Cry Baby Boomers

[Farm Boy]

A lack of imagination is indeed sad. 11-12 year-olds are often in for a pretty rough patch tho. Some of them never really move on and get Dawkins-y.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

A lack of imagination is indeed sad. 11-12 year-olds are often in for a pretty rough patch tho. Some of them never really move on and get Dawkins-y.

And what does "get Dawkins-y" mean?

Am I to infer that anyone who ever agreed with Richard Dawkins about something is someone with no imagination? Or is it some other "Dawkins" you're referring to?

Fun fact about Dawkins: He was friends with Douglas Adams (creator of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), who introduced him to Lalla Ward (who played Romana II in Doctor Who). Dawkins and Ward were married for awhile. Someone totally bereft of imagination is someone I doubt could be friends with anyone with Adams' wacky sense of humor and satire. And if you want a laugh, check out the YouTube videos of Dawkins reading his own hate mail (can't post it here due to NSFW language). He has a sense of humor.

(btw: Angela Lansbury's voice isn't what I want running through my head; now I'm going to have to binge a couple of Wuauquikuna videos to get it out and their music back in)

My imagination reawakened when I was 12. That's the year I started private organ lessons, got hooked on Star Trek, and learning more advanced things about astronomy. I spent Grade 8 and 9 in the school library during noon hours, reading every astronomy book I could get my hands on, and when one of our Grade 8 science assignments was "write an essay about something in the solar system" I was the only one in the class who figured, hey, the Sun is part of the solar system, I'll write about that... and that's how I ended up reading The Concise Atlas of the Universe and learning about how stars form, live, and die (yes, I know it's all physics and chemistry, but even astronomers talk about them being born and dying).

You can have an interest in science and an imagination at the same time. Just don't let imagination be a substitute for the scientific method. I got suckered into astrology and Chariots of the Gods nonsense for awhile, but taking anthropology and watching/reading Cosmos cured that.

 

[Farm Boy]

No, that does not mean anyone who has ever agreed with that asswipe on anything ever has no imagination. It just means that he's a type of jackass-y not believing. Sort of like 11-12 year olds go through when they're forced to take on some of the work on inserting themselves and their effort into the magic of the universe.

 

[Birdjaguar]

In boomer related news....

63-65% of US small businesses are owned by boomers but only 10% of those have any kind of succession plan to carry the business forward after they retire. That means that 10 of thousands of companies will die in the next decade.There is a huge opportunity for folks to buy those companies and acquire an ongoing operation and build on an existing asset.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No, that does not mean anyone who has ever agreed with that asswipe on anything ever has no imagination. It just means that he's a type of jackass-y not believing. Sort of like 11-12 year olds go through when they're forced to take on some of the work on inserting themselves and their effort into the magic of the universe.

Clear as mud...

I get that I'm forgiven for agreeing with him on something and that this doesn't mean I don't have an imagination. I can't decipher the rest of your post.

 

[Farm Boy]

12 year olds need some slack to be douchebags. Most of them probably outgrow it?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

12 year olds need some slack to be douchebags. Most of them probably outgrow it?

I fail to see what Richard Dawkins has to do with anyone being 12 years old.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

In boomer related news....

63-65% of US small businesses are owned by boomers but only 10% of those have any kind of succession plan to carry the business forward after they retire. That means that 10 of thousands of companies will die in the next decade.

I think you are making a great point here, and if we also consider that fact that small and medium size businesses are already being eaten up by multinationals consistently, this spells a pretty bleak future for small/medium businesses.

There is a huge opportunity for folks to buy those companies and acquire an ongoing operation and build on an existing asset.

Sadly the kind of folks with enough money to acquire a small or medium sized business are usually neither very young nor very much interested in investing in anything besides actual assets like stocks, real estate, etc. I barely know of any people my age who legitimately have money saved up (it's actually quite difficult when you are literally losing money for stashing it in the bank, who woulda thunk ) for an operation like that, and if they did, they'd likely (I assume) prefer to start their own, future oriented business. A lot of businesses are diying down due to change in the labor force (many jobs have virtually died off, especially skilled manufacturing jobs like hatmakers or similiar) and due to the aforementioned lack of succession plan, and predatory big business is waiting to snitch them up, strip them off their assets, and leave them to rot.

 

[Hrothbern]

I think you are making a great point here, and if we also consider that fact that small and medium size businesses are already being eaten up by multinationals consistently, this spells a pretty bleak future for small/medium businesses.

The first decades after WW2 were also a period in time where big companies reduced strongly their manufacturing depth, and outsourced many production steps to "specialist" companies that grew in numbers and size like mushrooms often with existing equipment as start and following new equipment because of the general population and prosperity growth.

Everybody busy with the benifits of focussing to the core know how and fitting manufacturing culture.
The big wave of Industrial Quality Assurance systems directly following securing that the interface between the as such fragmentised production facilities stayed at the required level of technical reliability.
The small companies creating jobs.
The big companies going for efficiency pushing out jobs, accumulating know how.

The multiples on EBIT or EBITDA paid by bigger industrial companies to gobble up the companies with retiring owners were so much higher than new enterpreneurs could pay that you got since the 90ies a net reduction in manufacturing of number of relevant companies.
Starting new companies for niche steps in the total production chain now more and more difficult because those niches had meanwhile reached too big scale size and starter treshold, barrier to entry becoming higher.
=> only innovative starters make it when lucky.
And the old empire builder enterpreneur, the SME family owner, becoming a less common breed.

 

[warpus]

As long as you continue to generalize entire groups of people like this.. you are buying into the premise yourself and fuelling the problem.

Don't you get that those who run your country want you to be divided among racial and generational lines? The more divided you are, the easier you are to control.

Many boomers have already been convinced of this nonsense, but.. surely the next generation of Americans are smarter than that. I don't think they are, but.. here's hoping

 

[Valka D'Ur]

As long as you continue to generalize entire groups of people like this.. you are buying into the premise yourself and fuelling the problem.

Don't you get that those who run your country want you to be divided among racial and generational lines? The more divided you are, the easier you are to control.

Many boomers have already been convinced of this nonsense, but.. surely the next generation of Americans are smarter than that. I don't think they are, but.. here's hoping

Exactly. "Divide and conquer" is how Trump got into the White House. For that matter, it's how the federal right-wing parties operate in Canada, and it's how we in Alberta are now saddled with Jason Kenney, who is basically a combination of Stephen Harper, Trump (sans the "I'd totally date my daughter" perversion), and his own hateful, bigoted self. The government of Alberta is corrupt beyond all doubt... yet Kenney's sycophants see "the other" as enemies whose rights are unimportant.

 

[RobAnybody]

Not to interfere too much in y'all's feud, but I agree with the above couple posts. "Millennials are whatever" & "ok, Boomer" look to me no different than "Muslims are terrorists" or "Mexico is sending rapists"'. Generalizations that only serve to alienate & divide. I mean, memes are often funny; I support those. Keep that up. But don't internalize those messages as The Truth. Don't substitute those for discussion.

Wait, that's enough opinion from me. I'm being told from my monolithic homogeneous generation HQ that I am in danger of getting my Gen X card revoked for exerting myself.

 

[bernie14]

Ok boomer

 

[Zardnaar]

Not to interfere too much in y'all's feud, but I agree with the above couple posts. "Millennials are whatever" & "ok, Boomer" look to me no different than "Muslims are terrorists" or "Mexico is sending rapists"'. Generalizations that only serve to alienate & divide. I mean, memes are often funny; I support those. Keep that up. But don't internalize those messages as The Truth. Don't substitute those for discussion.

Wait, that's enough opinion from me. I'm being told from my monolithic homogeneous generation HQ that I am in danger of getting my Gen X card revoked for exerting myself.

I'm younger generation X. Beers and Nirvana or other Grunge band?

 

[RobAnybody]

Nirvana was my first non-Gangsta rap band I liked in years. Also liked Pearl Jam, at the time. To be be fair, before that, in middle school, I was all in on Tiffany > Debbie Gibson & I despised NKOTB mostly because all the girls lusted after them. But I was younger then & much more superficial, unlike a few years later, when I was all like Britney > Christina & F NSync & 98 Degrees.. Today I am much more mature, naturally, & like Taylor Swift & Arianna Grande. We're keeping this between us, right? No one else is gonna see this?

 

[Zardnaar]

Nirvana was my first non-Gangsta rap band I liked in years. Also liked Pearl Jam, at the time. To be be fair, before that, in middle school, I was all in on Tiffany > Debbie Gibson & I despised NKOTB mostly because all the girls lusted after them. But I was younger then & much more superficial, unlike a few years later, when I was all like Britney > Christina & F NSync & 98 Degrees.. Today I am much more mature, naturally, & like Taylor Swift & Arianna Grande. We're keeping this between us, right? No one else is gonna see this?

I also hated NKotB, same reason lol.

Prefer Soundgarden and Alice in Chains over Nirvana but they're still good.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

As long as you continue to generalize entire groups of people like this.. you are buying into the premise yourself and fuelling the problem.

The only way to call out systemic inequalities is to point to systemic issues. Few people have a problem when people call out "rich", "elites", "multinationals", "CEOs" et cetera, but whenever it becomes generational or ethnic, it is somehow a problem?

It is simply a matter of fact that some people contribute more to global inequality, some people, through their behavior, contribute much, much more to climate change than others. Yes, not every boomer is a pretro millionare with two SUVs. But petromillionares with two SUVs are overwhelmingly boomers, or close.

But not every slaveholder was torturing or raping or whipping their slaves, does that mean we shouldn't make general judgements of slaveholders? Or Whites in pre-US North America? Or Colonialists? It is entirely fair to point out the "invisible" priviledge that a whole generation of people have had, in fact I think it is detrimental to any society when these talking points are silenced, just because some people are uncomfortable with it.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, but putting the causality of "petromillionare with two SUVs" as "boomer" is pretty ratchet. They may be boomers, a certain degree of accumulation selecting for boomer may be required, but I think, maybe, just maybe, there are more relevant inputs in the equation.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Generational generalizations are mostly a convenience of lazy thinking that attribute what people don't like about some folks to a much larger group and marking that group as an enemy.

 

[warpus]

The only way to call out systemic inequalities is to point to systemic issues. Few people have a problem when people call out "rich", "elites", "multinationals", "CEOs" et cetera, but whenever it becomes generational or ethnic, it is somehow a problem?

I mean, yes, generalizing is a problem. It's usually thought of as bigotry to take an entire group of people that have something like religion, ethnic background, age, or gender in common *and possibly nothing else* and say negative things about that entire group, as if it applies to all of them for some reason.

If you want things to actually change, generalizing like that will get you nowhere. It will only push people away and divide everyone else.

If you want to call out "the rich", then go ahead, although that makes little sense either. It's not like they all go to meetings and are all on the same page about everything. By calling out all rich people and saying negative things about them, don't you realize you are also including all those rich people who were already on your side of the issue? Why push them away, for no reason?

Argue your points effectively and it will be a lot more effective than generalizations and bigotry.