Quote: (01-24-2018 01:13 PM)Samseau Wrote:
Hard to blame Boomers when they didn't know any better.
I'd disagree. I observed how my parents and all my friend's parents acted over the years. The politicans, the media figures, older co-workers, teachers, caregivers. They were narcissistic arseholes of the highest order - the Millennials are lightweights by comparison. Nothing else existed to them outside their current desire, even their children's comfort and safety.
They chose to be so of their own free will. No-one 'tricked' them into anything.
A few of us Generation X'er's who are helping an abandoned Kid discussed our upbringings with him the other day, particularly the shared latchkey nature and the sensed
lack of mattering to our parents: we were all abandoned to social causes; sins of sex, drugs and alcohol; or whatever the latest shiny toy was.
This is exactly what has happened to Gen Z: they've been ignored for social media and social causes. I've been observing how they group and bond - for example, I was talking to The Kid about the need for
Secret Spaces for a teenager that Millennials seemed to have zero interest in - and have noted the intense similarity to Gen X play and herding behaviour, which is why I've said for a couple of years now on here,
something very different to the Millennials is coming.
Whilst I've read the fourth turning, I feel like the cycle isn't holding up: it's more like Millennials are Boomers, Pt 2, and GenZ is Gen X, Part 2.
I had to laugh last night. I was hiking along the lake and saw two sixteen year old boys sitting on a rock watching the growing storm. They called out to a younger boy they obviously knew playing some distance away and directed his attention to the crazy lightning on the horizon.
"Fuck!" the younger one said, as he came running up.
"Please don't swear," one of the older boys said, "I'm Christian."
"Sorry," the other one answered.
I mean, it's easy to laugh at Millennials for losing their minds when anyone disagrees with them, but I saw the exact same meltdown behaviour if you challenged a Nun about Religion, a School Teacher about a Margaret Atwood book, or any of the many Producers and Musicians I've worked with over the years who expected me to default to the worship of the endless waves of boring bands they liked as teenagers. (Hell, I've got every Psychedelic Furs album from the 1980's, but I'm not going to shove them down anyone's throat as the be all and end all of rock music).
A Boomer Producer was talking to me the other week about The Beatles - of course - and telling me the story, for the 1000th time - of how they cut together two different takes of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' to arrive at the final single.
"Makes sense," I said. "So not only did Lennon have no idea what he was trying to say, he had no idea of how to say it."
Oh man, you could have heard the REEEEE from orbit. Narrative Challenge leading to Meltdown is not a new behaviour.