The Importance of Elders(news.ucsb.edu)
news.ucsb.edu
The Importance of Elders
https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2022/020677/importance-elders
73 comments
I think the value of elder wisdom is not problem specific, but rather problem-class specific. Older people repeatedly encounter various classes of problems throughout their life, and eventually they discern a generalised solution or pattern. It's like an elder programmer imparting architectural or software design patterns to a younger programmer. The elder programmer doesn't need to know the programming language the younger programmer is using; they only need to recognise that the problem the younger programmer is trying to solve belongs to a class of problems that they know a pattern for.
True, younger people will always face unique problems in their life due to changes in society, but many important aspects of life and society, human nature for example, don't change much from one generation to the next. Elder wisdom from your direct genetic relatives (e.g. grandparents) is particularly useful, because they share personality traits with you and know from experience how those traits interact with certain classes of problems.
I think tapping into this is simply a matter of younger people bringing their problems to their elders and asking for advice.
True, younger people will always face unique problems in their life due to changes in society, but many important aspects of life and society, human nature for example, don't change much from one generation to the next. Elder wisdom from your direct genetic relatives (e.g. grandparents) is particularly useful, because they share personality traits with you and know from experience how those traits interact with certain classes of problems.
I think tapping into this is simply a matter of younger people bringing their problems to their elders and asking for advice.
> We're living in an era where expert level information is easily accessible on virtually every subject on mobiles devices.
Sort of agree, on some subjects anyway (like apple pie).
However, much of that expert information comes lack of context. Experts talking to experts leave lots of context out because it is common knowledge (among them). An uncountable number of people have worried themselves after diagnosing themselves with illnesses they don't have, or have improperly repaired their car or house after watching a few youtube videos and figuring that was enough.
Imagine someone reading a new CS article on some new sorting algorithm that works with certain special cases under certain constraints, and coming to you asking to replace all your sorting functions because "this one article said it is faster". That is what everyone does when they go to some expert and say "I read online..." or "I read this journal article where..."
Context is extremely important in pretty much everything we do; there are very few "universal truths".
Sort of agree, on some subjects anyway (like apple pie).
However, much of that expert information comes lack of context. Experts talking to experts leave lots of context out because it is common knowledge (among them). An uncountable number of people have worried themselves after diagnosing themselves with illnesses they don't have, or have improperly repaired their car or house after watching a few youtube videos and figuring that was enough.
Imagine someone reading a new CS article on some new sorting algorithm that works with certain special cases under certain constraints, and coming to you asking to replace all your sorting functions because "this one article said it is faster". That is what everyone does when they go to some expert and say "I read online..." or "I read this journal article where..."
Context is extremely important in pretty much everything we do; there are very few "universal truths".
One of the problems facing every generation of young people is not understanding the level of wisdom of their elders. You truly don’t know the wealth of experience to which you have access till well after you’ve achieved it or lost it.
Apt quote from Mark Twain:
> When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Apt quote from Mark Twain:
> When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Maybe?
Most of the "knowledge" my elder neighbours seem to give me is about lawn care. How to have a perfectly cut, perfectly green, weed-free, bug free lawn As if that is something worth achieving.
Meanwhile I'm planting clover in my grass, hanging up mason bee houses, and avoiding RoundUp like the plague.
He mows several times a week, sprays weeds with poison, and waters liberally to make it super green. What a waste of time, effort, and clean water.
Most of the "knowledge" my elder neighbours seem to give me is about lawn care. How to have a perfectly cut, perfectly green, weed-free, bug free lawn As if that is something worth achieving.
Meanwhile I'm planting clover in my grass, hanging up mason bee houses, and avoiding RoundUp like the plague.
He mows several times a week, sprays weeds with poison, and waters liberally to make it super green. What a waste of time, effort, and clean water.
>> How to have a perfectly cut, perfectly green, weed-free, bug free lawn
That's pretty much what I'm after with my lawn. What's his advice on bugs?
That's pretty much what I'm after with my lawn. What's his advice on bugs?
> It turns out that Grandma's apple pie wasn't that great
Maybe. But I've personally watched my grandmother reverse-engineer in realtime a recipe merely from taking a bite of someone else's pie. And that was a common feat used by a critical mass of grandmas to come up with their pies in the pre-digital era.
The fact that I can't install Debian on the most recent Iphone leads me to believe that there are a lot of Hackers who could learn something by having deeper conversations with their grandmothers.
Maybe. But I've personally watched my grandmother reverse-engineer in realtime a recipe merely from taking a bite of someone else's pie. And that was a common feat used by a critical mass of grandmas to come up with their pies in the pre-digital era.
The fact that I can't install Debian on the most recent Iphone leads me to believe that there are a lot of Hackers who could learn something by having deeper conversations with their grandmothers.
My grandfather was a poor Asian immigrant who achieved his dream of moving to America. He died in a hospital bitterly refusing to be treated by Black hospital staff.
My grandmother in law is a sweet lady who also shared the opinion that mixed race marriages are unnatural. I am mixed race but I’m one of the good ones.
Social norms have changed extremely fast. In addition to the lack of ability to interact with things like the internet, it’s so difficult to see value in anyone’s insights when you get nuggets like this.
My grandmother in law is a sweet lady who also shared the opinion that mixed race marriages are unnatural. I am mixed race but I’m one of the good ones.
Social norms have changed extremely fast. In addition to the lack of ability to interact with things like the internet, it’s so difficult to see value in anyone’s insights when you get nuggets like this.
In my family, all the elders apparently became doctors around the ages of 50 to 60, but without having to do any of the reading or working or math credentialed doctors have to do.
It is also funny seeing them grapple with daughter in laws having leverage now that they all earn hefty incomes and have no dependency on the elders.
It is also funny seeing them grapple with daughter in laws having leverage now that they all earn hefty incomes and have no dependency on the elders.
Yep, I don't believe many would be the quintessential ideal candidate to extract wisdom and most would yield sporadic valuable insights, particularly if they're not adapting well into their advanced years and excessively in discord with changing social norms. It could be a matter of parsing through insights to separate the valuable from the archaic.
Don't you think that's more a matter of your attitude than whether these people are effectively worthless?
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” doesn't seem to be fashionable nowadays but it's a valuable piece of wisdom.
Cancelling folks with this "lalalala I can't hear you!" attitude, against someone who offends a few sensibilities, is the problem here. People are imperfect, don't be so closed-minded.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” doesn't seem to be fashionable nowadays but it's a valuable piece of wisdom.
Cancelling folks with this "lalalala I can't hear you!" attitude, against someone who offends a few sensibilities, is the problem here. People are imperfect, don't be so closed-minded.
Well these educated minds haven’t updated their priors in 60 years. If your advice holds true, perhaps there is something we can infer.
> it’s so difficult to see value in anyone’s insights when you get nuggets like this.
We're made of the same stuff as our parents. Both literally and metaphorically. I hope we are including the people with the new norms as "anyone", in time they're going to be just as outdated and embarrassing as every other generation's norms.
We're made of the same stuff as our parents. Both literally and metaphorically. I hope we are including the people with the new norms as "anyone", in time they're going to be just as outdated and embarrassing as every other generation's norms.
Maybe. It’s possible that the interconnectivity of the internet will cause future generations to be less rigid. One can hope.
Almost completely disagree, there are invariants (or quasi-invariants...) in life that make elder wisdom great. Some of these invariants are the experience of social and political power [1] and repeated crisis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)
I agree with your last paragraph. I think there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. I understand wisdom as knowledge gained through experience. Sometimes experience can't be distilled into simple fact and is only really understood through repeated application.
I think my reality is probably the same for many. "Elders" suck and most fail miserably at providing anything close to sage advice. I remember my grandpa and father giving me car advice that was probably 20 years out of date when they were telling it to me. Fortunately reading a basics of modern car 20 page article catapulted my knowledge beyond anything they could offer. Despite being over twice my age both never bothered to update their information on a relatively simple topic.
I disagree with your last point as well. Again most "Elders" are terrible. The most common advice I got from elders all over the place.... "You will understand when you are older." yeah thanks....thats why I was asking so I don't have to wait. I'm pretty sure most people have similar experiences to me and its sorta provable. It's why nursing homes are overflowing with useless old people that are un-visited and ignored en mass.. Its simple, if they had any value people would come to visit them, but they don't.
I'm not saying its their(elders) job or anything. Just don't expect respect for living and not dying early. I already provide better advice to people younger than me than the vast majority of people double or triple my age can. Most people suck, with the internet it is easy to leapfrog the majority of so called elders since they never really tried in life anyway, most boomers just fell upward in a booming economy and don't even have soft or navigating life skills.
Yeah I don't really care much for old people if you can tell. However I do wish I've had some positive experiences from them but so far my entire life has proven otherwise.
I disagree with your last point as well. Again most "Elders" are terrible. The most common advice I got from elders all over the place.... "You will understand when you are older." yeah thanks....thats why I was asking so I don't have to wait. I'm pretty sure most people have similar experiences to me and its sorta provable. It's why nursing homes are overflowing with useless old people that are un-visited and ignored en mass.. Its simple, if they had any value people would come to visit them, but they don't.
I'm not saying its their(elders) job or anything. Just don't expect respect for living and not dying early. I already provide better advice to people younger than me than the vast majority of people double or triple my age can. Most people suck, with the internet it is easy to leapfrog the majority of so called elders since they never really tried in life anyway, most boomers just fell upward in a booming economy and don't even have soft or navigating life skills.
Yeah I don't really care much for old people if you can tell. However I do wish I've had some positive experiences from them but so far my entire life has proven otherwise.
[deleted]
Your post seems to be highlighting technical skills as an area where modern people don't benefit from elder knowledge. As a GenXer who started on the Commodore PET at 12, I see both sides of this: the Boomers generally suck, and yet, a fair percentage of millennials (my own kids included) have only basic computer literacy (except when it comes to phones/tablets).
I agree with your point that there is potential value in elder wisdom when it comes to soft skills and general EQ. And yet, the Boomers generally suck (particularly when looked at through the lens of their ability to resist media influence) and millennials (and Y/Alpha) seem to have started much further along the journey than previous gens.
I guess my conclusion is that subsequent generations should be yelling at boomers to get off our lawns and only buy your kid touch-based computing devices. /s
I agree with your point that there is potential value in elder wisdom when it comes to soft skills and general EQ. And yet, the Boomers generally suck (particularly when looked at through the lens of their ability to resist media influence) and millennials (and Y/Alpha) seem to have started much further along the journey than previous gens.
I guess my conclusion is that subsequent generations should be yelling at boomers to get off our lawns and only buy your kid touch-based computing devices. /s
[deleted]
Knowledge != Wisdom
When the Elders die in large numbers, unexpectedly, the cultural knowledge of a people takes a rather large hit. Preserving that cultural knowledge is so important because the removal will negatively affect their lives because of the holes left.
Like what
Things like language, spiritual practices, and traditional knowledge are lost. It can cause generational trauma, among other things.
"Kill the Indian, save the man" - the statement has been attributed to Richard Henry Pratt, an Army officer who developed the Carlisle Indian School
"Kill the Indian, save the man" - the statement has been attributed to Richard Henry Pratt, an Army officer who developed the Carlisle Indian School
Which all caused an amazingly high suicide rate that definitely did not "save the man". Never mind the number of children killed at the boarding schools[0,1].
Now, we are dealing with elders dying (even when fully vaccinated[2]) that has created holes in our language, history, and cultural teachings. We have been trying for years to document everything, but living examples are so much better.
0) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/indian-boarding-school-... - 'The report notes the investigation will likely "reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”'
1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57325653
2) Tribe paid everyone $500 to get vaccinated - that did an amazing job
Now, we are dealing with elders dying (even when fully vaccinated[2]) that has created holes in our language, history, and cultural teachings. We have been trying for years to document everything, but living examples are so much better.
0) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/indian-boarding-school-... - 'The report notes the investigation will likely "reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”'
1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57325653
2) Tribe paid everyone $500 to get vaccinated - that did an amazing job
Don’t build housing on that flood plain, it floods. Don’t invest in airlines for the long haul. You absolutely must be planning on timing the popping of the bubble. Brazil was the country of the future when your grandfather was young, when your father was young and when you were young. By induction it will also have massive unfulfilled potential when you have grandchildren too.
There are an awful lot of things that people are really bad are learning from books, and only slightly less bad at learning from people.
There are an awful lot of things that people are really bad are learning from books, and only slightly less bad at learning from people.
I’m laughing at the idea that you think the elderly have the best insights in future economic trends.
My example is a bit odd, but the gay male community lost basically an entire generation of people, and it's one reason that the current queer community is such a shithole: The adults in the room are usually people my age (~30s-40s) who have zero idea of how to be queer adults. A lot of the perpetual adolescence in the queer community is a direct result of queer Millennials being basically feral children/only connecting with other queer kids, whereas before the difficulties in getting involved in the queer communities meant you were likely to interact with a wide age range and get some idea of what, for example, a 50 year old gay man was like and how he should interact with a 20 year old.
A complete lack of strategic, long-term thinking, of preserving any kind of survival tactics during bad times, lack of people to guide you through normal issues in your community, etc.
A complete lack of strategic, long-term thinking, of preserving any kind of survival tactics during bad times, lack of people to guide you through normal issues in your community, etc.
As a straight dude with a handful of gay friends I don’t think I agree that they’re feral children.
Feral children (affectionate). I'm a lesbian who was born in 1988, and my first introduction to queer culture was queer teenagers/young adults online from when I was in elementary school. (They're why I knew it was okay to be gay!)
However, I don't recall many, if any, people over 30 around. It was very much like one of those stories where everybody above a certain age is wiped out. Hence my affectionate dubbing of us as feral children.
However, I don't recall many, if any, people over 30 around. It was very much like one of those stories where everybody above a certain age is wiped out. Hence my affectionate dubbing of us as feral children.
You're right, but then what explains the exact same phenomenon in all people our age, gay or not?
I'd say that's probably because we made an information system change very suddenly so most adults in the Gen X+ generations were basically soft-locked out.
A lot of our cultural problems come from the fact that we have millions upon millions of people who have gotten online in the last 10 years and a new generation that's grown up in a radically different information paradigm. There are just way, way fewer 'adults/elders' than 'kids/novices' online, and since so much of our lives and culture have moved online, it's a shit show.
I'm 34 and I was one of the first people to be raised with the Internet in the modern sense: I had continuous, assumed, free (in the sense that I wasn't censored) access since I was 4, but among my cohort there's very few of us. Even people who did access the Web in the 90s as children often didn't have a modern experience: Most other online Millennials had to access the Web at school, with adults looking over their shoulder or had some really strict controls that were more possible before everybody had a smartphone and the time they could spend online was restricted (you had to have some really nerdy parents to pay for unlimited Web access in the 90s). I tried deriving approximate numbers once and on the high end there MIGHT be a couple thousand of people my age with experience/context to offer advice to current younger people. And the numbers get worse as you go older: Before at home Web service existed, the only people who could really grow up online were academics' kids. So you're getting into 3 or even 2 figure numbers if you go back to Gen X.
SOME of the gay men survived, there just weren't enough of them to be an actual generational resource.
Same thing: There ARE people out there with the socio-cultural knowledge, but there's about ~5000 of us compared to over 100 million relative newbies, based on American numbers. Luckily, the numbers should level out as the 100 million newbies grow to have 20+ years online and start growing a culture and heuristics to deal with it.
There's also that, much like the current generation of gay 30 and 40 somethings, that those of us who were in the first few generations of kids who grew up in the digital age (and therefore have a first-hand understanding of how your informational models evolve differently through puberty, adolescence, young adulthood, etc) had zero guidance when it came to 'pay attention to these things; future generations will care' since most of the adults online pre 1995ish were mostly just there to play with computers or be nerds.
A lot of our cultural problems come from the fact that we have millions upon millions of people who have gotten online in the last 10 years and a new generation that's grown up in a radically different information paradigm. There are just way, way fewer 'adults/elders' than 'kids/novices' online, and since so much of our lives and culture have moved online, it's a shit show.
I'm 34 and I was one of the first people to be raised with the Internet in the modern sense: I had continuous, assumed, free (in the sense that I wasn't censored) access since I was 4, but among my cohort there's very few of us. Even people who did access the Web in the 90s as children often didn't have a modern experience: Most other online Millennials had to access the Web at school, with adults looking over their shoulder or had some really strict controls that were more possible before everybody had a smartphone and the time they could spend online was restricted (you had to have some really nerdy parents to pay for unlimited Web access in the 90s). I tried deriving approximate numbers once and on the high end there MIGHT be a couple thousand of people my age with experience/context to offer advice to current younger people. And the numbers get worse as you go older: Before at home Web service existed, the only people who could really grow up online were academics' kids. So you're getting into 3 or even 2 figure numbers if you go back to Gen X.
SOME of the gay men survived, there just weren't enough of them to be an actual generational resource.
Same thing: There ARE people out there with the socio-cultural knowledge, but there's about ~5000 of us compared to over 100 million relative newbies, based on American numbers. Luckily, the numbers should level out as the 100 million newbies grow to have 20+ years online and start growing a culture and heuristics to deal with it.
There's also that, much like the current generation of gay 30 and 40 somethings, that those of us who were in the first few generations of kids who grew up in the digital age (and therefore have a first-hand understanding of how your informational models evolve differently through puberty, adolescence, young adulthood, etc) had zero guidance when it came to 'pay attention to these things; future generations will care' since most of the adults online pre 1995ish were mostly just there to play with computers or be nerds.
There's also a "Logan's Run" effect in play where if the population of newbies is so overwhelmingly large, they set the norms and elders don't even get a voice in many discussions - they may not even be in the same circles. I think this holds for both the internet and gay examples: young people do what is convenient to them and don't ordinarily look forwards or backwards, so you ended up with norms for, e.g., social media, shifting on cycles of about 4 years as new user cohorts entered and tried new products with no awareness of the previous ones.
And all we've been doing for decades in that space is making things that onboard the newbies a little better. Now when something new and hyped launches, a bunch of people run in and claim the space speculatively, like a land rush(or maybe crypto mining, for an updated analogy). Their intuition is that they have to "win" at social media and get a high score, and there isn't a strong enough group of elders to add perspective and suggest that they need to define their goals independent of the platform, so they just roll over and succumb to whatever the algorithm is pushing that day.
Likewise, there's a stereotype of an intense party-drugs-hookup culture in the gay scene. But the one time I remember speaking at length with elders of that community, it was in a much more toned down party with literary readings, instrumental recitals and cake. And I think that's kind of suggestive of what a healthy culture is, really: it's the part that can survive to old age, which by its nature means it is usually a little more buttoned-up than what a young person craves.
And all we've been doing for decades in that space is making things that onboard the newbies a little better. Now when something new and hyped launches, a bunch of people run in and claim the space speculatively, like a land rush(or maybe crypto mining, for an updated analogy). Their intuition is that they have to "win" at social media and get a high score, and there isn't a strong enough group of elders to add perspective and suggest that they need to define their goals independent of the platform, so they just roll over and succumb to whatever the algorithm is pushing that day.
Likewise, there's a stereotype of an intense party-drugs-hookup culture in the gay scene. But the one time I remember speaking at length with elders of that community, it was in a much more toned down party with literary readings, instrumental recitals and cake. And I think that's kind of suggestive of what a healthy culture is, really: it's the part that can survive to old age, which by its nature means it is usually a little more buttoned-up than what a young person craves.
> There's also a "Logan's Run" effect in play where if the population of newbies is so overwhelmingly large, they set the norms and elders don't even get a voice in many discussions - they may not even be in the same circles. I think this holds for both the internet and gay examples: young people do what is convenient to them and don't ordinarily look forwards or backwards, so you ended up with norms for, e.g., social media, shifting on cycles of about 4 years as new user cohorts entered and tried new products with no awareness of the previous ones.
Yup. The ratios are just bad. On the 'understanding the impact of living on the digital world on one's life stages' aspect, we're looking at ratios of about one elder per 20,000 students at best. Then consider of us 5000, there are plenty of variables that might mean somebody can't help teach. Either they have no education background, aren't people people, aren't alive anymore (RIP Aaron Schwartz), or can't understand the average person's life experience well enough to offer any practical advice (I can't see Zuck having many good ideas here; he's too busy exploiting the situation for personal gain).
Which is another problem: The people who would be most helpful for this particular problem are those in the 5000 kids/earliest adopters who spend the most time around normal people (as opposed to academia or SV), because they're going to have the best ideas of how to adapt the digital world to work for the average citizen who has to work around things like trying to keep up with tech while raising 3 kids and working 2 jobs. But those people are also the group with the least resources, time, and ability to find each other.
I'm surprised it isn't more of a shitshow, honestly.
> And I think that's kind of suggestive of what a healthy culture is, really: it's the part that can survive to old age, which by its nature means it is usually a little more buttoned-up than what a young person craves.
I'd expand this and say a healthy culture can be transmitted and has something to offer for different stages of life. Which is where I think geeks have some issue: Because we're so forward thinking/future oriented + our greater social acceptance is so new, we don't even conceive of ourselves as being a culture, and we can be kind of disdainful of tradition and history efforts.
Yup. The ratios are just bad. On the 'understanding the impact of living on the digital world on one's life stages' aspect, we're looking at ratios of about one elder per 20,000 students at best. Then consider of us 5000, there are plenty of variables that might mean somebody can't help teach. Either they have no education background, aren't people people, aren't alive anymore (RIP Aaron Schwartz), or can't understand the average person's life experience well enough to offer any practical advice (I can't see Zuck having many good ideas here; he's too busy exploiting the situation for personal gain).
Which is another problem: The people who would be most helpful for this particular problem are those in the 5000 kids/earliest adopters who spend the most time around normal people (as opposed to academia or SV), because they're going to have the best ideas of how to adapt the digital world to work for the average citizen who has to work around things like trying to keep up with tech while raising 3 kids and working 2 jobs. But those people are also the group with the least resources, time, and ability to find each other.
I'm surprised it isn't more of a shitshow, honestly.
> And I think that's kind of suggestive of what a healthy culture is, really: it's the part that can survive to old age, which by its nature means it is usually a little more buttoned-up than what a young person craves.
I'd expand this and say a healthy culture can be transmitted and has something to offer for different stages of life. Which is where I think geeks have some issue: Because we're so forward thinking/future oriented + our greater social acceptance is so new, we don't even conceive of ourselves as being a culture, and we can be kind of disdainful of tradition and history efforts.
I agree. The lack of adults that know gay and lesbian history is the reason for a lot of internal strife in the LGB community.
Could you elaborate on the strife?
Some people want to change the definition of gay and lesbian, as one example.
(I'm discovering I'm more ignorant than I thought.) How would some want to change those definitions?
They're referring to the following argument in the queer community:
- Some people (mostly young people - people below the age of ~25) believe that being 'gay' or 'lesbian' is about gender (e.g. a woman attracted to a pre-op trans woman can still be a lesbian, but a woman attracted to a trans man wouldn't be). Others (mostly older people) believe that being 'gay' or 'lesbian' is about sex (e.g. a woman attracted to a pre-op trans woman is bi but a woman attracted to a trans man can be a lesbian).
Honestly, I think we should just have different terms for each. It's clear that there ARE large amounts of people attracted to (basically) either femininity or masculinity as opposed to bodies, so why don't we make a term for that just like we did for lesbians and gay men? That's what humans do.
The main thing I'm concerned about is how mean the young people are to those who don't agree. It doesn't impact me much, but I do worry about the messages young homosexuals are getting from their peers: There's a large conflation of being attracted to someone with moral approval which is...gross. Basically 'if you're not attracted to trans people, you're a transphobe.' Which isn't how any of this works, but teenagers listen to their peers because developmentally, that's what they need to do.
The person replying to you isn't correct that they want to 'change' the definition, though. It's more that we (the queer community) didn't bother nailing down which definition it was when the queer community was small enough that the issue rarely came up, but now it does and it turns out a lot of us disagree.
That's as neutral a run-down as I can give you. The person replying to you is on the 'it's sex based' side of the fence and I get the sense they're testing out whether they can discuss such things here, since a lot of queer/gay spaces online have very much Chosen A Side, and since the internet is full of young people and they have more time, it's mostly the young people's side.
- Some people (mostly young people - people below the age of ~25) believe that being 'gay' or 'lesbian' is about gender (e.g. a woman attracted to a pre-op trans woman can still be a lesbian, but a woman attracted to a trans man wouldn't be). Others (mostly older people) believe that being 'gay' or 'lesbian' is about sex (e.g. a woman attracted to a pre-op trans woman is bi but a woman attracted to a trans man can be a lesbian).
Honestly, I think we should just have different terms for each. It's clear that there ARE large amounts of people attracted to (basically) either femininity or masculinity as opposed to bodies, so why don't we make a term for that just like we did for lesbians and gay men? That's what humans do.
The main thing I'm concerned about is how mean the young people are to those who don't agree. It doesn't impact me much, but I do worry about the messages young homosexuals are getting from their peers: There's a large conflation of being attracted to someone with moral approval which is...gross. Basically 'if you're not attracted to trans people, you're a transphobe.' Which isn't how any of this works, but teenagers listen to their peers because developmentally, that's what they need to do.
The person replying to you isn't correct that they want to 'change' the definition, though. It's more that we (the queer community) didn't bother nailing down which definition it was when the queer community was small enough that the issue rarely came up, but now it does and it turns out a lot of us disagree.
That's as neutral a run-down as I can give you. The person replying to you is on the 'it's sex based' side of the fence and I get the sense they're testing out whether they can discuss such things here, since a lot of queer/gay spaces online have very much Chosen A Side, and since the internet is full of young people and they have more time, it's mostly the young people's side.
Thank you for the elaborate reply!
Your neutrality is appreciated.
Lots of things, but war especially. “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”
This quote comes from a guy who personally lived through two world wars. Maybe not as predictive as it is poetic.
Haha, well technically he wasn't wrong in that way (the contrapositive). He didn't say, "As long as there remains alive at least one man who remembers the horrors of the last great war, the next great war can't happen."
I don’t think alignment of interest degenerates linearly with generations. I would suggest that people in their 50s today are much more aligned in interests (not talking hobbies - more generic interests) to someone in their 20s than someone in their 70s.
This is not due to the age rather than the timing of the current technological age and its impact of social evolution of values.
That said to align generations around epochs of time is disingenuous to the diversity and value anyone brings no matter how old they are. We need to tread carefully that we don’t perpetuate ageism.
This is not due to the age rather than the timing of the current technological age and its impact of social evolution of values.
That said to align generations around epochs of time is disingenuous to the diversity and value anyone brings no matter how old they are. We need to tread carefully that we don’t perpetuate ageism.
I agree with this, but 50s are more likely to be closer to 70s unless that 50 something was a techie or involved in other subcultures that exploded in popularity between their youth and now. My parents are both in this category (my mom is a sci-fi and hardware nerd, and my dad likes computer programming and video games) and both have real troubles socializing in their age bracket. My grandparents' generation had similar problems: Until he died, most people in both my grandpa's generation and the one after him thought the man was insane/eccentric at best for his television obsession, whereas by the time the Web hit it was starting to be seen as 'cool' by the youngest folks. Likewise, my great-uncle was seen as a weirdo for studying pop culture and now obviously that's an entire profession.
It's less about interests being inherently tied to generation and more about whether that generation was actually permitted to pursue that interest. Particularly once you add things like sex on top of it: My uncle is an engineer but my mom wasn't allowed to go to college. She was supposed to be a SAHM. That makes it really hard for her to find other 60 something ladies that are taking their modems apart.
> This is not due to the age rather than the timing of the current technological age and its impact of social evolution of values.
Very much agree with this. It is funny how many teens and 20 somethings are boggled by 'old' people showing up in spaces with them sometimes. I've liked this thing for 25-30 years! I'm not going to stop liking it!
It's less about interests being inherently tied to generation and more about whether that generation was actually permitted to pursue that interest. Particularly once you add things like sex on top of it: My uncle is an engineer but my mom wasn't allowed to go to college. She was supposed to be a SAHM. That makes it really hard for her to find other 60 something ladies that are taking their modems apart.
> This is not due to the age rather than the timing of the current technological age and its impact of social evolution of values.
Very much agree with this. It is funny how many teens and 20 somethings are boggled by 'old' people showing up in spaces with them sometimes. I've liked this thing for 25-30 years! I'm not going to stop liking it!
Social obligation is missing in many today. Where there is a lack of obligation, entitlement will thrive.
Do not be so sure of yourself in the face of your grandparent's wisdom.
Do not be so sure of yourself in the face of your grandparent's wisdom.
Elder's provide a stability of culture and knowledge which is both good and bad. It's sometimes joked that science progresses forward one funeral at a time. The great luminaires of yesterday are the curmudgeons of today holding back any new competing theories (until they die opening up the floodgates).
I really think the "Inflection Point" of the singularity/acceleration was very mundane: "Recently, we had the first generation in history where the wisdom of our elders was more harm than boon" for basically the first time in our history as a species.
Interestingly we also see the first generation in recent history with less wealth than their parents.
We were saying that about GenX (my generation) in 1990. In fact, the genX cohort has 52% per capita wealth of their parents.
Millenials are much worse off - most GenX wealth is from buying houses in the first half of the price escalation (which millenials missed). They're likely to inherit most of the Boomer wealth though.
Too soon to call IMO for GenZ. In their 20s, GenX participants were mostly stoned at Nirvana concerts, with about a $9.76 mean per capita wealth.
Millenials are much worse off - most GenX wealth is from buying houses in the first half of the price escalation (which millenials missed). They're likely to inherit most of the Boomer wealth though.
Too soon to call IMO for GenZ. In their 20s, GenX participants were mostly stoned at Nirvana concerts, with about a $9.76 mean per capita wealth.
I disagree, not because I disagree with the fact that this happened: "Recently, we had the first generation in history where the wisdom of our elders was more harm than boon", but because I think the phenomenon is temporary.
The reason that the life advice of the Boomers, Silent Generation, and a lot of Gen X doesn't hit is due to the fact that we underwent an information era shift during their lifetime, and that due to advances, such shifts can happen more quickly than they used to. However, now that we're settled in this new digital, informationally networked world, generations are going to grow up and build new wisdom to pass on. This just takes time. A lot of the Gen Z people I've run into are happier to listen to me than I expected, but if I step back it makes sense: I was one of the first people to grow up online (I was 4 in 1993 when I joined the party) and really internalize the new way of doing things, so more of what I say is actually relevant and I can also read digital context far better than most people my age or older. In 30 years, there's going to be a lot more guidance for young people from the now older Gen Z and the very small portion of us Millennials who got to be very online our whole lives.
In addition, while most elders had harmful wisdom, not all did, and this is an important point because it disproves the idea that elders should inherently should not be listened to/were useless for one or two generations because of the technological advancements. Instead, I would say the fault lies with our cultures/societies. I'm a 3rd/4th generation geek, and so I, my siblings, and my cousins grew up with adults whose wisdom was still helpful, even in this weird age. There are dozens of us in my generation with varying temperaments, religious + political affiliations, ability levels, etc. and we all know things like troubleshooting skills, how the internet and Web work, basic systems-thinking, hacking stuff together to get the results we want, etc. So my generation and the one after can/could just walk up to pretty much any random adult and get some technologically/informationally literate advice. We also learned things like how to resolve nerdy arguments and got to hear conversations between our adults about things like why the Web was a Big Deal and what it meant. We received context and it's been key in keeping us all sane. This was a rare experience for my generation, but I think it will become more common in the next 50 years.
I do think the disconnect is one reason for a lot of social upheaval we're seeing/about to see, though.
The reason that the life advice of the Boomers, Silent Generation, and a lot of Gen X doesn't hit is due to the fact that we underwent an information era shift during their lifetime, and that due to advances, such shifts can happen more quickly than they used to. However, now that we're settled in this new digital, informationally networked world, generations are going to grow up and build new wisdom to pass on. This just takes time. A lot of the Gen Z people I've run into are happier to listen to me than I expected, but if I step back it makes sense: I was one of the first people to grow up online (I was 4 in 1993 when I joined the party) and really internalize the new way of doing things, so more of what I say is actually relevant and I can also read digital context far better than most people my age or older. In 30 years, there's going to be a lot more guidance for young people from the now older Gen Z and the very small portion of us Millennials who got to be very online our whole lives.
In addition, while most elders had harmful wisdom, not all did, and this is an important point because it disproves the idea that elders should inherently should not be listened to/were useless for one or two generations because of the technological advancements. Instead, I would say the fault lies with our cultures/societies. I'm a 3rd/4th generation geek, and so I, my siblings, and my cousins grew up with adults whose wisdom was still helpful, even in this weird age. There are dozens of us in my generation with varying temperaments, religious + political affiliations, ability levels, etc. and we all know things like troubleshooting skills, how the internet and Web work, basic systems-thinking, hacking stuff together to get the results we want, etc. So my generation and the one after can/could just walk up to pretty much any random adult and get some technologically/informationally literate advice. We also learned things like how to resolve nerdy arguments and got to hear conversations between our adults about things like why the Web was a Big Deal and what it meant. We received context and it's been key in keeping us all sane. This was a rare experience for my generation, but I think it will become more common in the next 50 years.
I do think the disconnect is one reason for a lot of social upheaval we're seeing/about to see, though.
On the other hand, Elders voted the UK out of the EU.
They showed up for their civic rights. The youth did not. If the youth had listened to them, they would have voted, and that vote would have turned out different.
Unfortunately, this does not matter when generation sizes differ. The older generations are by far larger.
There are good resources on how this has shaped society. Example are less support for education support and better policies for investments.
Ie. Large generations decide how the world looks for small generations.
There are good resources on how this has shaped society. Example are less support for education support and better policies for investments.
Ie. Large generations decide how the world looks for small generations.
Leave won with 51.9% of the votes, on a voter turnout of 72.2%. It was not the irreversible situation you are making it to be.
Whole point of the article was that we have elders because they look out for the youth. If they don't then they are useless, and can just die already.
But, they aren't. The boomers I think are the first generation in historical memory to act this way. Everything is about them, it's always been about them. Look at Social Security funding/timing, look at the ages of our politicians. Look at the response to COVID (and for reference compare it to the response to AIDs). Literally every single thing they've gotten their hands on from infrastructure to politics to the economy and housing to the environment has been transformed into some kind of Ponzi scheme.
I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers. Politically, economically, culturally I definitely have more in common with a gen-z than boomers.
I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers. Politically, economically, culturally I definitely have more in common with a gen-z than boomers.
> The boomers I think are the first generation in historical memory to act this way
No, they aren't.
> Everything is about them, it's always been about them
No, it isn't.
> Look at Social Security funding/timing,
You mean the way that, as Boomers were in early-mid career, the Silent Generation-dominated political class vastly increased taxes on workers for social security while also for the first time adopting taxes on social security benefits for the first time?
> Look at the response to COVID (and for reference compare it to the response to AIDs).
They are remarkably similar at the federal level, actually. In both cases, Republican Administrations deliberately didn't take it seriously for political reasons until media coverage of deaths and other political pressure from below resulted in a partial reversal. Everything about COVID happened faster, but the faster policy shift was mostly a result of it being a faster spreading, more acutely impactful pandemic, killing about as many people in its first year in the US as AIDS has in the US in total to date.
EDIT TO ADD:
> I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers.
This is relatively normal. Boomers in their own 40s experienced the same thing with regard to Silents. The big difference is because Gen X is a so much of bust generation compared to both Boomers and Millennials, they never became or will become dominant, and because not only are Millenials more liberal than Boomers but Gen X is more conservative than both, Gen X’s influence is basically to slightly extend and reinforce the feeling of Boomer domination for Millenials.
No, they aren't.
> Everything is about them, it's always been about them
No, it isn't.
> Look at Social Security funding/timing,
You mean the way that, as Boomers were in early-mid career, the Silent Generation-dominated political class vastly increased taxes on workers for social security while also for the first time adopting taxes on social security benefits for the first time?
> Look at the response to COVID (and for reference compare it to the response to AIDs).
They are remarkably similar at the federal level, actually. In both cases, Republican Administrations deliberately didn't take it seriously for political reasons until media coverage of deaths and other political pressure from below resulted in a partial reversal. Everything about COVID happened faster, but the faster policy shift was mostly a result of it being a faster spreading, more acutely impactful pandemic, killing about as many people in its first year in the US as AIDS has in the US in total to date.
EDIT TO ADD:
> I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers.
This is relatively normal. Boomers in their own 40s experienced the same thing with regard to Silents. The big difference is because Gen X is a so much of bust generation compared to both Boomers and Millennials, they never became or will become dominant, and because not only are Millenials more liberal than Boomers but Gen X is more conservative than both, Gen X’s influence is basically to slightly extend and reinforce the feeling of Boomer domination for Millenials.
> No, they aren't.
Yes, they are.
> No, it isn't.
Yes, it is.
---
Regarding AIDS/COVID comparison...we just spent many trillions of dollars and basically shut down the global economy for two years. There is zero precedent for this kind of response to a disease in human history and definitely was not done for AIDS. Worldwide ~45 million people have died of AIDS, 6-7 of COVID.
Regarding Social Security, my reading of history is that this was something done by working age folks on behalf of destituite elderly. Boomers have let this ride their entire lives knowing full well it needed adjustments to be sustainable, intentionally dropping the burden on younger generations.
Yes, they are.
> No, it isn't.
Yes, it is.
---
Regarding AIDS/COVID comparison...we just spent many trillions of dollars and basically shut down the global economy for two years. There is zero precedent for this kind of response to a disease in human history and definitely was not done for AIDS. Worldwide ~45 million people have died of AIDS, 6-7 of COVID.
Regarding Social Security, my reading of history is that this was something done by working age folks on behalf of destituite elderly. Boomers have let this ride their entire lives knowing full well it needed adjustments to be sustainable, intentionally dropping the burden on younger generations.
> Regarding AIDS/COVID comparison...we just spent many trillions of dollars and basically shut down the global economy for two years.
if we had shut down the economy for two years, the resulting US recession would have been longer than two months.
Instead, within two years of the pandemic being recognized, the prime issues I the US economy were associated with overheating rather than inactivity: tight labor market and high inflation.
if we had shut down the economy for two years, the resulting US recession would have been longer than two months.
Instead, within two years of the pandemic being recognized, the prime issues I the US economy were associated with overheating rather than inactivity: tight labor market and high inflation.
It's incredibly unfair to blame Brexit on youth voter turn out...
It was incredibly stupid to pose that question as a simple majority leave/stay referendum, and then equally stupid to actually go through with it given such a narrow majority.
Certain capital owners were the ones who advocated for it, and ultimately the ones who benefited, and they manipulated the older and xenophobic.
It was incredibly stupid to pose that question as a simple majority leave/stay referendum, and then equally stupid to actually go through with it given such a narrow majority.
Certain capital owners were the ones who advocated for it, and ultimately the ones who benefited, and they manipulated the older and xenophobic.
This is a disrespectful oversimplification of a very complex issue. Older people remember that Charles de Gaulle did everything that he could to keep the UK out of European politics. They remember the first referendum on remain/leave, that happened in 1975. They remember all of the exceptions, negotiations, all of the crashes. The EU is great, and I personally consider a grave mistake to leave it, but this sort of unidimensional oversimplification of complex issues is a major factor in politics polarisation.
I wonder what percentage of those elders acknowledge they have been manipulated but I suspect that number to be rather low.
I'm glad you agree with me. The Elders showed up for their civic right, and voted the UK out of the EU. So they're not great.
Ya, no reason to be apprehensive regarding an extra-national apparatus, barely representative or accountable to its constituents, entirely illiberal and increasingly exercising arbitrary authority, with a clear pattern of being the predominant tool for lawmaking well beyond its original purview. No reason to look at their American contemporaries' federal government, where virtually all issues are now to be addressed at the federal level or not at all, with consideration that the original responsibilities of the federal government were basically meant to be limited to few things beyond regulating interstate affairs.
If anything, our elders have failed to impart sufficient skepticism of state authority. The current generation of young people doesn't even understand the difference between "what I think is right" and "what I'd like imposed by the state onto others," let alone "what I'd like to be imposed onto others across the broadest scope manageable by the largest authority under my influence."
I will go so far to say that the primary obligation of elders in perpetuity will be to warn that any apparatus built in the name of imposing your will onto others is an apparatus whose objectives need not, and will not, mirror your own.
If anything, our elders have failed to impart sufficient skepticism of state authority. The current generation of young people doesn't even understand the difference between "what I think is right" and "what I'd like imposed by the state onto others," let alone "what I'd like to be imposed onto others across the broadest scope manageable by the largest authority under my influence."
I will go so far to say that the primary obligation of elders in perpetuity will be to warn that any apparatus built in the name of imposing your will onto others is an apparatus whose objectives need not, and will not, mirror your own.
Trial by combat may have had its place in the leadership transition process
Not all of us did
[deleted]
I think the weird transitional part still lies ahead, when people born after the internet age become elders. Currently, our elders lived in a time where their elders were valued, so they're met with a hostility that didn't exist for their elders in situations where they probably expect respect or appreciation. It must feel frustrating.
Negative aspects aside, I believe there will still be value in elder wisdom. Not necessarily through traditional knowledge transference on subjects evolving day after day, but on how to navigate the stresses of a modern life, developing/recognizing healthy interpersonal relationships, and adapting to change. Transferable life skill knowledge that isn't necessarily taught in school or from busy parents. This can be passed on to grandchildren or mentoring children growing up in challenging situations via volunteerism. But, like the author pointed out, reliably tapping into this seems challenging.