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Lemmy Be Wholesome @lemmy.world
ɔiƚoxɘup @infosec.pub

Restored my faith a little

Reminds me that the whole concept of generations is something manufactured of whole cloth and meant to divide us, but more than that, that real people are compassionate and understanding. All that stuff is just fake.

It gives me hope for unity.

65 comments

  • something manufactured of whole cloth and meant to divide us

    I'm not so sure about that.

    My parents grew up in London during WWII. My father told me that, on any given day, at least one or two of the kids in his school had recently received a letter from the government telling them that their father, uncle or brother had died in the war. Not to mention other deaths from bombings that happen on and off for years. For the most part, the rest of the kids in school never knew who had just had someone killed in the war, although I suppose it eventually came out to become public knowledge. The point being that you could be playing ball with some kid who had just lost a family member, and you wouldn't necessarily know it. He said that this shaped his attitude that death is just a part of life, and something that (in true British fashion) you accepted and moved on with.

    This came up when my sister-in-law lost her adult daughter some years back and she was (and is) still struggling with it. My father has a hard time understanding her feelings. The two of them are just 22 years apart in age.

    WWII is something that casts a pretty big shadow. But when I was born, it was less than 20 years later and its influence on my attitudes is several orders of magnitude smaller than on my parents.

    At the other end. It's hard for anyone much less than 25 years old today to remember life before modern smart phones (if you assume the start of that as the iPhone in 2008). It's hard to deny that the smart phone has radically changed the way that we interact with each other and the world. Yes, old farts like me have adapted to it, but young people today have these things hard-wired in from the beginning.

    So far, in this century, it's changing technology that casts the big shadow.

    The point being that, while society changes in a continuum, big things that cast big shadows tend to define "eras" that shape the way that young people develop. And those big shadows are what cause "generations" to tend to clump together in attitudes and behaviours. And, no, I don't think this is made up just to divide us.

    • no, I don't think this is made up just to divide us.

      Now, those articles written about them are another story. They frame things about generational differences in a negative or salacious light for the views.

  • What galls me is that we have no means of recourse really.

    The minimum wage has been stuck at $7 for almost two decades, and 2/3 of the states use that baseline. Unions have become stronger by necessity, which is great, as prices for everything from food, to gas, to rent have surged and our Federal Government has done nothing meaningful to stop it. Workers are cast as lazy or crybabies for wanting the most basic positive work-life balance. And, short of being a billionaire or being willing to commit a terrorist act (which I 100% do not endorse) the individual is stuck cutting themselves down to the bone in order to survive, even with a full-time job.

    • The worst part of this is that half the western world seems to be caught by right-wing media that has managed to convince them that the problem is gays, immigrants, muslims, jews, professors, doctors, scientists, teachers, etc. These people believe that the rich are their allies, and so when Jeff Bezos rides a penis rocket into "space", they cheer instead of wanting to lynch him.

      Democracy doesn't work unless the voters are informed. The right-wing media system has brainwashed people so they can't even accept basic facts -- and that's before you start diving into the whole conspiracy space with Jewish space lasers, a flat earth, chemtrails, crisis actors, etc.

      Because these voters are so misinformed, they advocate against anything that might help them or their children to become more informed. So, the problem just gets worse generation by generation.

      If you can't get people to understand the basic facts of life, you definitely can't get them to understand the problem. If you can't get them to understand the problem, there's no way to get them to advocate for a solution. And, even if it were possible to get a majority to advocate for a solution, the electoral systems of the world are so rigged that it would be really hard to pass the required laws.

    • We do have recourse, we just aren't organized and don't seem to really be that motivated to do anything about it. And a huge number are regularly falling for a massive propaganda machine.

    • And, short of being a billionaire or being willing to commit a terrorist act (which I 100% do not endorse)

      In a society where healthcare and housing are purchased at market rather than a right, financial exploitation is an overt act of violence against each and every one of us.

      Violence begets violence. However, a lack of a sufficiently violent response to an unjustified violent act begets repetition and escalation of that violent act.

      What galls me is that we have no means of recourse really.

      Guillotines.

      Our means of recourse is the guillotine. That we haven't hauled a guillotine to the door of a billionaire and demanded he reduce his wealth to $999,999,999 is a travesty.

      The longer we refrain from using the figurative guillotines of law and order to bring these robber barons into line, the more likely we will need to resort to literal guillotines.

65 comments