this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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I mean, technically boomers saw Korea, Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, Yom Kippur, (sorry if it’s misspelled), and the 70s oil crisis. I think the world has really just been interesting all this time
You say interesting, but I find the slow decay of our society as it's eroded by greedy corporations to be rather dull.
Or you could look at the progress of science, morality and general kindness.
Your view is also valid. There are good and bad things to turn your focus on.
I'd personally rather live in 2023 than 1923, so for me, the total change seems generally interesting/good.
I mean as an educated white man, 1923 doesn't seem all that bad to me...
Does 2023 look worse for educated white men?
Yes. Granted not due to being a white educated man so much as a human who doesn't have loads of money or influence. At least in 1923 you didn't have every corporation trying to micromanage your life and life was affordable.
Maybe not 1923 exactly, but you can look at Europe in that time... That was right around the time Mussolini got to power, and why? Because of white males (and more) facing a cost of living crisis. America at that time had the "golden 20s", true, but then you go a few years later and the fucking great depression starts, probably the biggest cost of living crisis there was.
And then also compare the standard of living from that time with now, even though we are struggling, our standard of living in general is much better than it was at that time due to technology and other factors.
Right in the middle between two world wars you're going to experience and probably die in.
I'm not saying you are wrong in the sense that all is good now, and that it doesn't suck majorly for a lot of people, all I'm saying is that I think you overestimate how good the past was.
And I think you underestimate how much my life sucks.
Not really, I haven't made any assumptions about your life. I'm sorry that your life sucks.
They also got to own their own homes.
And affordable education.
And wage growth.
And job availability..
Depends on where you where born I guess? Living in Belgium, my boomer parents never got a higher education because it was not affordable for working class families with 6 or more children. My dad had to go to work in a factory at 14, which was very common at the time. Props to him though, he got a degree through evening classes when he was already married with two children and working full time.
Higher education only became common and affordable with my generation.
On the other hand, while I make more money than my parents ever did, they were able to buy a 4 bedroom house in the 1980s on a working class income, whereas I could only afford a 2 bedroom appartment in the mid 2000s, the tail-end of affordability for housing.
While it's true that I was speaking from an American perspective on a time period that definitely saw different situations in the US vs Europe, I would also say that the experience you've shared shows a similar effect, just in a different environment.
Your father (to his credit) was able to work his way through night school while supporting a family and (presumably) not incurring a mountain of debt.
The notion of working one's way through college is something that was certainly difficult, but also certainly doable in the time when the boomers were in their 20s and 30s. Many of them still think that it's possible to work a part time job while you study to pay your way through college and graduate with little to no debt (and use that perspective to pass judgement on anyone who doesn't do that as lazy).
These days, a part time income may not even be enough to cover books, let alone room and board... forget about tuition. Honestly, it's so impractical that it's probably better for a student to not work and focus on study and health rather than try to mitigate debt through a side job.
This is again a more American perspective I think, which doesn't make it invalid of course. The situation over there where students typically get loans and suffer crippling debt for years after they've graduated is frankly outrageous. Over here though, higher education is government regulated and highly subsidized, and while it's not free and can still be pretty expensive, it's possible to fit it within the budget of most families without loans, and people from families with a really low income are eligible for a grant.
So I'm going to stand by my point that in Belgium at least, education has become more accessible compared to how it was for the boomer generation. It's visible in the statistics too: the number of people with a higher education level is still increasing every year, and younger people are much more likely to be highly educated than older people.
Sources:
People are so much more "connected" now. Everyone hears about everything that goes on in the world. Well, except the good stuff, that's not engaging. This and modern popular culture has us focused on the state of the world, which we largely have no ability to directly impact. In the past, people have been more concerned with their community and bettering their immediate life.
Now, this allowed for us to bury our heads in the sand and ignore global issues caused by state actors and accept systemic issues. But it also often set people up for success. The problems modern people are expected to solve is shit like climate change. Which, you know, is impossible for a single person to achieve. The irony is that we're actually more alone. People today have fewer close friends and deep relationships than ever before.
The good news is that the world's actually in a better place than it ever has been by many metrics. The woeful feelings are created by societal shifts and pressures. Things we can control in our own life. So I think the answer is to get yourself right and into a good place. Set limits and disconnect from the internet, build close and meaningful IRL friendships. Once you're set, then reach out into the world and do whatever good you can.
You forgot the 80s, 90s and 00s. Keep up. :)
I wanted to cover till their thirties to do the parallel with millennials
We got the back end of the nuclear threat and then Red Dawn