musing

Aug 20, 2014 20:11


Forgive me if this is long-winded and driveling; something just hit me but I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it.

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I was friends with some neighbors whose kids I babysat - still am friends, at least in a vague Facebook-and-holiday-card way. Obviously they were older, 30ish or so when I was sixteen. His parents ( Read more... )

musing

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rebeccmeister August 21 2014, 03:50:51 UTC
I think it does, but am only going to react in a small way:

The first election I was eligible to vote in happened in the year 2000. The take-away message was that my vote didn't really count, after all.

It's also hard to imagine certain kinds of change in the face of the current social, economic, and political gridlock that's happening, although perhaps all of it indicates that change will happen somehow, sometime soon?

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l_empress August 21 2014, 10:20:00 UTC
I understand what you're saying. I'm a little older; I remember World War II, though I was a small child. I grew up believing that in America, we could do it (whatever it might be). In many ways we have done so, as you pointed out.

More recently, however, I don't necessarily believe it, though I don't stop hoping. I'm sure you have encountered young people whose attitude is not "we can do it," but rather "you have to do it for me." Something got lost in teaching children -- about fifty years ago, I would say -- and now parents and even grandparents are incapable of teaching it. And it works backwards too.

Just watch six people with walkers trying to get on the same elevator, incapable of understanding that you have to wait your turn. They should have learned that in kindergarten, but...

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sartorias August 21 2014, 20:39:05 UTC
It does. I was talking to a German friend the other day about our observations relating to generational cultural attitudes, and cultural recovery. What you say maps generally over what we were observing (via a zillion anecdotes).

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