In general, it sure naturally would be better for children to grow up in times of piece, I guess. Times of violence and unvertainty - also create adults of violence and uncertainty. Which also bring forth another generation of that type...
I think this lack of connection to the past and history, which comes when peace times already last long, is also a part of why there are so many ridiculous beliefs, ambitions and phenomena out there, which currently gather most in a pot that's called "Identity Politics". It happens because people don't regard things that have been done or called a certain way for a long time with the story in mind what it sprung from. They just see everything with the eyes of the present - or whatever is their basic feeling or understanding of the present is like. So some come to regard something as "offensive" while barely anybody else looks at it that way and barely anyone has felt it like this for 30 years or so.
In a certain way, I think, even I can feel some of these basic generation struggles which have reached their peak now in the so-called "generation Y". The lack of a task to do, the absence of the "life should be better for your than for your parents", the absence of "wealth" that everybody gets promised for working hard... I think I can even already sense that in my path. The reality that I see is "connections matter more than being good at something; work hard and be the dumb idiot who gets kicked; obey and become unhappy with your life; do the right thing and get scolded for it" and, seriously, it's been this way 10 years ago already and even earlier than that. The world of "everything gets better day by day" is no more, when people way older than me talk about it. It even feels like mockery when people take their experiences from 30 to 40 years ago as a base for judging a young or not so young adult in the present days.
...And already I say that as someone who hasn't been born exactly into this time where people are fully affected by this development of things. So... how must people feel all the more who really are right in the middle of this?
...This all is interconnected with other things. Many other things... It ain't just a generation's stupidity which makes them blind to feel certain things. They're also what's been put into them - and if that's just tons of food, parents with boredom, egoistic parents, excess and then lack of possibilities, struggles and personal freedom to master them - to grow as a person from these experiences -, well, then you'll receive out of it just a bunch of spoiled kids which regard it as funny to kick someone to death on the floor.
I think income inequality comes with spoiled assholes which regard it as funny to kick someone to death on the floor. And also bored kids who, like you said, don't pay attention to past atrocities.
If they did, they'd understand kicking someone isn't cool.
I sometimes think cultural boredom is both good and bad. A bored, celebrity obsessed culture (like America) isn't likely to wind up in a civil war. But at the same time, it also means we don't pay attention to real issues and that's always bad.
Is Germany that way? I always imagined Germany as less likely to forget, considering WW1 and WW2. Also they just seem like more PRACTICAL people.
I dunno about people being offended. I'm usually on the side of social justice, but lately, even I find myself kind of flabbergasted at what people get offended about.
Boredom depends on the intellectual base you have in those people who feel it. Smarter people find ways to fill that boredom with substance, people with average to beyond average intelligence usually lack the creativity to use it in a productive way. They tend to take simple destruction without a purpose as their way to fill that boredom.
I think America is very extreme in this, being obsessed with celebrities and gossip and actual trivialitites. But since Facebook and social media became popular for a wider audience, I think other areas catch up on that. For here, I dare say it is the case. Even though I don't want to claim it wasn't like this before in any way too. (If that was so, RTL and BILD newspaper had never survived until today...)
Well, a thing to regard in this matter, I think, is: For which side of the former inner German border you wanna have the piece of information?
As I perceive things - West Germany is the more Americanized part which tends to get obsessed with media, scandal and trivial stories way more than East Germany. In political things, I feel that coming through even stronger. For a West German to make the conclusion "our whole system is fucked up" is less likely to happen that for someone who's been born and raised in the East, for example. I don't know what to reason it with exactly... I guess the main part in this is: Because they're missing the basic idea in their mindset that the world, as they know them, can also disappear from one to the other day and become totally meaningless. And technically, for West Germany this even didn't really happen even after WWII. The post-Reich-state West Germany saw Nazis in government positions again right after the war (installed by the US, just for the note), let the guilt and atonement for its crimes disappear under the carpet (except for the bigger and more famous crimes that couldn't be denied), and in the depth of its state structure, law structures as well as structures in thought of the people who worked in it, not that much of the former Nazi state disappeared. Most people from West Germany surely aren't aware of that, but I think you notice that even though in some very deep-lying points on a subtle level...
One of that is this thing "not getting upon the idea to not only get rid of certain politicians, but putting a whole system into question". Which, on a subtle level, requires the precondition "I don't think we're that much on the wrong track here" - maybe also leading to the fact that Westerners in general have a problem to draw the conclusion of systematic patterns instead of just "seeing it as single independent cases" (and if they do it, then they do it with things religiously and see patterns under mostly emotional viewpoints). Well... and what would you expect in awareness from that? Not much, I think.
And I feel like noticing that in conversations about politics, when people are from West Germany. Even I! Although I cannot even build up an identity as a "citizen of the GDR" because I'm too young to know what that would mean in its full extent (and neither would want to). I'm only sensitive to structures and patterns, respectively have an eye for it. I do not see these things with resentment...
Times of violence and unvertainty - also create adults of violence and uncertainty. Which also bring forth another generation of that type...
I think this lack of connection to the past and history, which comes when peace times already last long, is also a part of why there are so many ridiculous beliefs, ambitions and phenomena out there, which currently gather most in a pot that's called "Identity Politics".
It happens because people don't regard things that have been done or called a certain way for a long time with the story in mind what it sprung from. They just see everything with the eyes of the present - or whatever is their basic feeling or understanding of the present is like.
So some come to regard something as "offensive" while barely anybody else looks at it that way and barely anyone has felt it like this for 30 years or so.
In a certain way, I think, even I can feel some of these basic generation struggles which have reached their peak now in the so-called "generation Y".
The lack of a task to do, the absence of the "life should be better for your than for your parents", the absence of "wealth" that everybody gets promised for working hard... I think I can even already sense that in my path.
The reality that I see is "connections matter more than being good at something; work hard and be the dumb idiot who gets kicked; obey and become unhappy with your life; do the right thing and get scolded for it" and, seriously, it's been this way 10 years ago already and even earlier than that.
The world of "everything gets better day by day" is no more, when people way older than me talk about it. It even feels like mockery when people take their experiences from 30 to 40 years ago as a base for judging a young or not so young adult in the present days.
...And already I say that as someone who hasn't been born exactly into this time where people are fully affected by this development of things.
So... how must people feel all the more who really are right in the middle of this?
...This all is interconnected with other things. Many other things...
It ain't just a generation's stupidity which makes them blind to feel certain things.
They're also what's been put into them - and if that's just tons of food, parents with boredom, egoistic parents, excess and then lack of possibilities, struggles and personal freedom to master them - to grow as a person from these experiences -, well, then you'll receive out of it just a bunch of spoiled kids which regard it as funny to kick someone to death on the floor.
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If they did, they'd understand kicking someone isn't cool.
I sometimes think cultural boredom is both good and bad. A bored, celebrity obsessed culture (like America) isn't likely to wind up in a civil war. But at the same time, it also means we don't pay attention to real issues and that's always bad.
Is Germany that way? I always imagined Germany as less likely to forget, considering WW1 and WW2. Also they just seem like more PRACTICAL people.
I dunno about people being offended. I'm usually on the side of social justice, but lately, even I find myself kind of flabbergasted at what people get offended about.
Reply
Smarter people find ways to fill that boredom with substance, people with average to beyond average intelligence usually lack the creativity to use it in a productive way. They tend to take simple destruction without a purpose as their way to fill that boredom.
I think America is very extreme in this, being obsessed with celebrities and gossip and actual trivialitites.
But since Facebook and social media became popular for a wider audience, I think other areas catch up on that.
For here, I dare say it is the case. Even though I don't want to claim it wasn't like this before in any way too. (If that was so, RTL and BILD newspaper had never survived until today...)
Well, a thing to regard in this matter, I think, is: For which side of the former inner German border you wanna have the piece of information?
As I perceive things - West Germany is the more Americanized part which tends to get obsessed with media, scandal and trivial stories way more than East Germany. In political things, I feel that coming through even stronger.
For a West German to make the conclusion "our whole system is fucked up" is less likely to happen that for someone who's been born and raised in the East, for example.
I don't know what to reason it with exactly... I guess the main part in this is: Because they're missing the basic idea in their mindset that the world, as they know them, can also disappear from one to the other day and become totally meaningless.
And technically, for West Germany this even didn't really happen even after WWII.
The post-Reich-state West Germany saw Nazis in government positions again right after the war (installed by the US, just for the note), let the guilt and atonement for its crimes disappear under the carpet (except for the bigger and more famous crimes that couldn't be denied), and in the depth of its state structure, law structures as well as structures in thought of the people who worked in it, not that much of the former Nazi state disappeared.
Most people from West Germany surely aren't aware of that, but I think you notice that even though in some very deep-lying points on a subtle level...
One of that is this thing "not getting upon the idea to not only get rid of certain politicians, but putting a whole system into question".
Which, on a subtle level, requires the precondition "I don't think we're that much on the wrong track here" - maybe also leading to the fact that Westerners in general have a problem to draw the conclusion of systematic patterns instead of just "seeing it as single independent cases" (and if they do it, then they do it with things religiously and see patterns under mostly emotional viewpoints).
Well... and what would you expect in awareness from that?
Not much, I think.
And I feel like noticing that in conversations about politics, when people are from West Germany. Even I! Although I cannot even build up an identity as a "citizen of the GDR" because I'm too young to know what that would mean in its full extent (and neither would want to).
I'm only sensitive to structures and patterns, respectively have an eye for it. I do not see these things with resentment...
Reply
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