[Piedra79]

Isn't some of this just generational griping? It seems like each generation talks about how easy or how lost the younger generations have it.

[johnnycap]

"Isn't some of this just generational griping? It seems like each generation talks about how easy or how lost the younger generations have it."

-Sometimes I think it is. Sometimes not. When I read about mice with human brains, my first thought was, "I am glad I will die before this becomes too big an issue, because that is not the world I was born to live in." I was born in the 1960's and even I am beginning to feel lost. The old ways, the honest times, the imaginative play with the littlest things, the skill awards I earned in cubs and the merit badges I earned in scouts, the hikes with friends to the woods on the edge of town, the western shoot outs we had in the quarries...all gone.

We didn't do drugs, we read books at the town library. We chose sides for kick ball or baseball or touch football. We imagined and dreamed...it all feels gone. To tell you the truth, I think the author is right. It might do us some good to have some life changing event which brought all this 'progress' screeching to a hault and maybe discovering our values again in the process.

I remember when the blizzard of '78 hit New England. It was supposed to be a huge catastrophy, but those of us who lived through it will fondly remember how we re-discovered our friends and neighbors for a few weeks when there were no cars, when we pitched in together and we made do or went without. The best times in life are often smaller and simpler than Madison Avenue would want us to believe...

[ThinkDifferent]

Isn't some of this just generational griping?

Yes. The author has some valid points, but lumps together things that are worse (urban crime, increased debt) with things that are just different. Yes, we don't have as many farmers; that's because agricultural productivity is much higher, which is *good*. And she ignores positive changes like vastly improved medical treatments and widely available global communication.

[sarasmom]

Not really.
I know how to "can" vegetables.I had to learn because that was what we ate.
A back to nature dilettante liberal couple I once knew "canned" an acre of various vegetables they had worked hard on all year,n their spare time, from their own garden.
They proudly showed me their pantry of two serving portions in color coordinated, artistically disobeyed quart jars.





They were dismayed when I told them they would get violently sick, and possibly die, if they ate any of it.
You see, they didn't fill any of the jars to seal properly...botulism laboratory.
I doubt they burned the waste, as I advised. They probably just dumped the jars upstream of their or their neighbors well.
I try to avoid living near high income, gated communities.
Not a safe place to be near in a power outage.

[ccmay]

It seems like each generation talks about how easy or how lost the younger generations have it.

Hear hear.

My great grandfather laughed at my grandfather for not knowing how to drive a horse and buggy. My grandfather laughed at my dad for not knowing how to hand-crank a Model T. My dad laughed at me for not knowing how to drive with a manual transmission. I laugh at my kids for not being able to navigate without a GPS. My kids will laugh at my grandkids, as they fly around in their automated jet-pods, for not knowing how to drive a car with a steering wheel.

Hindsight is always, always, always obscured by rose-colored glasses. The future always, always, always looks grim to cranky old people.

-ccm

[cubreporter]

No generation griping. Growing up was like Nancy Levant said.

[Old Professer]

Trite? Yes, but did it ever occur to you that all these generational lamentations might be true? If so, imagine the cumulative loss.

[ladylib]

She's telling the younger generation that her generation had it better than theirs.

I don't call that griping.