Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Birdjaguar]

Peak Boomerism is inventing participation trophies and then complaining that kids get participation trophies.

Please explain.

 

[Arwon]

Peak Boomerism is inventing participation trophies and then complaining that kids get participation trophies.

Yes, this is the content I seek!

 

[Arwon]

Silent Generation was, what, born from 1925 to 1945? We were governed by them from 1983 to 2007 (Hawke Keating Howard), I wonder why so different.

edit: Oh I see, Bush and Carter were just before and Clinton and Bush came fractionally after

 

[Patine]

Silent Generation was, what, born from 1925 to 1945? We were governed by them from 1983 to 2007 (Hawke Keating Howard), I wonder why so different.

edit: Oh I see, Bush and Carter were just before and Clinton and Bush came fractionally after

Except that, in standard anthropology, a generation is 25 years. 1925 to 1945 is 20 years. The concept has a flaw.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As @Farm Boy pointed out: Not talking about Boomers.

But if you want to redistribute blame towards the Silent Generation, we run into a problem:
The Silent Generation never got a President. I think that's a remarkable datapoint.

Interesting, but I think they had three presidents.

Bush 1 was born in 1924
Jimmy Carter also born 1924
Ronnie was born 1911

The Greatest Generation born 1910 to 1924
The Silent Generation born 1925 to 1945

You could say Bush 1 and Carter are on the cusp.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Except that, in standard anthropology, a generation is 25 years. 1925 to 1945 is 20 years. The concept has a flaw.

Standard anthropology is not used in the naming of the generations. The designations are cultural and not scientific.

 

[Patine]

Standard anthropology is not used in the naming of the generations. The designations are cultural and not scientific.

Well, than they can arbitrarily be declared of any length, at any time, to make any point, or any gripe, and just as easily countered by arbitrary redefinition.

 

[Patine]

Interesting, but I think they had three presidents.

Bush 1 was born in 1924
Jimmy Carter also born 1924
Ronnie was born 1911

The Greatest Generation born 1910 to 1924
The Silent Generation born 1925 to 1945

You could say Bush 1 and Carter are on the cusp.

A term like "Greatest" Generation is a good example of self-defeatist, self-sabotaging "Golden Age-style," toxic nostalgic thinking that is socially highly unhealthy.

 

[Lexicus]

Judging from this thread, it's clearly not "Boomers" but the revival of 18th and 19th century thinking that is the problem.

 

[Patine]

Judging from this thread, it's clearly not "Boomers" but the revival of 18th and 19th century thinking that is the problem.

If you think there's only ONE problem, with ONE identifiable group behind it, you need to do a LOT of catch-up homework, there.

 

[Birdjaguar]

A term like "Greatest" Generation is a good example of self-defeatist, self-sabotaging "Golden Age-style," toxic nostalgic thinking that is socially highly unhealthy.

It was coined in 1984 by Tom Brokaw and was the title of a book he wrote about those who participated in WW2. It stuck. Like it or not, changing it would be tough.

 

[Patine]

It was coined in 1984 by Tom Brokaw and was the title of a book he wrote about those who participated in WW2. It stuck. Like it or not, changing it would be tough.

If 30 000 lemmings jumped off a cliff without thinking, because someone said it was a bright idea, would you? I sure wouldn't.

 

[Arwon]

If 30 000 lemmings jumped off a cliff without thinking, because someone said it was a bright idea, would you? I sure wouldn't.

Thanks for that mum

 

[Birdjaguar]

If 30 000 lemmings jumped off a cliff without thinking, because someone said it was a bright idea, would you? I sure wouldn't.

I made reference to things that actually happened. Tom Brokaw wrote a book and the title of that book was applied to a generation of people 35 years ago. There was no call to action; no suggestion that an action be taken; nothing to follow. You can certainly call those people anything you want. Whatever point you are trying to make is totally senseless.

 

[Patine]

I made reference to things that actually happened. Tom Brokaw wrote a book and the title of that book was applied to a generation of people 35 years ago. There was no call to action; no suggestion that an action be taken; nothing to follow. You can certainly call those people anything you want. Whatever point you are trying to make is totally senseless.

The quote I made can also be applied to using socially sabotaging labels and terms without thinking about them. My comments on the "Leftist" term, above, are also in that category.

 

[Peuri]

Wait what on earth happened to this thread, I was in here all ready to complain about baby boomers driving up house prices to unaffordable levels through tax policies that favour rampant speculation, and ruining football with their cack-handed attempts to enforce nostalgic notions of what the game should look like.

But here instead there's a bunch of folks trying to whatabout and abstract the contemporary legacy of European colonialism into oblivion?????

You are right, the thread went off the topic, but I'll just add one more point and be done with it.

What you say in the last paragraph is a mischaracterisation in my opinion. In no part did I say that European colonialization was a trivial issue, or that it hasn't negatively affected subjugated peoples. In fact in multiple points I affirmed that. My point was only that in the grand scheme of things it wasn't somehow unique in that special blame of being doubleplus evil should be placed on Europeans, because other people have done much of the same thing. Still we should put up our index finger, wiggle it around a bit, do a frowney face and say "no, no, no". Call that "whataboutism" if you like, as if labeling an argument as something that you consider bad settles anything. But I don't know, seems that even comparing atrocities can be construed as racist in this day and age.

 

[inthesomeday]

There really hasn’t been anything comparable to European colonialism in the 16th-20th century. It is more or less unparalleled as far as historical analysis. Japanese imperialism, maybe in some minute way, but that was quite explicitly a program adopted from Europe.

 

[Patine]

There really hasn’t been anything comparable to European colonialism in the 16th-20th century. It is more or less unparalleled as far as historical analysis. Japanese imperialism, maybe in some minute way, but that was quite explicitly a program adopted from Europe.

Clive Barker had a great article about the best horrors being not about outgoing other such productions in body-count or raw scope, but in more insidious, spine-tingling, nightmare-inducing, violations of justice. A quote that has a good analogy to counter your and @Timsup2nothin's view that scale is all that matters, and nothing else should be taken into account, and broad, sweeping judgements of mass morality built around scope and body-count of atrocity alone, leading to the modern historical revisionist tendency of exonerating ALL non-European cultures ABSOLUTELY of ALL past atrocities just because of comparison of scale alone.

 

[Hygro]

So, we should have greater want?

Yeah. A lotta uncured diseases, cheap sprawl, and lack of recycling and repurposing capacity for starters.

Demand is a function of wants, yes, and also purchasing power. Without the purchasing power there is no demand, only desire.

As judged by us obviously. In the hope we’d find some way to practice self restraint.

Self restraint to what end? So a barren foreign planet is only affected by other chemical-physical phenomenon that is as randomly not human as we are human?

 

[Patine]

Self restraint to what end? So a barren foreign planet is only affected by other chemical-physical phenomenon that is as randomly not human as we are human?

That's typical human thinking, you realize.