• alvvayson@lemmy.world
    174·
    11 months ago

    One thing about the greatest generation (my grandparents).

    They saw some serious shit and were just legitimately happy we don’t have to see that same shit.

    Funny how the coddled Boomer generation is often much more critical of the young, when they had the easiest ride ever.

    • ConditionOverload@lemmy.worldEnglish
      651·
      11 months ago

      They had it so easy but didn’t realize that that’s not the norm at all. They still expect the same to happen now. As if one can work through college and pay off all debts, or if just going to college meant landing a job, or even if you landed a job it would do little more than just make you live paycheck to paycheck.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
        241·
        11 months ago

        They had it so easy they’ve all been conditioned to believe that life is simple and easy. Not that it had nothing to do with their “effort” or “skills”, was easy as a direct result of complex external geopolitical and economic conditions (by chance), or that previous generations fought hard and paid for those conditions.

        People are also shit at math, and inflation is unintuitive. My boomer parents are extremely sympathetic to the situation of younger generations, but still thought their mortgage in the 80’s was comparable to current. After I punched it into an inflation calculator it was about 30% less than I would pay on a 2 bedroom UNIT; they paid that on a 2 bedroom HOUSE, and only for a couple years at peak interest rates.

        TL;DR: people are simple creatures and civilizations are complex machines 99.99% of us couldn’t possibly understand; even the most intelligent and best intentioned. Every one of the best minds in all of history were deeply flawed in some way (in hindsight).

        • Clent@lemmy.world
          81·
          11 months ago

          The issue isn’t that boomer don’t get it.

          It’s that boomers don’t get that they don’t get it and talk about it anyway.

          People spent more time in read, think, listen cycles instead of skim and rage cycles.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
          71·
          11 months ago

          No, that’s a silly conclusion.

          Even if it were literally 99.99% of people that didn’t “get it”, that’s still almost a million people across the world who do understand it. How many politicians and “leaders” are there in the world?

          There are barely over 500k elected officials across the entire united states, for ALL elected positions. Only a few hundred of them really “need” to understand the big picture…

          It should not only be possible, but fully expected that people seeking the f*cking POTUS position be the kind of person who DOES get it.

      • dfc09@lemmy.world
        14·
        11 months ago

        Not even just that. My dad didn’t go to college, he joined the military at 18. He walked away from that and landed an engineering job with no degree. Now, he’s in a position that would ask for a masters minimum making nearly 300k a year.

        I joined the military and walked away with bad knees and a list of phone numbers to get a job in the trades. Don’t get me wrong, I took it, but damn I’m sure as hell not making anything near what he was at my age.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
      40·
      11 months ago

      A point boomers, the children of WW2 fighters, intended to be driven into the backs of their own children.

      Blunting that point, that’s the point. Blunting it with “It’s okay that you don’t have to kill, it’s good that you don’t have to kill, your choice not to kill is good. I love you.”

        • Comment105@lemm.ee
          251·
          11 months ago

          It is a straight-forward interpretation grounded in a reality where many American homes are split by an elevated open hostility between parents and their adult children.