Reluctantly observing the birth of a brand new bigotry

[anahata56]

You know, we are now eight days away from the inauguration, and, yesterday, over on the Obama 08 community, someone pointed to this article, because they "are interested in stuff about generational change

Comments

[katmoonshaker]

::head:desk:: There are no absolutes. I applaud you and your efforts and yes, I've known other people from 'your generation' who are wonderful, fantastic, and are my friends (others I just know and admire). If you'll note, I said that I was shooting off a quick comment. In general, quick comments are snippets of one's thoughts and are not to be considered to be the whole of a person's ideology.

That said, I have found, in general (iow speaking of that portion found to fall within one standard deviation of the mean) that those I encounter who where raised within the milieu of the '80s (iow without mitigating standards provided by parental units etc) have a high tendency to be more concerned with their own needs and do not, in general, seem to notice those persons who are not within their own sphere. Indeed, it often seems as if they do not inhabit the same universe as the rest of us, making one wonder if higher functioning autism is indeed on the rise, and that instead is the problem.

So, you can take this response as you will. After all, semantics are what you make them.

[ziactrice]

Many generalizations work at a macro-level but fail at the micro, I know. It was the depth of ill-feeling expressed that punched my buttons; I know you meant nothing personal by it.

Perhaps I did make too much of your comment after a lifetime of hearing it perhaps too often repeated. I admit to having a non-objective view of the question, as well. I've too often suffered, or witnessed, hard-working and generous younger persons being given such outright insult for their: work ethics, selfishness, laziness, etc. that I am somewhat sensitized to the subject. You seem to be saying the normal bell-curve for that ... decade of birth (since a generation is 25 years) is skewed to the more selfish side of the equation of societal behavior, which I believe may have more basis in observer effect than reality (or perhaps I'm just thinking that statistically speaking, mass movements of behavior like that are unusual in society, but I'm not a societal statistician, or even a people person, so that's mere supposition on my part) than in actual, bare-bones reality.

I'm not sure that attributing that observed shift to a rise in mental disorder is less demeaning than saying the behavior changed intentionally.

Of course, we could also consider environmental factors, such as the frequent reports that the Social Security system, Medicare, and health providers in general would be crashed and burned before anyone of my age-decade would receive any of our paid-in benefits in return so we would just have to see to our own support in retirement, our own health - and additionally, to taking care of our parents in their own older years. Sometimes what looks like selfishness resolves into only fear of a sparse retirement or a very harsh, poor future life upon a closer examination.