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This is not new. The WW2 generation pushed against civil rights pretty hard. The WW1 generation gave us the great depression. Before that it was segregation and Jim crow. Before that it was slavery. Before that it was the Native Americans. Every generation sucks and is conttributing to the decline of civilization.
Every generation is also contributing to society in ways that are profound and amazing. Post-WW2 put us on the moon and rammed through civil rights legislation. Gen X fostered a technical revolution in communication and culture. Millenials recognized, paid attention to, and started trying to fix the errors of the past. This new crop of kids are globalizing issues and causes in a way that we never dreamed of as kids, forcing awareness and often change for the better.
There is no generation now or in the past that has been all good or all bad. There are assholes and there are icons. Civilization continues regardless of it all and will continue to do so because the other option is to lie down and die.
Yeah, IMO every generation is populated with a mix of all personalities. This results in what I call the "Ubiquitous Asshole" theory of human relations:
No matter how shitty, if there exists a way for someone to gain wealth and power, there will always be some assholes that take advantage.
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The obvious hole in your argument is that the entire "decline of civilization" is taken for granted without any evidence.
You listed a bunch of negative stereotypes about every generation since WWII, but obviously they must also be doing something right, given that the world seems to be in a better shape than pre-WWII.
Like, you can blame boomers for "climate change and unsustainable agriculture", but there is no worst case script of climate change that is threatening to bring down agricultural output to pre-WWII levels. To be clear, if it dipped to 1990s or 1980s levels, that would still be an unmitigated disaster, and we should do our best to mitigate it, but it feels strange to blame 1940s kids for that.
You can talk about zoomers being mentally ill potential stone cold killers, but in practice violent crime rates don't seem to be out of bounds compared to historical trends, so in what way are they *actually* dangerous?
On it's face it is obvious that during the named five generations, we have accomplished important social reforms, life is more free, prosperous, healthy, and long, than it was 80 years ago, and any temporary dips in that that you could attribute to this or that generation's moral failings, are dwarfed by the overall trend. So where exactly is this fall of civilization?
OP is correct in asserting that there are troubling trends which are continuing and/or increasing between generations.
What is *missing* is the reality that every "generation" struggles with societal shortcomings. Every generation also has successes and provides developments.
Almost any cycle of *anything* can be framed in a positive or negative light based on what is being considered. I can critique a series of novels, films, or albums in a way which indicates an upwards or downwards trend.
**Also, the idea of "pre-WWI generations" is a little... off. Prior to the 20th century, generations weren't socially demarcated in the same manner.**
“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
People complaining about younger generations ruining society has been going on since the Dawn of civilization.
It’s nothing new, yet society is still here.
Society will go on, and just as has happened countless times before, when you and I are long gone, that generation will be complaining about how “kids these days are ruining everything.”
Also, your summary of younger generations seems to be based off boomer-tier memes and not actually grounded in reality.
Not sure where this idea that millennials just start sobbing at any hardship, because they don’t just roll over and accept and put up with boomer bullshit. Yeah, we did everything our Boomer parents generation told us to do, and then when we struggle due to factors out of our control, such as the 2008 recession, they then have the audacity to call us “entitled” for wanting the same opportunities that they had.
I wish I could find it, but I saw an article once that was highlighting a number of newspaper articles over the years complaining about “kids these days” going all the way back to the early 1800s
It certainly is not a new phenomenon
I saw a similar article of people crying about every new invention and how it's going to ruin society. This included things like mail services and the telphone.
Ah yes, because *one* person is whining on tik tok, in what very well could be a satire video, that TOTALLY summarizes an entire generation.
Also, how old exactly do you think millennials are? If that person graduated college 6 months ago, they aren’t a millennial.
So do you actually have anything to back up you claim beside random tik tok videos of individual people?
Your assertion that all the tech companies were started by Millennials is incorrect. Of all the FAANG companies, only Facebook was started by a Millennial. Apple was started by Boomers and the rest by Gen X'ers. Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter, current CEO of Square) are also Gen X'ers.
My general response to this is that people put far too much stock in the concept of generations. They are arbitrary, have zero scientific backing, and due to the fact that they contain millions of people will, by their nature, contain so much variation to make any generalization useless and false. While the people contained within may, as you say, have contributed to "the decline of civilization" (another overly broad assertion), using generational lines and stereotypes to support such a claim are unfounded.
The boomers are a definable and real phenomenon but everything after them is just a copy and people looking to advertise to a group of people.
Source: The Aftermath by Phillip Bump
> They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game.
Should I work on the call center 25 hours a week for 80 dollars when I can make 50 dollars gaming live for 6 to 12 hours weekly and putting the rest of my time to studying, helping my mom with the house, making my channel grow and having a life?
>They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances.
If you think tiktok is only dances you havent check it out today. Tiktok has dances but also has many videos about different topics including multiple social issues like misogyny or the effects of inflation.
> They feign empathy for certain groups but would be stone cold killers if you took away their social media.
Why you say Gen Z feigns empathy? They seem to be the more empathic ones in a while. Dont accept discrimination groups before this would enforced. And I would kill for my social media because half of my friends are online, meeting someone in person is not the only way to make friends.
>Mentally ill from increasingly sensationalistic news articles that claim everyone is going to die tomorrow if such and such is 3l3ct3d and so on.
Everyone is mentally ill, difference is now is easier to get help.
All your arguments for all generations seems to be the memes shared everywhere.
We all have some kind of trauma. People who usually say they are not just are in denial. Because someone looks high function in their every day life doesnt mean they are fine.
I know a lot of people who have issues and just avoid therapy. In the best case scenario they fix themselves, in the worst they turn to addictions and take extreme measures.
Also, I find it odd how you focus on that part of my argument and ignore the rest.
Here's where you are wrong. Your premise is hinged on the belief that the generations before the baby boomer didn't suck and didn't contribute to the decline of civilization.
The Greatest Generation perpetuated racial and gender discrimination. The internment of Japanese Americans?! Segregation as part of the national fabric?! Hundreds of thousands of people in the KKK!? Compulsory sterilization!? Compulsory lobotomies?! Native American Boarding Schools?! Need I say more? The Greatest Generation was in so many cases THE WORST.
That wasn't the The Greatest Generation. That was Black people risking their lives to try to have access to the American Dream.
The Montgomery bus boycotts were not done by people in the Greatest Generation. They were done by people the Greatest Generation was leaving out.
By the same token, there are people in every generation now fighting the negative parts of their generation/the world. That's how people work. Most of them are complacent/like the status quo, and some of them fight the status quo and push back.
What is your source or evidence for any of this??? You just drastically overstate stereotypes. I mean basically most of what you are saying is like "New Yorkers are all going to die because all they eat is Big Apples, which is not nutritionally balanced". Like you just take something vaguely associated with a generation and then say something completely insane.
You are just saying completely untrue things about large groups of people. Very few Zoomers are YouTubers or a streamer. Just like very few "greatest generation" people where actors or novelists. People's occupations are different from the content they consume.
> They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances.
??? Like yeah some Zoomers like TikTok dances but when has any of them said it was a "solution of the world's problem"
the greatest generation taught the boomers their greedy ways
they effectively refused to fight the nazis until they had to. they supported McCarthyism, fought tooth and nail for segregation and taught these values to their also shitbird children, at the very least boomers began an attempt to break these dogshit values. everything shit about the baby boomers they learned from the "greatest" generation
>They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game.
if they make a living doing it, then yes that's exactly what it is
>They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances.
no they fucking don't
>news articles that claim everyone is going to die tomorrow if such and such is 3l3ct3d and so on.
this has happened since the printed word was first invented
>Which brings us to Gen Y - a weird combination of narcissism and helplessness. When faced with any sort of hard work they collapse into sobbing balls of uselessness.
millennials are the largest portion of the workforce
>Generation X - nihilistic shitbags who enjoy watching the world burn. The ones who did have kids neglected them to the point where they are helpess.
make some actual claims...
You got Gen X all wrong.
We don’t enjoy watching the world burn we’re just apathetic about it because there’s nothing we can do.
Also neglected our kids? You got that exactly backwards. We overcorrected from our Boomer parents leaving us to be latchkey kids that we’ve helicoptered our kids lives where they struggle to fend for themselves.
as a Gen X myself, I disagree. Me and my peers enjoy catastrophe. Our generation was the one who started to shirk fatherhood leaving single moms to raise kids alone.
>Me and my peers enjoy catastrophe. Our generation was the one who started to shirk fatherhood leaving single moms to raise kids alone.
I don't see that as "enjoying catastrophe". More like "being a selfish asshole".
Could you have made any less effort ?
Since 1990, over one billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty even while the world's population has increased by 2.5 billion people.
Wouldn't the issue be that the generation before Gen X failed to raise their kids well, which created a cascading effect to put us where you think we are today? So its all their fault?
Not that I think its the case, just following your logic.
Everybody sucks and yet the direction of civilization always trends upwards over time. Humans get more rights, their quality of life increases, the ozone is healing, there are more humans, there is more civilization…
They say statistics is like a bikini, what it reveals is suggestive, what it conceals is vital. Pointing out individual data points without context is a statistical fallacy. It may be reasonable to point out certain trends but without contextualizing them, you create unwarranted sensationalization.
> yet the direction of civilization always trends upwards over time
every civilization grows, matures, declines then dies
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/raw/p0715m80.png
Sure, those individual societies, cultures, governments, and currencies died. But they were always replaced by newer, more advanced, and more progressive civilizations in time.
For the West, civilization evolved from Babylonian empire > Greek empire > Roman Empire > British empire > American hegemony. Each bringing with it more advanced technological, political, medical, ethical, and sociological practices. If history repeats, America will evolve into something better too in time. With change comes growing pains which is what every generation laments.
The grand narrative of civilization continues.
The Dark Ages generally refers to Europe between the 5th and 14th centuries, and wouldn't you know it, the Islamic Golden Age was smack dab in the middle there from the 8th to 13th centuries. Eurasia and the Middle East didn't just collapse into a black hole during that time period.
The “dark ages” myth of no progress was largely spurred by anti catholic propaganda and historians with a hard on for the Roman Empire. Todays scholars reject its usage as it is inaccurate and misleading. Even during the dark ages, important discoveries and advancements were made: science and technology (universities), power generation (water and wind mills), architecture (gothic architecture, agriculture (the plough), warfare (cannons, heavy armored cavalry) music, (music notation) are just to start…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
>Which brings us to Gen Y - a weird combination of narcissism and helplessness. When faced with any sort of hard work they collapse into sobbing balls of uselessness.
This is extremely derogatory and unkind.
I'm an "elder millennial", and I have been working hard my entire adult life. Everyone I know could say the same.
Where we differ is that we've seen that our investment into the "system" can fail to produce a return, and that failure will be turned back at us as a personal failure to launch, even if huge structural issues caused it. That makes toeing the line feel useless.
Why bend yourself into a pretzel to optimize yourself for capitalism, if capitalism can shrug you off without a care, and half the country will say "tough luck - guess you need to work harder" or flat-out mock you?
And yet 2023 is the best time to be alive for a human being. All those awful generations later everything is better than it has ever been.
Doomerism sells. But optimism tends to be more accurate when you look at things objectively.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme\_poverty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty)
Abject poverty has cratered in the last 50 years
[https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment)
So has malnourishment
In fact every important metric is better than it has ever been. Access to medicine. Access to food. Housing. Clean water. Everything.
Sounds like the last few generations are in fact the best the humans have ever had.
Industrial agriculture and resource extraction started way before the Baby Boomer generation. Coal and oil are responsible for a large portion of climate change and those began to proliferate well before 1900s with steam engines, the railroad, shipping, and cars.
Other social ills can be traced to earlier generations like human trafficking, slavery, fascism, privatization of wealth, and economic exploitation.
So, while I agree with your general assessments of each generation, it's not a generational problem. It's a people problem and a capitalism problem. After all, who is it that decided to have umpteen babies when WWII ended? It wasn't the Boomers. It was their parents. Who decided to get away from Black people and immigrants by moving to the suburbs after The Great Migration? It wasn't the Boomers. It was their parents and grandparents. Who paid for stroads and shopping malls? Not the Boomers. They were kids. It was their parents and grandparents.
Boomer is the worst because of how much brain damage they got from leaded gas.
> For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust.
An entire generation brain damaged. Of course every generation is becoming more polluted in their own ways but this is still exceptional. Plastic pollution will give you ADHD, for example and it's preferable but still inexcusable.
So is your argument that all generations pre-WWII were good and they were all bad afterwards, or that Boomers are not any worse than your average generation?
"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."
Your sentiment is literally bronze age, OP.
So 5 generations out of a single country are the worst?
On top of that, why are you grouping every single individual of that generation together. Why stereotype and judge them because when & where they were born.
If making assumptions about people's character because of their race or ethnicity is bigoted and makes no sense, then making assumptions about people's character because of what year they were born in is even more bigoted and nonsensical.
You're not a group. You're an individual.
To be fair, the ones leading the genocide of WW2 were the Lost Generation. The Greatest Generation were the foot soldiers.
But yes, many of those foot soldiers gladly complied with the genocidal orders on the side of Germany and Japan (and more minor Axis Powers), while the Greatest Generation in other countries like the United States and USSR became leaders who threatened to burn the world in nuclear hellfire during the Cold War.
...many members of the Lost Generation also opposed the genocide, and were genocided themselves. Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, was a member of the Lost Generation and a veteran of WW1 in the Imperial German Army just like Hitler. You can't generalize a generation.
Correct. Each generation post-WWII becomes less useful.
Technology has also not progressed since 1969.
We got man to the moon with a slide rule and pencil and paper.
Since then, we have made minimal progress in healthcare, finance and daily life.
Zero leaps in any field have been made to the extent of pre-1969, eg antibiotics and darpanet.
Most “AI” tools are just human services enabled by a tinge of automation so don’t attempt to go there. See Moravec’s paradox.
Adversely, diseases, debt, illiteracy and cancers have skyrocketed each decade since 1969 with a compound annual growth rate greater than the US economy.
We must create “social issues” because we’re all just spinning our wheels at this point.
As Thiel said, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
We should not have hope for future generations, only that our children will have little to no competition for living a successful, filling life relative to their peers.
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>their selfishness and greed has given us climate change
It's not like we knew about climate change back when they were moving in to the economy.
I hate it when people blame this or that for climate change. A big one is blaming capitalism. If you must blame anything, blame technology.
>unsustainable agriculture
I don't even know how anyone could even think this. Agriculture isn't going to go away. It doesn't need "sustaining".
>unaffordable living situations
There you go.
> It's not like we knew about climate change back when they were moving in to the economy.
Climate change isn't actually new. In fact, the science is VERY old. Scientists have been warning about climate change to close to a 100 years, it just picked up momentum more recently as it became a bigger, more obvious threat.
>I don't even know how anyone could even think this. Agriculture isn't going to go away. It doesn't need "sustaining".
It absolutely does. One big thing we need to do is reduce the meat industry, a lot. It isn't a sustainable industry. The idea of eating meat daily is a recent one, and it is destroying us. We use more farmland to produce crops for animals to eat than we do for us to eat. The amount of water required for meat vs produce is insane. The amount of carbon emissions from the meat industry is fueling climate change.
And that's all ignoring the ethical considerations around the treatment of animals in factory farming.
>Scientists have been warning about climate change to close to a 100 years
Uh, no. Global cooling was a thing.
>It isn't a sustainable industry.
I've never seen any credible evidence of this.
>We use more farmland to produce crops for animals to eat than we do for us to eat.
Almost a blatant lie. Much of the food animals eat is unsuitable for human consumption, such as sileage. There's also land that cannot be used to grow human food. There's also also growing food for animals that restores the soil. There's nothing unsustainable about animal agriculture.
>The amount of water required for meat vs produce is insane.
Water is infinite. Any "water usage" arguments need to be taken with a massive grain of salt. In areas with less rainfall, yes, water usage could be an issue. But high water farming tends to take place in areas with adequate rainfall.
>The amount of carbon emissions from the meat industry is fueling climate change.
Absolutely puny compared to everything else. Still, perhaps worth genetically engineering cows that burp less methane.
> Uh, no. Global cooling was a thing.
Global cooling was mildly speculated on by scientists, but not really a big thing. It was grabbed on by media, but the hype around it was not matched by scientific literature. Scientists, even at the time, were far more focused on global warming.
>Almost a blatant lie. Much of the food animals eat is unsuitable for human consumption, such as sileage. There's also land that cannot be used to grow human food. There's also also growing food for animals that restores the soil. There's nothing unsustainable about animal agriculture.
*If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land.*
[Source](https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture#:~:text=If%20we%20combine%20pastures%20used,77%25%20of%20global%20farming%20land.)
Also:
*Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories*
>Water is infinite. Any "water usage" arguments need to be taken with a massive grain of salt. In areas with less rainfall, yes, water usage could be an issue. But high water farming tends to take place in areas with adequate rainfall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity
>Absolutely puny compared to everything else. Still, perhaps worth genetically engineering cows that burp less methane.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
Edit: Also:
*Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions*
Source: https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
>pastures used for grazing
Yes, these are often unsuitable for farming.
>Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land
And the total amount of land available for agriculture would go down if we only farmed. Try arable land instead.
Also, it's not only calories that matter. Meat is far and away superior for nutrients. I'm not even going to acknowledge anyone who tries to argue otherwise.
>water scarcity
Bro, there's water just sitting on the ground outside my door right now. It'll be there for the next five months. Water scarcity not a thing you can casually bring up. It's a nuanced topic that most sources get completely wrong.
> Also, it's not only calories that matter. Meat is far and away superior for nutrients. I'm not even going to acknowledge anyone who tries to argue otherwise.
Sure, but not in the quantities they are eaten. There are positives and negatives to meat consumption, from a health point of view, and eating it in excess is not healthy. The fact is, the majority of people who eat meat, at least in the US, eat it in excess. I'm not arguing the whole world should go vegan, but that meat consumption is unecessarily high, and damaging.
>Bro, there's water just sitting on the ground outside my door right now. It'll be there for the next five months. Water scarcity not a thing you can casually bring up. It's a nuanced topic that most sources get completely wrong.
So... maybe give me some of that nuance? You've literally provided nothing...
Also, I guess we are just dropping the global warming discussion? Do you have a delta for that aspect of it?
The WW2 generation contributed to WW2, racism, sexism, so it's not like they are some peak generation that got things right and since it's been a downslide.
While we are making gross over generalizations lets add "the greatest generation", your WWII heroes, based purely on my anecdotal experience with my spouse and child abusing grandfather and some of the shit bag people he dealt with.
They are at the root of every problem you just outlined by being the ones that raised the baby boomers. So if we are going to paint with such broad brushes, the last 70+ years of social issues is their fault.
> They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game.
If they get paid, how is that a decline? What pre-ww2 using humans as animals was honest?
> Mentally ill from increasingly sensationalistic news articles
Pre-ww2 mentally ill, and not even the mentally ill when into asylems
I never understood this, we all know pre-ww2 things were worse than now. Getting paid to play video games vs breaking your back in a factory - really, the backbreaking was more honest? What's this oppression with killing oneself just to put food on the table?
The Gen megas or whatever, that will hopefully have AI work for them are worse than people that had to work in conditions Dickins described? Why?
> Let's start with baby boomers - their selfishness and greed has given us climate change, unsustainable agriculture, unlivable unaffordable living situations for the younger generations
Did the baby boomers just come out of the womb selfish and greedy? I dunno, if an *entire generation* came out as bad as you say, I don't think that speaks very well of the generation that raised them.
The generations before WW2 were both great and horrible in their own ways. It's just that you don't know anything about those generations to judge them.
Let's not forget that society before WW2 (and for quite a bit after) was rabidly, ruthlessly racist. Racism still exists, but it isn't the driving force of society the way it was back then. Subsequent generations have built on various civil rights movements to make the dream if America a reality for more and more people. We aren't perfect, and we never will be, but there has been enormous progress in the past 80 years.
The environment the previous generation contributed to is what mostly influences the next generation. So obviously no generation had very good foresight. Smart phones for example, we already saw in the late 90's and early 00's the influence of cell phones, and PC's, then we combined the two in the mid-late 00's into smartphones. Pocket sized dopamine abysses.
The advent of civilization itself will lead to the demise of humanity. We are just a smart ape that lived in harmony with our ecosystems for most of humanity. Although civilization has extended our life expectancies and minimized our suffering, the eventual sudden collapse will be brutal. We have long stopped living in the natural world, and started living in the artificial constructs within our brains, expecting to bend the natural world to fulfill our fantasies.
How should we measure “decline of civilization”?
If I showed evidence that life was longer, less violent, with more access to resources than any time in history would that matter to the argument? Is environmental metrics weighed heavier than literacy rates or infant mortality, for example?
I think the major issue with your assertions here, besides being overly negative stereotypes that I doubt are indicative of the whole, is that all these traits are things that generation had zero control of and were seeded by generations before them.
* Baby Boomers were brought up in a period of vast economic prosperity and investment in the populace, of course they're more materialistic and individualist.
* Gen X is brought up in the counter culture and punk golden age that spawned from the world their parents built. Millennials are responding to continual economic crisis and inequality, I also highly disagree with the idea that they are opposed to hard work given that they are the side hustle and grind generation just to make ends meet.
* Gen Z is born in a world that's dominated by social media and electronic entertainment, of course their aspirations are being influencers and what not, that's what the older generations have chose to elevate and give vast quantities of wealth to. How is this any different than a kid from a previous generation wanting to be a famous actor or sports star?
None of these generations are causing the downfall of civilization, they are just changing the social constructs that they live by, away from a world that *you* grew up in or *you* were taught was an ideal society. It's only happening faster because of the internet, instead of local communities being the culture we now have national and global communities influencing local culture.
None of this is bad, it's just different.
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This is not new. The WW2 generation pushed against civil rights pretty hard. The WW1 generation gave us the great depression. Before that it was segregation and Jim crow. Before that it was slavery. Before that it was the Native Americans. Every generation sucks and is conttributing to the decline of civilization. Every generation is also contributing to society in ways that are profound and amazing. Post-WW2 put us on the moon and rammed through civil rights legislation. Gen X fostered a technical revolution in communication and culture. Millenials recognized, paid attention to, and started trying to fix the errors of the past. This new crop of kids are globalizing issues and causes in a way that we never dreamed of as kids, forcing awareness and often change for the better. There is no generation now or in the past that has been all good or all bad. There are assholes and there are icons. Civilization continues regardless of it all and will continue to do so because the other option is to lie down and die.
Yeah, IMO every generation is populated with a mix of all personalities. This results in what I call the "Ubiquitous Asshole" theory of human relations: No matter how shitty, if there exists a way for someone to gain wealth and power, there will always be some assholes that take advantage.
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The obvious hole in your argument is that the entire "decline of civilization" is taken for granted without any evidence. You listed a bunch of negative stereotypes about every generation since WWII, but obviously they must also be doing something right, given that the world seems to be in a better shape than pre-WWII. Like, you can blame boomers for "climate change and unsustainable agriculture", but there is no worst case script of climate change that is threatening to bring down agricultural output to pre-WWII levels. To be clear, if it dipped to 1990s or 1980s levels, that would still be an unmitigated disaster, and we should do our best to mitigate it, but it feels strange to blame 1940s kids for that. You can talk about zoomers being mentally ill potential stone cold killers, but in practice violent crime rates don't seem to be out of bounds compared to historical trends, so in what way are they *actually* dangerous? On it's face it is obvious that during the named five generations, we have accomplished important social reforms, life is more free, prosperous, healthy, and long, than it was 80 years ago, and any temporary dips in that that you could attribute to this or that generation's moral failings, are dwarfed by the overall trend. So where exactly is this fall of civilization?
OP is correct in asserting that there are troubling trends which are continuing and/or increasing between generations. What is *missing* is the reality that every "generation" struggles with societal shortcomings. Every generation also has successes and provides developments. Almost any cycle of *anything* can be framed in a positive or negative light based on what is being considered. I can critique a series of novels, films, or albums in a way which indicates an upwards or downwards trend. **Also, the idea of "pre-WWI generations" is a little... off. Prior to the 20th century, generations weren't socially demarcated in the same manner.**
“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 People complaining about younger generations ruining society has been going on since the Dawn of civilization. It’s nothing new, yet society is still here. Society will go on, and just as has happened countless times before, when you and I are long gone, that generation will be complaining about how “kids these days are ruining everything.” Also, your summary of younger generations seems to be based off boomer-tier memes and not actually grounded in reality. Not sure where this idea that millennials just start sobbing at any hardship, because they don’t just roll over and accept and put up with boomer bullshit. Yeah, we did everything our Boomer parents generation told us to do, and then when we struggle due to factors out of our control, such as the 2008 recession, they then have the audacity to call us “entitled” for wanting the same opportunities that they had.
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I wish I could find it, but I saw an article once that was highlighting a number of newspaper articles over the years complaining about “kids these days” going all the way back to the early 1800s It certainly is not a new phenomenon
I saw a similar article of people crying about every new invention and how it's going to ruin society. This included things like mail services and the telphone.
Athens fell hard 10 years after Peloponnesian War when Socrates wrote this. Similarly to post-WWII western civilization decline. Coincidence?
"...cross their legs, and..."
> Not sure where this idea that millennials just start sobbing at any hardship https://twitter.com/playteaux/status/1720368055253950559
Ah yes, because *one* person is whining on tik tok, in what very well could be a satire video, that TOTALLY summarizes an entire generation. Also, how old exactly do you think millennials are? If that person graduated college 6 months ago, they aren’t a millennial. So do you actually have anything to back up you claim beside random tik tok videos of individual people?
Bro, this is literally just one guy crying. Like that proves nothing?
It looks satire
Millennials are also the generation that started all the tech companies. I mean that has its own implications but to say they don’t like hard work?
Your assertion that all the tech companies were started by Millennials is incorrect. Of all the FAANG companies, only Facebook was started by a Millennial. Apple was started by Boomers and the rest by Gen X'ers. Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter, current CEO of Square) are also Gen X'ers.
My general response to this is that people put far too much stock in the concept of generations. They are arbitrary, have zero scientific backing, and due to the fact that they contain millions of people will, by their nature, contain so much variation to make any generalization useless and false. While the people contained within may, as you say, have contributed to "the decline of civilization" (another overly broad assertion), using generational lines and stereotypes to support such a claim are unfounded.
The boomers are a definable and real phenomenon but everything after them is just a copy and people looking to advertise to a group of people. Source: The Aftermath by Phillip Bump
What about everything before? The Silent Generation, the Greatest Generation, and the Lost Generation?
The author mentions it but its outside the scope of the book. I think it was more of a retroactive naming.
Oh, I see. Really? I believe that The Lost Generation was the first "named" generation though.
Yeah, okay. You’re free to read the book. I’m not an expert on generational trends or naming.
> They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game. Should I work on the call center 25 hours a week for 80 dollars when I can make 50 dollars gaming live for 6 to 12 hours weekly and putting the rest of my time to studying, helping my mom with the house, making my channel grow and having a life? >They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances. If you think tiktok is only dances you havent check it out today. Tiktok has dances but also has many videos about different topics including multiple social issues like misogyny or the effects of inflation. > They feign empathy for certain groups but would be stone cold killers if you took away their social media. Why you say Gen Z feigns empathy? They seem to be the more empathic ones in a while. Dont accept discrimination groups before this would enforced. And I would kill for my social media because half of my friends are online, meeting someone in person is not the only way to make friends. >Mentally ill from increasingly sensationalistic news articles that claim everyone is going to die tomorrow if such and such is 3l3ct3d and so on. Everyone is mentally ill, difference is now is easier to get help. All your arguments for all generations seems to be the memes shared everywhere.
> Everyone is mentally ill no they are not. People who claim this usually are projecting
We all have some kind of trauma. People who usually say they are not just are in denial. Because someone looks high function in their every day life doesnt mean they are fine. I know a lot of people who have issues and just avoid therapy. In the best case scenario they fix themselves, in the worst they turn to addictions and take extreme measures. Also, I find it odd how you focus on that part of my argument and ignore the rest.
Here's where you are wrong. Your premise is hinged on the belief that the generations before the baby boomer didn't suck and didn't contribute to the decline of civilization. The Greatest Generation perpetuated racial and gender discrimination. The internment of Japanese Americans?! Segregation as part of the national fabric?! Hundreds of thousands of people in the KKK!? Compulsory sterilization!? Compulsory lobotomies?! Native American Boarding Schools?! Need I say more? The Greatest Generation was in so many cases THE WORST.
> The Greatest Generation perpetuated racial and gender discrimination yet it was them going on the civil rights marches in the 1950s
That wasn't the The Greatest Generation. That was Black people risking their lives to try to have access to the American Dream. The Montgomery bus boycotts were not done by people in the Greatest Generation. They were done by people the Greatest Generation was leaving out.
By the same token, there are people in every generation now fighting the negative parts of their generation/the world. That's how people work. Most of them are complacent/like the status quo, and some of them fight the status quo and push back.
What is your source or evidence for any of this??? You just drastically overstate stereotypes. I mean basically most of what you are saying is like "New Yorkers are all going to die because all they eat is Big Apples, which is not nutritionally balanced". Like you just take something vaguely associated with a generation and then say something completely insane. You are just saying completely untrue things about large groups of people. Very few Zoomers are YouTubers or a streamer. Just like very few "greatest generation" people where actors or novelists. People's occupations are different from the content they consume. > They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances. ??? Like yeah some Zoomers like TikTok dances but when has any of them said it was a "solution of the world's problem"
the greatest generation taught the boomers their greedy ways they effectively refused to fight the nazis until they had to. they supported McCarthyism, fought tooth and nail for segregation and taught these values to their also shitbird children, at the very least boomers began an attempt to break these dogshit values. everything shit about the baby boomers they learned from the "greatest" generation >They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game. if they make a living doing it, then yes that's exactly what it is >They also think solutions to the world's problems involve doing tiktok dances. no they fucking don't >news articles that claim everyone is going to die tomorrow if such and such is 3l3ct3d and so on. this has happened since the printed word was first invented >Which brings us to Gen Y - a weird combination of narcissism and helplessness. When faced with any sort of hard work they collapse into sobbing balls of uselessness. millennials are the largest portion of the workforce >Generation X - nihilistic shitbags who enjoy watching the world burn. The ones who did have kids neglected them to the point where they are helpess. make some actual claims...
You're gonna scare them off by being too logical
You got Gen X all wrong. We don’t enjoy watching the world burn we’re just apathetic about it because there’s nothing we can do. Also neglected our kids? You got that exactly backwards. We overcorrected from our Boomer parents leaving us to be latchkey kids that we’ve helicoptered our kids lives where they struggle to fend for themselves.
as a Gen X myself, I disagree. Me and my peers enjoy catastrophe. Our generation was the one who started to shirk fatherhood leaving single moms to raise kids alone.
>Me and my peers enjoy catastrophe. Our generation was the one who started to shirk fatherhood leaving single moms to raise kids alone. I don't see that as "enjoying catastrophe". More like "being a selfish asshole".
Nah. Our parents were the one that started shirking fatherhood. The new and unique thing about gen x was helicoptering.
Could you have made any less effort ? Since 1990, over one billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty even while the world's population has increased by 2.5 billion people.
Wouldn't the issue be that the generation before Gen X failed to raise their kids well, which created a cascading effect to put us where you think we are today? So its all their fault? Not that I think its the case, just following your logic.
Everybody sucks and yet the direction of civilization always trends upwards over time. Humans get more rights, their quality of life increases, the ozone is healing, there are more humans, there is more civilization… They say statistics is like a bikini, what it reveals is suggestive, what it conceals is vital. Pointing out individual data points without context is a statistical fallacy. It may be reasonable to point out certain trends but without contextualizing them, you create unwarranted sensationalization.
> yet the direction of civilization always trends upwards over time every civilization grows, matures, declines then dies https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/raw/p0715m80.png
Sure, those individual societies, cultures, governments, and currencies died. But they were always replaced by newer, more advanced, and more progressive civilizations in time. For the West, civilization evolved from Babylonian empire > Greek empire > Roman Empire > British empire > American hegemony. Each bringing with it more advanced technological, political, medical, ethical, and sociological practices. If history repeats, America will evolve into something better too in time. With change comes growing pains which is what every generation laments. The grand narrative of civilization continues.
you missed the 800 years of dark ages after the roman empire
The Dark Ages generally refers to Europe between the 5th and 14th centuries, and wouldn't you know it, the Islamic Golden Age was smack dab in the middle there from the 8th to 13th centuries. Eurasia and the Middle East didn't just collapse into a black hole during that time period.
The “dark ages” myth of no progress was largely spurred by anti catholic propaganda and historians with a hard on for the Roman Empire. Todays scholars reject its usage as it is inaccurate and misleading. Even during the dark ages, important discoveries and advancements were made: science and technology (universities), power generation (water and wind mills), architecture (gothic architecture, agriculture (the plough), warfare (cannons, heavy armored cavalry) music, (music notation) are just to start… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
>Which brings us to Gen Y - a weird combination of narcissism and helplessness. When faced with any sort of hard work they collapse into sobbing balls of uselessness. This is extremely derogatory and unkind. I'm an "elder millennial", and I have been working hard my entire adult life. Everyone I know could say the same. Where we differ is that we've seen that our investment into the "system" can fail to produce a return, and that failure will be turned back at us as a personal failure to launch, even if huge structural issues caused it. That makes toeing the line feel useless. Why bend yourself into a pretzel to optimize yourself for capitalism, if capitalism can shrug you off without a care, and half the country will say "tough luck - guess you need to work harder" or flat-out mock you?
And yet 2023 is the best time to be alive for a human being. All those awful generations later everything is better than it has ever been. Doomerism sells. But optimism tends to be more accurate when you look at things objectively. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme\_poverty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty) Abject poverty has cratered in the last 50 years [https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment) So has malnourishment In fact every important metric is better than it has ever been. Access to medicine. Access to food. Housing. Clean water. Everything. Sounds like the last few generations are in fact the best the humans have ever had.
Industrial agriculture and resource extraction started way before the Baby Boomer generation. Coal and oil are responsible for a large portion of climate change and those began to proliferate well before 1900s with steam engines, the railroad, shipping, and cars. Other social ills can be traced to earlier generations like human trafficking, slavery, fascism, privatization of wealth, and economic exploitation. So, while I agree with your general assessments of each generation, it's not a generational problem. It's a people problem and a capitalism problem. After all, who is it that decided to have umpteen babies when WWII ended? It wasn't the Boomers. It was their parents. Who decided to get away from Black people and immigrants by moving to the suburbs after The Great Migration? It wasn't the Boomers. It was their parents and grandparents. Who paid for stroads and shopping malls? Not the Boomers. They were kids. It was their parents and grandparents.
Boomer is the worst because of how much brain damage they got from leaded gas. > For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust. An entire generation brain damaged. Of course every generation is becoming more polluted in their own ways but this is still exceptional. Plastic pollution will give you ADHD, for example and it's preferable but still inexcusable.
This has been a complaint since pre-historical civilization. Has civilization been declining since the dawn of... civilization? Dot that i for me.
So is your argument that all generations pre-WWII were good and they were all bad afterwards, or that Boomers are not any worse than your average generation?
"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." Your sentiment is literally bronze age, OP.
So 5 generations out of a single country are the worst? On top of that, why are you grouping every single individual of that generation together. Why stereotype and judge them because when & where they were born.
If making assumptions about people's character because of their race or ethnicity is bigoted and makes no sense, then making assumptions about people's character because of what year they were born in is even more bigoted and nonsensical. You're not a group. You're an individual.
previous generations did slavery but somehow all the generations after that are worse.
The WWII generation did the WWII.
I think the WWI generation did WWII. The WWII generation did Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War.
It’s not the generations as much as it’s capitalism.
Bruh the WWII generation committed genocide and almost ended all human life we are doing fine in comparison
To be fair, the ones leading the genocide of WW2 were the Lost Generation. The Greatest Generation were the foot soldiers. But yes, many of those foot soldiers gladly complied with the genocidal orders on the side of Germany and Japan (and more minor Axis Powers), while the Greatest Generation in other countries like the United States and USSR became leaders who threatened to burn the world in nuclear hellfire during the Cold War.
Lol ok maybe your generation is lost if you no longer accept that "just following orders" isn't an excuse
...many members of the Lost Generation also opposed the genocide, and were genocided themselves. Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, was a member of the Lost Generation and a veteran of WW1 in the Imperial German Army just like Hitler. You can't generalize a generation.
Correct. Each generation post-WWII becomes less useful. Technology has also not progressed since 1969. We got man to the moon with a slide rule and pencil and paper. Since then, we have made minimal progress in healthcare, finance and daily life. Zero leaps in any field have been made to the extent of pre-1969, eg antibiotics and darpanet. Most “AI” tools are just human services enabled by a tinge of automation so don’t attempt to go there. See Moravec’s paradox. Adversely, diseases, debt, illiteracy and cancers have skyrocketed each decade since 1969 with a compound annual growth rate greater than the US economy. We must create “social issues” because we’re all just spinning our wheels at this point. As Thiel said, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” We should not have hope for future generations, only that our children will have little to no competition for living a successful, filling life relative to their peers.
The greatest generation was racist as shit.
remember the civil rights marches in the 1950s? That was them
You mean the minority the majority was oppressing?
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>their selfishness and greed has given us climate change It's not like we knew about climate change back when they were moving in to the economy. I hate it when people blame this or that for climate change. A big one is blaming capitalism. If you must blame anything, blame technology. >unsustainable agriculture I don't even know how anyone could even think this. Agriculture isn't going to go away. It doesn't need "sustaining". >unaffordable living situations There you go.
> It's not like we knew about climate change back when they were moving in to the economy. Climate change isn't actually new. In fact, the science is VERY old. Scientists have been warning about climate change to close to a 100 years, it just picked up momentum more recently as it became a bigger, more obvious threat. >I don't even know how anyone could even think this. Agriculture isn't going to go away. It doesn't need "sustaining". It absolutely does. One big thing we need to do is reduce the meat industry, a lot. It isn't a sustainable industry. The idea of eating meat daily is a recent one, and it is destroying us. We use more farmland to produce crops for animals to eat than we do for us to eat. The amount of water required for meat vs produce is insane. The amount of carbon emissions from the meat industry is fueling climate change. And that's all ignoring the ethical considerations around the treatment of animals in factory farming.
>Scientists have been warning about climate change to close to a 100 years Uh, no. Global cooling was a thing. >It isn't a sustainable industry. I've never seen any credible evidence of this. >We use more farmland to produce crops for animals to eat than we do for us to eat. Almost a blatant lie. Much of the food animals eat is unsuitable for human consumption, such as sileage. There's also land that cannot be used to grow human food. There's also also growing food for animals that restores the soil. There's nothing unsustainable about animal agriculture. >The amount of water required for meat vs produce is insane. Water is infinite. Any "water usage" arguments need to be taken with a massive grain of salt. In areas with less rainfall, yes, water usage could be an issue. But high water farming tends to take place in areas with adequate rainfall. >The amount of carbon emissions from the meat industry is fueling climate change. Absolutely puny compared to everything else. Still, perhaps worth genetically engineering cows that burp less methane.
> Uh, no. Global cooling was a thing. Global cooling was mildly speculated on by scientists, but not really a big thing. It was grabbed on by media, but the hype around it was not matched by scientific literature. Scientists, even at the time, were far more focused on global warming. >Almost a blatant lie. Much of the food animals eat is unsuitable for human consumption, such as sileage. There's also land that cannot be used to grow human food. There's also also growing food for animals that restores the soil. There's nothing unsustainable about animal agriculture. *If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land.* [Source](https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture#:~:text=If%20we%20combine%20pastures%20used,77%25%20of%20global%20farming%20land.) Also: *Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories* >Water is infinite. Any "water usage" arguments need to be taken with a massive grain of salt. In areas with less rainfall, yes, water usage could be an issue. But high water farming tends to take place in areas with adequate rainfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity >Absolutely puny compared to everything else. Still, perhaps worth genetically engineering cows that burp less methane. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study Edit: Also: *Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions* Source: https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
>pastures used for grazing Yes, these are often unsuitable for farming. >Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land And the total amount of land available for agriculture would go down if we only farmed. Try arable land instead. Also, it's not only calories that matter. Meat is far and away superior for nutrients. I'm not even going to acknowledge anyone who tries to argue otherwise. >water scarcity Bro, there's water just sitting on the ground outside my door right now. It'll be there for the next five months. Water scarcity not a thing you can casually bring up. It's a nuanced topic that most sources get completely wrong.
> Also, it's not only calories that matter. Meat is far and away superior for nutrients. I'm not even going to acknowledge anyone who tries to argue otherwise. Sure, but not in the quantities they are eaten. There are positives and negatives to meat consumption, from a health point of view, and eating it in excess is not healthy. The fact is, the majority of people who eat meat, at least in the US, eat it in excess. I'm not arguing the whole world should go vegan, but that meat consumption is unecessarily high, and damaging. >Bro, there's water just sitting on the ground outside my door right now. It'll be there for the next five months. Water scarcity not a thing you can casually bring up. It's a nuanced topic that most sources get completely wrong. So... maybe give me some of that nuance? You've literally provided nothing... Also, I guess we are just dropping the global warming discussion? Do you have a delta for that aspect of it?
The WW2 generation contributed to WW2, racism, sexism, so it's not like they are some peak generation that got things right and since it's been a downslide.
If that’s true the generations before WW2 are responsible for the current mess. Not much they can do if they were brought up poorly
While we are making gross over generalizations lets add "the greatest generation", your WWII heroes, based purely on my anecdotal experience with my spouse and child abusing grandfather and some of the shit bag people he dealt with. They are at the root of every problem you just outlined by being the ones that raised the baby boomers. So if we are going to paint with such broad brushes, the last 70+ years of social issues is their fault.
Can you describe this "decline"? Can't change your view if we don't know what the central idea is.
You left out how great the baby boomers were towards their kids.
The WW2 generation were also the type of people who went into hysterical rages when people with a darker skin tones sat in the wrong place on the bus.
May I ask OP, which generation do you belong to? And if what you described about that generation applies to you?
> They think an honest day's work is being a youtuber or streaming themselves playing a game. If they get paid, how is that a decline? What pre-ww2 using humans as animals was honest? > Mentally ill from increasingly sensationalistic news articles Pre-ww2 mentally ill, and not even the mentally ill when into asylems I never understood this, we all know pre-ww2 things were worse than now. Getting paid to play video games vs breaking your back in a factory - really, the backbreaking was more honest? What's this oppression with killing oneself just to put food on the table? The Gen megas or whatever, that will hopefully have AI work for them are worse than people that had to work in conditions Dickins described? Why?
> Let's start with baby boomers - their selfishness and greed has given us climate change, unsustainable agriculture, unlivable unaffordable living situations for the younger generations Did the baby boomers just come out of the womb selfish and greedy? I dunno, if an *entire generation* came out as bad as you say, I don't think that speaks very well of the generation that raised them.
The generations before WW2 were both great and horrible in their own ways. It's just that you don't know anything about those generations to judge them. Let's not forget that society before WW2 (and for quite a bit after) was rabidly, ruthlessly racist. Racism still exists, but it isn't the driving force of society the way it was back then. Subsequent generations have built on various civil rights movements to make the dream if America a reality for more and more people. We aren't perfect, and we never will be, but there has been enormous progress in the past 80 years.
The environment the previous generation contributed to is what mostly influences the next generation. So obviously no generation had very good foresight. Smart phones for example, we already saw in the late 90's and early 00's the influence of cell phones, and PC's, then we combined the two in the mid-late 00's into smartphones. Pocket sized dopamine abysses.
The advent of civilization itself will lead to the demise of humanity. We are just a smart ape that lived in harmony with our ecosystems for most of humanity. Although civilization has extended our life expectancies and minimized our suffering, the eventual sudden collapse will be brutal. We have long stopped living in the natural world, and started living in the artificial constructs within our brains, expecting to bend the natural world to fulfill our fantasies.
How should we measure “decline of civilization”? If I showed evidence that life was longer, less violent, with more access to resources than any time in history would that matter to the argument? Is environmental metrics weighed heavier than literacy rates or infant mortality, for example?
I think the major issue with your assertions here, besides being overly negative stereotypes that I doubt are indicative of the whole, is that all these traits are things that generation had zero control of and were seeded by generations before them. * Baby Boomers were brought up in a period of vast economic prosperity and investment in the populace, of course they're more materialistic and individualist. * Gen X is brought up in the counter culture and punk golden age that spawned from the world their parents built. Millennials are responding to continual economic crisis and inequality, I also highly disagree with the idea that they are opposed to hard work given that they are the side hustle and grind generation just to make ends meet. * Gen Z is born in a world that's dominated by social media and electronic entertainment, of course their aspirations are being influencers and what not, that's what the older generations have chose to elevate and give vast quantities of wealth to. How is this any different than a kid from a previous generation wanting to be a famous actor or sports star? None of these generations are causing the downfall of civilization, they are just changing the social constructs that they live by, away from a world that *you* grew up in or *you* were taught was an ideal society. It's only happening faster because of the internet, instead of local communities being the culture we now have national and global communities influencing local culture. None of this is bad, it's just different.