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Guest Post: A Twenty Something Speaks
Guest Post: A Twenty Something Speaks
By
Steak
(As much as anyone else, I am guilty of complaining that “the younger generation” is absent from the developing collapse dialogue. More than once I have said that if permanent change is to be made, first the young must become involved, then change needs to be embraced by the average Jane and Joe. But when the young raise their voices in anger or protest, such as the On Wall Street contingent, my tendency is to complain about the methods they use or the process they follow. This is patently unfair of me and hypocritical to boot.
With this thought in mind I present the following from Steak, a ZH Veteran by any measure with more time in than me, who many know from the playlists he drops into the comment section from time to time. Please take a few moments and read what he has to say.)
Cognitive Dissonance
12/04/2011
To my peers:
Being born in 1984 offers a special perspective on where society is at present, as well as where it might be going. We are digital natives who also remember the old ways. Our first years of elementary school were characterized by paper encyclopedias, library card filing systems, and Apple II computers. We reached our teenage years just in time for AOL Instant Messenger to become a dominant force in our social lives, and we weren’t just pioneers on Facebook, we were on THE Facebook.
Having a foot planted on each side of distinct historical eras defines us. While the question of generational divides along technological lines is a commonly explored theme, the great divide unique to us is economic.
Those before us only knew and only expect an ever increasing level of prosperity. Those after us only know the turmoil of collapse. The older ones are attached to a world that never truly existed, and the younger ones have trouble imagining any sort of better world. All the while we children of 1983/84 grew up in the last parabolic push of the most prosperous era in human history. It was enough that we can remember in vivid detail how it was, but it did not last so long in our lives that we have some fundamental expectation for it to persist.
At least where I grew up, the idyllic childhood in the bubble years was disrupted by a sign that perhaps things were worse than appeared on the surface. Around the time my cohort was starting middle school, many of us had new kids in our classes. Atlanta being a popular place for refugee resettlement, in the mid 90’s there was a wave of immigrants from the former Soviet republics. We gave them shit as ‘ruskies’ and ‘commies’, but they came along early enough that by high school we were all just part of the same groups.
They were hard, all of them. Where they came from there was hunger, deeply ingrained organized crime, and ethnic hatreds. Their parents were PhDs who had to work for the mafia just to make ends meet. There was a deep appreciation on their part that America was a place, still in those last few years, where if one followed the rules there was a shot at a comfortable life.
It all seemed so dramatic. We were just kids, and those were stories from distant lands. We didn’t know they were describing the violence of collapse. They didn’t know they were only the first victims of a wave that would follow them here and one day sweep the world. Looking back, those things are clear both to us and to them.
Being born 1983/84 put us in a unique position on the day of the inflection point of our time. By September 2001 we were seniors in high school and all around 18. Sure there was talk about how the government would respond, but on that day and in the following months the real question was how WE would respond. Go to college or go to war? In May of 2002 Eminem spoke directly to us when he said:
Fuckin' assassins hijackin' Amtracks crashing,
All this terror America demands action,
Next thing you know you've got Uncle Sam's ass askin'
To join the army or what you'll do for there Navy.
You just a baby,
Gettin' recruited at eighteen,
You're on a plane now,
Eating their food and their baked beans.
I'm 28,
They gonna take you 'fore they take me
Some decided to fight, some were horribly injured, and others died. I can’t commend or condemn how any of my friends decided they would respond to the attack, it was a deeply personal decision for everyone. But that was where we broke with the past. Our parents, as they were conditioned in their lifetime of prosperity, waited for someone to do something……and we realized that someone was us.
For those of us who went to college, we once again found ourselves at an interesting and unique intersection in history. As a member of the class of 2006, we had the incredible luck of entering the work force and gaining critical experience in the last year before the financial collapse. Five years later many of us are moving up to management positions, or at least have substantial resumes. This puts real decision making authority at our fingertips.
There is a responsibility to those older and younger than us, since we are a bridge between eras. It is our responsibility to tell those older than us that the world they have known all their lives is dead, and they fight for it at the expense of future generations. At the same time we must make sure their knowledge does not retire when they do. Our responsibility to those younger is to show them, not tell, but show them that a better future is possible through what we can create.
So far we are handling these responsibilities well. A decade of war has made our peers the most skilled, adaptable, and combat proven fighting force the country has seen since World War Two. 1980's baby Mark Zuckerberg helped found the social media industry, where people in their 20's are making fortunes working at the bleeding edge of technology and social interaction. And most dramatic of all, our peers are at the vanguard of revolutions all over the world from Tahrir to Wall Street.
A source of great strength is that we see the world for what it is, but have also seen what it can be. The way we engage the world is fundamentally driven by an understanding of two great waves sweeping the world. One is collapse, a collapse that began in earnest in 1991 and since then has been deferred and delayed, but not deterred. The second wave is technology. It has the potential to organize us to defend against forces that would tear apart our societies, our families, and our faith in others. Technology has the potential to give all access to pillars of free living including health, energy, and information. And it is on us to fulfill that potential.
By any quantifiable measure of wealth or opportunity, we will be the first generation of Americans to have less than our parents. Yet there is no room for self-pity. There is no room for wishing times were not so hard or that our burdens were someone else's. The coming conflagration and its fallout are ours to engage and overcome. Others wait for leaders to deliberate and decide, but we do not have that luxury. For us there is no hope. There is no fate. All there is are the things we create.
12/04/2011
- advertisements -
Because the tyrants forced people to move into McMansions and drive SUVs and go RVing and go on Cruise Ships, to buy whatever you want on credit, and to expect the following generations to pay for you to go on the aforementioned RV trips and cruises? If that's true, they have some powerful mind-control technology, and probably cannot be defeated, those all-powerful tyrants.
Agreed.. I got no kleenex for steak. I was met with this same scenario in 81, 83, 90, 96, 2000 and were right back in recession in 08.
For every one of the above dates, i had to change careers, not job's, fucking careers.
Cry me a river.... Get used to it.
I have 4 kids in and around your age within 6 years of each other. I always tell them to avoid debt as much as possible. Good luck. Work smart, love often and avoid debt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594WLzzb3JI
This song is for you.
From a 26 year old here ..
To the prior generation(s), yes you have had it much harder than we; however, in 30 years, when your body is being recycled into the Earth, our generation will be the one dealing with the reprecussions of all of the prior generations. I envy the older folks, they will not have to see the monster they have created, it is just being born. You will not get to see the effects to your causes. Cleaning up the excesses of consumerism, dealing with possible energy crises, and greeting our debt-laden future are not things I look forward to - it causes me much anxiety. Enjoy your condo in Naples though.
I personally don't give a shit about "having less" or "having more" than the previous generation or whatever, we have already reached the vertex of the parabola when it comes to that I think. I am concerned about our survival as a species, though I'm not sure why. I am torn between wanting us to continue and wanting us to reap what we have sown, for some sort of cosmic justice give us what we deserve. Likewise, in my personal endeavors, I am torn between becoming a functional member of society or dropping out and living in a Buddhist monastary, meditating and doing manual work daily for food and shelter, having nothing, and attaching myself to even less.
Technology, if anything, will offer us nothing but more chains. These are chains that distract us from our true nature, and chains that the oppressors will, and have, gladly used against the populace to achieve nefarious ends. The people that think technology will save us are just as ridiculous as those who think Jesus is going to swoop down on a white horse and create heaven on Earth. I have news for you people trapped by these delusions, these are human problems, we have one Earth, and it is up to humans, and humans alone to solve these problems.
The article above seems to see Zuckerberg as some sort of messiah figure (bleeding edge, blah blah blah ...).
//the bleeding edge of technology and social interaction//
Do you really think that's what it's about? Please think past the Forbes headlines, this is about developing more granular marketing techniques, nothing more. The wonders of technology, give me a fucking break, nothing has changed on an institutional level.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Facebook and Google are against internet anonymity? It's not a coincidence, you can't market to anonymous internet user. The original premise of the internet has been lost (see J. Larnier concerning this), instead it has turned into a giant marketing ecosystem and is helping to exacerbate wealth inequality (also see Larnier). How can they gather more information about you and place you into some marketing segment so they can more efficiently target you with advertisements? That's what this is, humans have been replaced by consumers, and to them, you are nothing but a contribution to cell C3 on a cash flow statement.
I am not hopeful about what is happening and am not looking forward to what is coming.
A quote to end -
"Those who chase the glittering rainbows of the consumer society, who buy into the perverted ideology of consumer culture, become, as Dante knew, moral cowards. They are indoctrinated by our corporate systems of information and remain passive as our legislative, executive and judicial branches of government—tools of the corporate state—strip us of the capacity to resist. Democrat or Republican. Liberal or conservative. It makes no difference. Barack Obama serves corporate interests as assiduously as did George W. Bush. And to place our faith in any party or established institution as a mechanism for reform is to be entranced by the celluloid shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave."Chris Hedges
You're missing a little here, though it's more a matter of timing than anything.
I'm 33- not many years different in the great scheme of things, but I think it's just older enough to call bs on the refutal of the riches that information technology have the potential to give us. That's not necessarily your fault, just a function of how fast the information tech revolution moved.
I'm guessing, though not certain, that those seven years mean that you've never had to use a library- unless you wanted to, or come from a poor family. You likely can't remember a world without cellular phones, or without the internet.
All this stuff is what we make of it- and although I see a lot of pain ahead for all of us, I'm still not writing off the possibility that I will end my days in a new golden age of human civilization. There has never been a time in the history of the world when people could communicate with and educate one another with such speed and ease as there is today. If you send your time on-line playing farmville and looking at porn, that time is obviously wasted- though since you're here on ZeroHedge, I'm willing to bet that you are not in that group.
Sometimes the value you gain comes from what you don't have to spend, or the time you save. While you may not have the material wealth your grandfather did in real terms, you and I have, in many ways, infinitely more. If my car breaks down, I am not at the mercy of a mechanic and his scruples- I can look at a hundred online forums, and watch youtube videos that show me how to fix the problem for pennies on the dollar. If I want to invent or make something, I can piece together the relevent information from my living room, rather than going to a university or spending hours in a library.
It is a freeing force, and has matured to the degree that the genie can never be put back into the bottle. Men will always try to take over the world, and make it their plaything- but it has become, short of a complete collapse of all technology, impossible for anyone to do so. I can set up a local network with crap sitting in bins in my crawlspace, and use it to organize resistance against the local government without anyone leaving thier homes- that has never happened before.
By virtue of a curious nature, and a speedy internet connection, I've mananged to become competent in several trades, and gain the kind of broad general education that used to be impossible for any one man to achieve- and I am not the only one who has done so. Sure, there are still plenty of mouth-breathers around, and there always will be- but those who want to now can, and do, achieve wonders with comparatively little effort.
We do need to fight, and we will need to carve out a new form for the world going forward- but that's nothing new. If you can't believe that, ask a cooper, a wheelwright, a blacksmith or a carriage maker how they feel about the industrial revolution, if you can find one. It happens, and I'm ok with that. My hope is that we can go through this pain, and forge a new order from the ashes where people can live with a reasonable degree of dignity no matter which course of study they choose.
But poor? No, we're not poor. Even our beggars live like princes did 500 years ago.
From a 28 year old here...
We're a lost generation. Lost in our music. Lost in our movies and television. Lost in our video games. Social media has connected us together globally but it has torn us apart, socially, locally. Dinner with the family consists of a few minor words: "pass the ketchup." Our eyes are always now fixated on a glowing device be it a cellphone, laptop, television or portable video game console. Our morals and integrity have become null and void. College professors of past generations have taught my generation nothing more than the ability to push fraudulent documents from one side of the table to the other---earning $70,000 per year for that skill. We have forgotten the hardships our grandparents overcame so that we have the ability today to sit on a couch, collecting welfare benefits, watching reality-television and buying and selling fake goods in fake worlds, building your in-game character with all the characteristics your "real-self" has failed to attain. We'd rather scratch off a lottery ticket in hopes of wining $20 than actually work for that $20. Mark Zuckerberg is no Buckminster Fuller and unfortunately, kids today would rather emulate Snooki than Bucky. We're not deserving of anything...not free healthcare, not free meals, not a house nor a car. Entitlements----be it things given to us by the government or our parents, we've been handed everything without asking who had to sacrfifice what for us to have what we're being given. Our emotions are supressed by drugs which rewire our brain because how dare we learn to deal with our emotions ourselves? A xanax here, an adderall there...don't worry about thinking, in a world where everything is becoming automated, just sit back, relax, and the USPS worker will be there in a bit to deilver your next NetFlix DVD. I blame my parents generation for one thing and one thing only, that is for forgetting the lessons of their parents and great-grandparents and not instilling values, morals, integrity, honesty, respect and diginity into the youth of today. We are simple a LOST generation...we don't know who we are, what we want, and could care less about to morrow. LIVE IN THE NOW is what they practice. I for one, am living today and will live tomorrow to PREPARE for the horrors awaiting us at any given moment in future time as the dominos all come crashing down.
You don't want one, but I want to give you a hug, let you shake a minute.
I think it is all collapsing. Scary. Don't want to plan poorly, train poorly, and starve or let down a loved one.
I also think it is not as bad as you type.
You give a shit. Don't you get it? You're fine. Spectacular. Beautiful. And fine. From your post, your passion, caring, awareness, everything you need is already in you. Expectations might be torturing you, lofty ideas of who you think you are supposed to be vs. who you are might be trorturing you.
The past is, at best, in your memory, quite possibly an illusion. The future is an idea of something that is up ahead which you strategize for. The now (another concept) is all we actually have. All the rest is anxiety. I hope this does not sound like patronizing bullshit. NOW is all any of us ever have. The idea of past and future is an act of faith.
The bullshit that drives us (and drives us out of our minds) is the same shit that is driving consumer society. Without it, consumerism dies and so do bankers and CEOs who profit from our insecurity that we are not enough.
I'll stop. I sound like a fogey or something. If you were my kid I'd be thrilled AND I would desperately want to help you chill. :-)
Yes indeed MsCreant.
Steak, like many of his age/era/generation are very aware, highly engaged and seem to be attempting to discern the sands of time, even as they distort going through the vortex of the hourglass from future to present to past. I observe and experience this as a parent of a crew of brilliantly absurdly dynamic young adults from an 84'er to a 92'er. The fact that ever greater awareness of all these individual grains as they pass by at warp speed makes the process all the more engrossing, engaging and.. illusory in a future, present, past construct.
You're a bedrock fight clubber and brilliant observer/engager Steak whom I admire greatly. To the bedrockers Cog who posted this up and to you, the ever fabulicious MsCreant I tip my cap and will limit my old foegyism. I have great confidence in you Steak and your generational fellows. I for one am sure you will take a pause for the cause on occasion .. and remember .. the ten commandments of a raving raver. A bedrock of our mutual respect and how I see the transitional and transformative process playing out in micro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGbRpdCRwt0
Steak, you and yours are indeed formidable bridge builders, thank goodness.
Cheers and thanx for teaching me that BBQ goes better with periperi ;)
Azwethinkweiz
I blame my parents generation for one thing and one thing only, that is for forgetting the lessons of their parents and great-grandparents and not instilling values, morals, integrity, honesty, respect and dignity into the youth of today.
Finally one that gets it.
I agree w/all you said, and respect you for it.You GET it.
As for the quote, those things were standard fare for late 40's/early50's Boomer's.Our kids WERE taught them.And it made them better adults.All have great jobs, and families and THINGS.
I stay on them constantly about debt,but they are well past the age where they need my advice, it was instilled on them early.A Son, a Daughter, when they speak ,or answer my wife, or myself it's Yes Sir, no Sir, Yes Ma'am.No Ma'am. Their 40yrs old.............This is to everyone the meet,that are not teens,kids.Why?,because WE were taught the same things.
It's called Values, and Mores.
It's called Values, and Mores.
+1
Of which a foundational aspect called civics.
Cheers
+1 I think your take on things is a lot more realistic than the article's author. You express yourself well and should write a ZH article about this issue. To me, a dude a few years older (Gen X), you show the "cognitive dissonance" that I think is really going on. People are torn between staying/fixing things or going John Galt. I know that's how I personally feel. After traveling around the world, it's easy to find very happy, purposed, self sufficient individuals who are strongly connected to their families and communities, and "impoverished" by Western standards. Knowing that many of these people have literally $0 income, yet thrive physically and socially, opens up your world to new possibilities, and redefines "living well." As others have said, technology is a double edged sword, and will harm many, many people in the coming years.
The author seems a bit more naive than I, and with that, seems to be more hopeful about our future. I have no faith in technology or a higher power to absolve us from our responsibilities which, in my opinion, are to be good stewards while here on Earth and to do our best that there is a viable future for generations after us.
I don't think that life owes me anything, on the other hand, I really don't want too much from a material perspective, which puts me at odds with not only my generation, but the boomers too - now the generation before that (my grandparents), I think that their values were somehow lost - a tragedy I think.
I tend to try and take a step back during these times of mental anguish to achieve a more cosmic perspective and take in the wise words of Carl Sagan.
http://tiny.cc/ub3gu
http://tiny.cc/tuqbc
Quotes to end -
"We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We oohed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Groups ‘round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data in their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death"
Roger Waters :: Amused to Death :: 1992
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will"
Frederick Douglass, 1857
"It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
John Steinbeck
I'll echo most of that sentiment. Social media sites are jumbo shrimp for the most part. So you're finding long lost friends/relatives on fb? Great. That's about the extent of it though. By clicking on 'profiles' or 'pages' you're not being social. In fact it's the opposite.
The above, needed to be said in my opinion.
I am around the same age.
There should be some concern about the application of new Technology. In of itself, technological advancement is neutral. Almost every achievement in a lab can be applied for good but based on who is currently in power it will most likely be applied for evil in the real world.
We admire innovators such mark zuckerberg for changing communications and the available of information, we see the potential good in technological.
The older, control freak baby boomer generation currently in power looks at every technological development as a way to cement their control of society and force the people of the world into submission. E.g. A year or so after it was created, the controllers of the C.I.A. were creaming their collective pants at the potential of Facebook. By some means or another they established a cozy relationship with the company, and it has since became the biggest and easiest intelligence dossier on U.S. citizens for the C.I.A
It's a long way off until anyone born from 1980's onward has sort of political influence, or say in society which is failing right now. By the time they get a say there will be nothing left to influence.
Baby boomers should beware, there is a price to pay for their political apathy, their tolerance and even willing embrace of corruption, their obsession with the trivial, trite, and meaningless, the entertainment, willful ignorance of history, of economics of what's going around them, the first "me generation", that has elected politicians: that have finished off the job of subverting the Constitution, that have accumulated debt to point of guaranteed collapse to pay for THEIR sense of entitlement, and that have destroyed the foundation of society THE RULE OF LAW.
The changing of the guard could be peaceful, but will most likely be violent and boomers have difficutly voluntarily giving up power. Either way Boomers will get none of the promises they believe they were entitled to you. Ironically, it will most likely be the elite from their own generation, the boomer generation that will break the promises and cut them off and rob them as a last ditch effort to protect themselves. Then they’ll turn around and be forced to answer to younger generation.
Personally I don't believe in vengeance. I make my own reality. Solve my own problems, even the ones i've created. But I believe a majority of our generation won't be so forgiving.I don't want to scare older generation but If that's the case of how they will feel, They’ll be all hell to pay for what the boomers have done to this country
"The older, control freak baby boomer generation..."
careful that you don't start believing this stereotyping. That is exactly where the real control-freaks want to have you.
"Vengeance"? Did you have issues with your father?
No, I wasn't aware using the word "Vengeance” brought up an association with one's father.
Odd reaction from you suggesting it would.
As far as stereotyping: “control-freak" is only a descriptor. The label "baby-boomer” is the stereotype. The descriptor being able to be applied to anyone in that postion at the time.
Do what makes you happy kid. Fighting the things that are wrong can be good stress if you don't let it get you down. The dilemmais the void that everyone feels because we know there is something missing. This is only because we are constantly looking foward to what is next. Monks try to live in the present through meditation. Its harder to do if your a western kid. Fight what is wrong. it will give you purpose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI3SNrmOcPA
Thank you, that was encouraging actually, sometimes I need that.
Me too. Everybody does whether they admit or not.
"For simplicity leave it implicitly love is tranquility if we don't know that then nothing is known" Robert Hunter former Grateful dead writer
"idyllic childhood" - did you mean "ideal childhood"?
Or did you grow up on a farm?
At that point I stopped reading. Sorry, it began to become pretentious bullshit.
Some times it's better to sound uneducated but make a coherent point than to try and use 10 cent words that you pulled out of your thesaurASS, and present a worthless essay.
i take umbrage at your remarks
His battery is overcharged. Take it impersonally so your umbrage becomes shade from rudeness rather than resentment to ignorance
I'm glad I'm not starting out again, past generations, including mine, have screwed the future generations
This is the big lie.
Psychopaths, have screwed us, as they have done through history.
It is the fatal flaw in the human condition.
Excellent, I hope there are many of you.
Hi Steak. I was born in 1985. It is rare for me to come across people my age who understand.
That is why many of the people in my network have children your age or my age.
There are incredible opportunities out here but they are all a matter of dropping everything we know to make room for what we can create.
I was once transfixed by the so-called collapse of the financial system. Not any longer. I can no longer afford to discount the value of the present in favor of a future which may or may not come. And the # of millionaire's is growing at an 18% rate. Does this sound like a broken system? Not to me.Not anymore broken than the system which has allowed millions to starve to death every year for the last XXX years. I mean to say, the system has always been broken.
I have realized in the past year, due to a number of things I am now being exposed to having to do with my Treasury account, DTC account and also my local health department that the matrix actually exists as a fictional reality and ZH has done little but to perpetuate the myths which reinforce matrix.
So Steak, I am deeply thankful to hear your perspective and your conviction that we must create our own future. We must also create our own reality for there is no reality beyond truth and truth is a hard thing to find and embrace.
Having less is inversely proportionate to being more. My wish is that we all have nothing and be everything we were created to be.
Scientologist or Amway distributor?
Reading what you wrote and being of the same age, I can only say well another 'lost generation' and the more things change the more they stay the same
Why does everybody think they are special? BEFORE they do anything...
I am special because I was born in 1983
I am special because I or my brother went to war in (place country here)
I am special because I will be poorer then my parents
etc. etc.
You are NOT special untill you prove your self special with your own actions, circumstances of life do Not make you special
Seems like every 20 years or so, we get this lost generation crap. It was the same thing in the early 90s with Gen X. These kids are whining they they will have less than their parents (or older siblings) while they walk around with iPhones, iPads, Kindles, etc. Information wise, what they have is dizzying compared to those of us who came of age in the 1970s had. I remember when streaming content was single channel cable TV (HBO), a VCR made your TV an "entertainment center", and PONG was an exciting video game. I grew up having to actually PAY for my music--on vinyl no less. Back them, "shopping on-line" meant perusing the Sears catalog and ordering by phone. These kids live in a world where they almost unlimited information and media at their fingertips and the technology to access it is dirt cheap--and its only gonna get better. That has to be worth something.
It won't be long before us Boomers finally start to retire and expire in large numbers. When that happens, these kids will make out like bandits.
I agree that it is not circumstance that makes one special, though circumstance does give one the opportunity to stand out. That being said, I do feel there has been a broader consciousness about how individual actions affect the whole. It is not a question of whether you are special because you are more than something else, but special because your actions have an impact on the world around you. I cannot say if folks my age are more generous, or recycle more, or volunteer more than those before us, but it is my sense we have a high consciousness of those things and value them.
I didn't mean to come out too harsh, but the point remains if you wanna stand out you need to do something 1st than take the laurels not the other way around.
If this generation is in a unique position to make a change? Hmmm well before you had
- the Vietnam War and the Peace Movement with all the Racial equality crap = the result the floodgates to the 3rd world have been opened with the West getting overrun by 3world turdlers crashing our economy 20 years later
- the WWII with the 'Allies' winning giving Jews/Zionists free reign over the world
- the American Civil War was the death knell of State Rights and Individual Freedoms
- and many examples like this in-between
So colour me skeptical when it comes to 'not wasting this crisis' by the current generation and excuse me for not putting too much faith in the I-Shit society
"we will be the first generation of Americans to have less than our parents."
Are you dusted? You should have grew up in the early 80's.
Ketchup was declared a vegatable for the purposes of school nutrition.
We didn't have parents.
PSA'a when I grew up where.
"It's eight o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"
Generational stereotyping is bunkum and serves to divide us. Any possible wedge , the TPTB will exploit it.
The assent of the majority of people halted in 1972-1973.
"Generational stereotyping is bunkum and serves to divide us. Any possible wedge , the TPTB will exploit it."
Bravo Indio! This cannot be repeated often enough. Labeling people "boomers" serves only to discourage them from teaming up with their children and support them in building a better society.
It is remarkable that this inter-generational war-mongering seems to have gone further in the US than anywhere else.
Wake up people and see how you are being manipulated in order to weaken you.
The decay that now grips most of the country did indeed start well before the 2000 crash.
I hear you about generational sterotyping. Fighting amongst ourselves will not help anybody's cause in the long run. But important transitions between generations in power are a part of any country's history. Boomers and above are descendant, and a new group is now ascendant. How that transition unfolds will be critical in determining the country's future.
Oh and it must be a bit of dejavu tho since Congress recently declared pizza a vegetable. :)
The number of Boomers is still so great, and we will vote in such great numbers as we age even more, that I don't think that we are descendant at the moment. That said, my number one concern is the world that my children and grandchildren are inheriting. For now, I am gainfully employed, (though that may rapidly be coming to an end as of Jan 1) and am scrambling to save whatever I can to leave to my kids as a legacy.
Best of luck to you as you attempt to make the best future for yourself that you can.
The People need to declare Congress a vegetable. :P
And then pull the plug.
All registered voters are corporate officers of the corporation. They are all in favor of the corporation. There is little, if any, dissent.
The assentors are called voters. Before it became a corporation the voters were called electors and they had to be property owners. That was a republic. This is a democracy.
Look up de facto as opposed to de jure.
Quite right except for the de jure part. There was never a de jure government in North America. The taking of land by Right of Discovery is a crock of shit.
Thanks for the correction. Ultimately the acquisitive society has been the ruination of true freedom.
a well done 'steak' to you, thanks
quote: "the length of your education is less important than its breath, and the length of your life is less important than its depth" ___ [author unknown?]
Cartoon Strip 'Calvin & Hobbs'
* the scene is a concrete sidewalk where calvin and hoobs find themselves stopped - unable to move forward or backward - caught in a time vacuum - perplexed, standing on one of the squares - amicable as usual for the two - a dialogue between the sparring characters opens with a subtle but foreboding discourse, dissecting philosophy, and asking the immortal question:
[frame 1 @ daybreak] ___ "let's say this square of the sidewalk. we're born at that crack and we die at that crack. [f2]___"now we find ourselves inside the square, and in the process of walking out of it. suddenly we realize our time here is fleeting. [f3]___ "is our quick experience here pointless? does anything we say or do in here really matter? have we done anything important? have we been happy? have we made the most of these precious few footstep?? [f4 @ midnight with crescent moon in background___ 'calvin and hobbs', blindly fixed and looking down motionless at the square in which they first appeared]
priceless
thankyou "CD"
OK Steak, do you really want to know some of the knowledge you asked for in this letter to your generation? Your doing fine, son, until you hit your second to last paragraph and write:
..."pillars of free living including health, energy, and information. And it is on us to fulfill that potential."
I'm certain you do not understand the economics of freedom, but in brief, it will not be your technology that will deliver the "pillars" of your "free living" standard. That is an illusion. It's the promise of your parents that you state earlier doesn't exist, which is true. But you don't understand why, and if you did, you would understand the futility of your illusion, because the problem is your government. And no technology is going to change that, in fact, your technology will lanquish unless you change the government of your parents. This is the freedom you desire that will make your freedom through technology possible, unless of course, that is not what you desire. Because if you ignore the government of you parents, you will have accepted its economics of tyranny, whose insatiable demand for wealth continually undermines your "pillars".
For if you support your mantra of "consumption is freedom", within our current ruling governmental system, you are going to do it on the backs of most of those around you. That makes you a syncopant of the ruling elite of your parents, and paid traitor to your fellow Americans to whom you will now have become their willing oppressor.
And unless you have sold your soul, I do not think that this is what you intended, but this is what you have said. And words have meaning.
This is the wisdom of an older generation that I pass along to you. And I'll fight you if I have to.
I take the phrase "free living" as part of a discussion of the pre-conditions for conducting one's life as a free person, not gratis exchange.
NA,
You are so right, words have meaning. The problem is Steak's generation has never been held accountable for their thoughts or words. Throughout their school years they were stroked like little girl, praised for whatever emotionally based blather that spilled from their lips.
They do not know what true freedom is, nor do they know
Responsibility,
Sacrifice,
Hardship,
Honor,
Humility,
Faith,
Hope,
Charity,
Or any of the philosophical foundations of western civilization.
They are, literally, Holden Caulfield's with a Lean 6 Sigma version of an Orwellian 1984 education who think living in a video game fantasy world is living The Lord of the Flies.
And what about our generation, or the generation before that, or the one before that?! So this all falls on Steak's generation's shoulders?
You are such a perfect big fat fucking hypocrite.
Go fuck yourself.
Reminds me of a saying my Grandmother used to use when I tried to point something out to her "Children and Fish have no Voice" and she was not a bad woman by heart.
The Elders are pretty much always arrogant enough to think that they know what's best even if their children are long grownup in the end they just serve their own selfish needs
Same could be said of the boomers -- insolent man-children who are the true cause of America's implosion. Boomers who overpaid for real estate. Boomers who failed to save for retirement. Boomers who failed to take care of themselves, and now count for a significant percentage of America's disgustingly overweight carcass, doughy goddamn men and women in their 60s eating everything in sight. Boomers who voted for profligate politicians (Reagan, Bush I and II, Clinton, and Obama) who blew the U.S. debt bubble to epic levels.
Boomers who now expect to be coddled with Social Security, Medicare, and who the fuck knows what else. It's a generational war, and the elder statesmen in this country have much to answer for.
So don't preach to Steak about responsibility and hardship -- not when the boomer generation has handed the young a country with $100 trillion in debt, an abysmal energy policy, a failure to respect the constitution, and a broken government populated by boomers who are grabbing every last fucking dollar they can get their hands on.
And you know what? It's over. The promises will not be kept. The bills will not be paid. And younger generations, including Steak's generation, are going to give a righteous "fuck you" to fat, lazy, ignorant boomers who are the root cause of the problem.
Frankly, I wish most of the boomers would simply die, instead of stealing the few remaining resources. Think I'm going to work harder so that some fucking boomer can retire to Florida, sit on their fat ass, eat up medical resources, and watch Dr. Phil all day? There's a reckoning coming, and it's going to smack boomers like they've never been smacked before.
Sequitur
Just erased a full page of vitriol to you, decided it's not worth it.
You cannot have a clue of any Boomers life, nor what we did, or didn't do.
Your just an ugly little cunt.And a stupid one to boot.
Anyone that Judges and entire class of people the way you did, is a fucking moron.
Ove 50% of Boomers voted for the muslim and young-ins voted for him in even larger numbers. F em. And boomers STFU about Woodstock. It sucked, the bans sucked except The Who and some trust fund little NYC shit spiked the punch. The Who were there to play a good show not get high. They were working class lads. Hopefully many boomers will lose everything thanks to the muslim they voted for.
Sadly, Freddie is not treatable.