph and some colleagues argue in a recent paper.

Talking about generations in broad strokes makes for compelling, simplistic stories to explain the world and how it works. “These stories always persist and people will be looking for data to confirm their biases,” Kali Trzesniewski, a social developmental psychologist at UC Davis, says.

But even if there’s a kernel of truth to the stereotype that young people are self-concerned, she says we don’t need to see it as a bad thing. “We think — and we don’t have great data on this — that narcissism is higher in young adulthood, and for me, that makes developmental sense,” she says. “They have to think about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives. They have to be able to go out, and try things, and not be afraid of it. So you need a little extra confidence.”

Protzko says the most common question journalists have asked him since publishing the Science Advances study is a variation on “So is this a vindication of millennials?” To that, he flatly says “No.” Instead, he thinks the lesson is more broadly about our common humanity.

“Millennials are just like everyone else,” he says. “They’re going to grow into older people, who are just going to keep looking at kids and making the same complaints about them. [The] memory bias ... is going to keep affecting us in 1,000 years.”


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12 Nov 2019, 6:07 pm

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." ~ Socrates



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12 Nov 2019, 6:09 pm

Yep....OK Boomer existed even in 400 BC :)



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12 Nov 2019, 7:24 pm

I think what is is, is this.

Young people start to think for themselves, think they have all the answers. They get told by old people what to do, and resent it. They get older, life kicks their asses. They realize that they didn't know all that much when they were young. They then tell young people what to do. Cycle repeats.


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12 Nov 2019, 7:29 pm

Yep. You sort of hit the nail on the head.



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12 Nov 2019, 7:46 pm

Give Baby Boomers Their Dues, too. The blanket demonisation is unfair and unwarranted, although I too empathise deeply with the issues facing younger generations. They are my children and grandchildren too. I did things that helped bring about greater social justice in New Zealand law for the generations after mine as well as my peer group.

No, I didn't ruin the world. But there were times when it tried to ruin me. Every generation suffers, and that's the big picture, and every generation to come will suffer too. Life doesn't come with guarantees and insurance against pain, terrible events, suffering, and harm. How we wish it did, but we are only human at the end of the day and each generation has to deal with challenges thoughtfully rather than by blaming others, for blaming others can quickly become a trap that encages people into a sense of powerlessness.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/117334 ... their-dues



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12 Nov 2019, 7:56 pm

The two generations before the Baby Boomer generation were ROUGH.