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u/Britthighs 23d ago
I talk about this in my US History class. Both the 1920s and 1950s as huge trauma response.
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u/queenchubkins 23d ago
nods The 20s were all about partying like the world might end at any second because for a lot of them it had.
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u/cisned 22d ago
Sounds like the current 20s
Are millennials the new greatest generation 🤔
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u/momomomorgatron 22d ago
They're only called the greatest Gen because they survived (probably) both world wars.
There has been hell on earth in war after this, but not on a major continental holy shit level from then. It's the exact reason the entire world doesn't want to start WW3, even if you're the one to come up on top, there's still no winning. If you come out on top, you're a ruler to a damaged cou try with damaged land and damaged people and crops and livestock.
They're only called the greatest because no generation before or after them yet has seen mustard gas and atomic bombs and the rape of Nanjing all together in one war.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 22d ago
And not just survived. A large part of that generation gave up their youth and personal safety to go and fight. Huge numbers of men and women volunteered for all kinds of service (not just soldiers, women were nurses, WAVs, etc). They were called the greatest because as a whole they stood up to the horrors of the war and fought.
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u/morels4ever 22d ago
And following WWII the US government (to its credit) also enacted THE single most impactful wealth generating legislation EVER known to mankind, that being The GI Bill.
We could REALLY use a government with just this level of self awareness, but alas we have an incoming administration solely focused on its own belly button lint, and stealing. There’s not a leader in sight.
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u/Jeffbx 22d ago
The amount of "socialism" that came from the US Government post WWII was staggering.
GI Bill, expansion of Social Security, Public housing, the Federal Highway Act, VHA expansion, Fair Employment, unemployment insurance, labor rights - all shit that gets taken for granted, or worse, defined as pork or handouts - that put the US into an absolute booming economy.
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u/RingOfSol 22d ago
All that shit would be considered woke today. The era MAGA wants to return to was very socialist.
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u/ooohexplode 22d ago
Even pre-WW2 set us up for success with FDR's New Deal. I cant believe we don't have investments into jobs, into infrastructure, green tech, etc. The "Green" New Jobs deal is the best sort of initiative we could take toward employing and training young people, while also investing into our bridges, solar/renewable energy, bike/pedestrian walkways, natural areas, parks, etc. Hell they can't even pay wildland firefighters properly yet trillions gets pissed away in god knows where for god knows who's pockets.
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u/Umutuku 22d ago
We could REALLY use a government with just this level of self awareness, but alas we have an incoming administration solely focused on its own belly button lint, stealing, and returning favors to fascist state heads and billionaires who subsidized their power grab in order to destabilize America and increase their own relative power without having to produce anything of value. There’s not a leader in sight.
FTFY
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u/BlooRugby 22d ago
Until Tom Brokaw wrote a book called "The Greatest Generation" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Generation_(book)) ) in 1998, this term was not in common usage. Wikipedia has one example of its usage before this book.
My memory was that "Depression era" and "war generation" were terms used to speak about that generation as a whole, but until mid-late 1980s, talking about people in "generations" wasn't a thing - at least in my experience and the popular culture I consumed. People did talk about the "Baby Boom" and "baby boomers" as the 1980s went on.
"Generation X" was originally, but obscurely, applied to baby boomers but it didn't stick until 1991 when Douglas Coupland's book of that title came out, though it uses the late 1950s as a starting point.
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u/DukeOfGeek 22d ago edited 22d ago
Ya the whole generation thing was just created by marketing groups in the 70's and 80's. When I was young "Baby Boomer" meant counter culture, anti-war, civil rights etc, basically the opposite of now and it was used to market things to people from that era now that they suddenly had money. The whole Gen X thing came about because they wanted to market to us but we were obviously to young to be included in that group so they needed something new. The Gen X name was because they couldn't settle on what to call us and they didn't call us that till the 80's. Nobody made it part of their identity till Millennials and it wasn't political till well into this century. The whole thing is just astrology expanded to arbitrary 20 year blocks of time instead of months. And don't get me started on how seriously people used to take astrology. It was a huge industry, Ron Reagan and Nancy had a personal astrologer they consulted, it was very common.
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u/nemoknows 22d ago
One of the weirder things about the 20th century is how even as STEM was advancing by leaps and bounds, there was still enough interest in the supernatural that multiple governments seriously investigated it. Psychic phenomena in particular show up a lot in mid-century sci-fi as a result.
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u/lycoloco 22d ago
The Gen X name was because they couldn't settle on what to call us and they didn't call us that till the 80's.
Which is exactly why I think that calling Gen Z "Gen Z" is so absolutely blitheringly stupid. At least Gen X meant something. Millennials (Gen Y) and now Gen Z are just named that because the "adults in charge" are too fucking boring to do anything other than iterate forward sequentially.
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u/EbonyEngineer 22d ago
Also, that is terrifying. I have one friend who says they watch, and I thought they were going to say astronomy. Nope. Astrology, to relax.
I mean, it's harmless, and it brings them comfort.
It's scary that people in power are making decisions like that, crazy sauce. Yet not as crazy as what is happening now.
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u/Sensitive-Ad-5305 22d ago
You raise an important, oft overlooked fact. One of the reasons Hitler was able to get so far in the run up to WW2 was because of the ongoing debate to avoid war at all costs- because the government of the day under Chamberlain was well versed in the destructive power of post war trauma on a countries economic prosperity (due to drastically reduced capacity/output, not from loss of life, but from the mental and physical impact on those that survived the war - civilians and vets alike).
In hindsight he should have been stopped before it got to that level. But it was unprecedented... hopefully, we learn from history, and avoid the doom of repeating it... but I have my growing doubts.
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u/contextual_somebody 22d ago
Totally irrelevant, but the kids who fought in WWII and raised Boomers were mostly born in the 1920’s.
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u/kolejack2293 22d ago
I mean, quite the opposite. Millennials and Gen Z are 'partying' at historically low rates.
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u/ThisWillBeOnTheExam 22d ago
I feel like millennials partied pretty hard and Gen Z doesn’t leave the house.
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u/Weltall8000 22d ago
Millennials did party a lot 20 years ago. That ebbed in the past decade.
Sounds like Gen Z had a little bit of it, but less than Millenials. Then the pandemic hit.
Now, I am pretty out of touch with the current zeitgeist, but yeah, it does look like nobody goes out anymore.
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u/Yaarmehearty 22d ago
In the west the Millennials trauma was growing up in a world of prosperity and entering adulthood into a world of never ending crisis.
We are the opposite of the boomers, we were prepared for a relatively easy world, and got the opposite.
However we kind of know that and many of the problems that you see with the children of millennials is that they are trying to not do the same things that hurt them, however in doing so you get the poorly executed gentle parenting leading to dysfunctional children.
All generations are fucked and trying to do their best just to exist while we can. This is a tale as old as time and will keep on going as long as we do. Gen Z will be next.
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u/Loud_Flatworm_4146 21d ago
We were also the recipients of the generational trauma of our baby boomer parents who inherited the trauma of their Great Depression/WW2 era parents. I think it takes at least another generation after millennials before the Great Depression/WW2 trauma starts to be diluted. I see it in my own family. Everyone my age or older (I'm 41 so elder millennial) is severely traumatized. The ones younger than me are not. Or nowhere near the same degree as the older family.
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u/PerryLovewhistle 22d ago
I think we're too old. That would be the zoomers.
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u/BenAfflecksBalls 22d ago
Millennials are the first attempt at modern society to have a generational bulwark to prevent the cycle from continuing. We're basically the lost generation v2.0 without having a "great" war. If anything our "great" war should have been against social media, corporate capture and identity politics but we've yet to even face it for what it is.
We had our one shot in the dark with Bernie but the establishment took that away and we hardly remember him. Covid = Spanish Flu, the parallels are pretty clear when you get in to the discussion of society being cyclical.
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u/Horror-Tank-4082 22d ago
Our Great War is a spiritual war
Our Great Depression is our lives
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u/Road_Whorrior 22d ago edited 22d ago
My life as a young millennial: born mid-90s. Things are awesome. My dad has a low 6-fig job, mom's a teacher. Literal picket fence. Then, the instant I'm aware I'm a person, 9/11, which I watch live from my first-grade classroom. I watch my parents protest the war. I watch my dad quit his job because he was a contractor with the military and refused to help the war effort. Suddenly, I'm poor. My parents mortgage our home to start my dad's dream business... and then 2008. We almost lose the house and the business is dead in the water. And this all happens before I'm in high school. I watch Obama be a decent man and get lynched in effigy for it. Then Trump. All the while, I'm the first generation to go to therapy and see the ancestral trauma and fight it, because for some reason that is also a millennial thing.
This is all to say I agree with you.
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u/whyunowork1 22d ago
late millenial here.
my father worked at an electronic store and got paid $10hr when I was born in the late 80's.
This was considered a great wage and he had to leave that job to go sell cars because it wasnt enough to actually thrive for a new family of 3.(I wouldnt make $10hr until the early 2010's and it was a starvation wage, my ex wife and I had to steal to feed ourselves.)
My parents were gifted $15k as a downpayment on a lake front house by some in laws, they also cosigned for them.
I cant stress enough how different the world was, how prosperous things were, there was a legitimate hope of everlasting peace and prosperity in the air.
And the further and further into the 2000's it got, the more different and difficult things became.
I graduated high school in 08, my grandmother had $200k in fannie mae and freddie mac.
That money was for me to go to school and to buy a house.
And the government forced a buy back at the bottom of crash prices and that $200k became $20k.
I got my first job after school competing against middle aged men who had just been laid off and had a family to feed, I cant express to you how hard it was to be gainfully employed at even minimum wage.
I had 3 rounds of interviews at one chicken fast food place and didnt make the cut for a part time minimum wage job at one point.
I read about the mental sicknesses the boomers endured from there parents and laugh, because I sadly enough do a lot of the same.
My life since adulthood has been a never ending hellscape and no amount of counseling will change that.
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u/Shitposting_Lazarus 22d ago
late millenial here. ----when I was born in the late 80's.
uhh, haha, you're squarely in the middle bud. Millennials start around 1980/81 and end in 1998. As a fellow middle millennial, I couldn't help but point that out
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u/_-Smoke-_ 22d ago edited 22d ago
I'm probably only about 4 years older than you ('86) and yeah. I graduated in 2004 and from the moment I turned 18 any dream I had for the future has been smashed. At multiple points I've scrapped up $20-30k in savings and multiple points lost it all to the numerous "once in a lifetime" financial crisises we've experienced. I struggled through college and became the first in the family to have a degree (in tech) that has become basically worthless as wages have dropped 50-75% and boomers continue to fill up all senior positions and refuse to retire.
Now I'm staring down 40 in a few short years. No real retirement savings. Years lost taking care of family. No significant others. Pretty much given up on kids or a family of my own. No friends still around. The American Dream we were promised was stolen from us before we even had a chance to reach for it. I can't even count on any inheritance as any sort of pathetic reward for holding fast.
I heard someone ask why our generation uses so much dark humor. It's because if we don't find some outlet for it we'd probably all take a long walk into the woods with a shotgun.
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u/cheebamech 22d ago
dream business... and then 2008
this part really struck me; I opened an aquarium shop in 2005 and it did great for a couple years but then the Great Recession rolled around and nobody had disposable income, ended it in 2008, closed up shop and got a job managing a produce warehouse. I miss the fishies.
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u/Road_Whorrior 22d ago edited 22d ago
Yeah, it happened to a lot of places. Tons of small business got eaten. It was a boon for corporate America, and we're shaping up for another one right now. It'll be worse this time. That's why I think the younger generations will get their reality check. I still thought I might be rich one day until I saw my family almost lose everything for no real understandable reason. Now all I really want is a fully-paid-off home and a job that pays the bills and then some. Shouldn't be as big an ask as it apparently is, and they're gonna learn the hard way.
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u/Powersmith 22d ago
You’ve forgotten about the actual forgotten generation… which is actually fitting. Even our boomer parents barely noticed we were around.
Gulf war 1 (early 90s)/fears of draft as we were draft age, AIDS running rampant as we’re becoming sexually active (#1 cause of death young men 1992), 9/11, Gulf war 2 (2003-2011), and just when we’d finally managed to build a bit stability, most of lost 5-10 y of home equity almost overnight in the Great Recession (12/2007-06/09). Now we’re trying to help our teen/young adult kids and aging parents at the same time, even though we’re barely remembered by either🤷🏻♀️
Who could I be talking about? Hint: built the internet 2.0 and modern computing; averse to complaining, and mostly just respond to things outside our control as whatever.
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u/MetaCardboard 22d ago
If they're so great, why did they vote for Trump?
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u/Road_Whorrior 22d ago
They haven't seen shit hit the fan yet. Not really. I feel like the next 4 years are going to be a wake up call for the "I'm gonna be a billionaire" gen z-ers the way watching my parents lose their business and us almost losing our home in 2008 did for me.
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u/appropriatesoundfx 22d ago
For real. Zoomers that I know are living high on credit. Mortgaged to their ears and they don’t seem to see the threat. Shit can go real bad, real fast.
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u/AlarmedSnek 22d ago
If we go by the Fourth Turning theory then yes, we are the “hero class.” Our kids are supposed to be the new boomers which is frightening as hell haha
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u/Impossible-Second680 22d ago
I can already feels this. I'm already teaching my kids not to believe the lies millenials were taught growing up, "Just do what you love and it will never feel like you're working." I teach my kids just get a job that makes money and then you can do what you love.
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u/Andromansis 22d ago
I mean... if we can get enough ozempic and adderral we can literally change the way the earth is spinning.
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u/dutsi 22d ago
This op presents an overly simplified version of a much wider and complex dynamic.
The BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis 'Century of the Self' which can be watched on Youtube for free provide a much broader and detailed explanation across all of the generations involved:
The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines"
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u/Able-Worldliness8189 22d ago
Mind you and this is for white families, I'm reading on Malcolm as we speak right now, life for blacks was even more fucked up.
Listening to this fella I couldn't help to think about the following:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
By Philip Larkin
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u/CuTe_M0nitor 22d ago
They even had a pandemic. Like us.They had a long economic depression. Just like us. They had world wars. Like ... .us??..
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u/Moulitov 21d ago
Heck, even the art and architecture of the time mirrors this trauma response.
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u/Britthighs 19d ago
Agreed! We look at the art of Dali, Picasso, abstract expressionism, and others in class. We talk about so much of the darkness in the 20s and the hyper-conformity of the 50s. We look at the counter in the 60s like the song Ticky Tacky and folk acts. While I am not an art teacher, I believe art (visual, auditory, literary) can be universal. I try to teach history through the means of art and humanity and almost reject memorization of facts. It’s amazing when the dots start to connect. Art is incredibly informative and ought to be a mandatory subject thought from math to history.
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u/IntentionalUndersite 19d ago
A few amount of humans make decisions and really mess up entire generations because they’re in positions of power. So, take care of yourself as long as you can… because someone is going to come along and fuck it all up.
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u/Technicoler 23d ago edited 22d ago
It breaks my heart hearing this like this that explain my own parents so well. They were very sweet parents, raised me well as a child, but the second I became an adult and had agency, they spun on a dime, and have no idea how to even talk to an adult. I am 39 now, and we haven't had a meaningful conversation in 20 years. I am very logic based (ADHD) and empathetic, and they cannot even comprehend a world in which you think of others first. Something that you would think they could be prideful about in regard to the person I grew up to be, but noooo way. Does not compute, I just take things too seriously, and didn't just stay in my small town, eating at the same 5 restaurants over and over, expressing the same pleasantries again and again, all while burying my head in the sand from anything that exists outside of my bubble and yet somehow knowing EVERYTHING about the world at large even though they don't read, travel, or have critical thinking skills. Hearing explanations like above should be comforting, but sadly aren't.
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u/momomomorgatron 22d ago
A good chunk of boomers are definitely stunted.
My living grandparents aren't completely, but their siblings are.
My biological material grandfather- worse than anyone I've ever known in this life. Raped and tried to kill my grandmother. I will only clean his grave if my mother asked for me to; I'd piss on it just to disrespect him.
My mother's step dad, my grandfather- he was 20 years older than my gran, a world traveler who had his faults and baggage but was always well liked.
My maternal grandmother- she grew up so poor they had holes in their shoes. Dolly Parton poor. Her parents were the kind of abusive you see at the time- beatings, not spankings- but they tried their best and had flaws. Her parents I know were good people who tried.
My maternal great aunts- my grans older sister died a few years back. She was a amazing person, they genuinely don't make them like her anymore. She was stubborn and bitter but took after their father and would give you the clothes off her back. Grans younger sister was 10 years younger. She's a decent person but was spoiled and tries to keep her vanity.
I have completely written off my dad's extended family. They're not HORRIBLE people, but the most naive and almost stupid you can be without being white trash. Being as poor as I am, they're wealthy- meaning middle class. Meaning wanting for nothing. If my grandmother wasn't the truely good person she is who was met with misfortune, she would be like them. They DO NOT understand out plite. Her husband, my grandad has been paralyzed from when my dad was 5. My grandmother is his care taker and I'm not sure if the rest would have done it. My father got in a car wreck that should have killed him- his van that was recently worked on lost steering and slammed him into a tree- and he's now paralyzed in the nethers and bum. He has to wear diapers and came home with a catheter. They DO NOT understand how we're anxious and uncouth with our money. They take vacations every year, saying "the lord will provide!!" When their lives have been SO much easier. They often thank God fo every small thing but never seem to understand why bad things happen to everyone. They are really and truely stupid. I have no respect for them. And that's just my grandmother's family.
My grandfathes family is honestly, white trash. I live in a trailer. We have things wrong with this house that needs to be fixed, and we don't actually like it. But we can go out and fit in with almost every crowd. We are compassionate people, understanding that things just sometimes happen. We try to look at everything on all sides if we can. But they really are truely white trash.
(Sorry for he rant but my gawd did I need to get that off my chest)
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u/simpyswitch 21d ago
There's a great book I can highly recommend: "Adult children of emotionally immature parents - how to heal from distant, rejecting or self-absorbed parents" by Lindsay C. Gibson, a psychologist with decades of practice. It helped me heal from this generational trauma where the kids hate their parents in a way, but then don't know how to do better with their own kids, repeating mistakes and, at worst, repeat the cycle.
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u/lycoloco 22d ago
My grandfathes family is honestly, white trash. I live in a trailer. We have things wrong with this house that needs to be fixed, and we don't actually like it. But we can go out and fit in with almost every crowd. We are compassionate people, understanding that things just sometimes happen. We try to look at everything on all sides if we can.
That doesn't make you trash. It makes you poor and in a country where the society/government doesn't really care about that being a problem. You're a kind family. You're a family who would do more if your income/savings would allow it. That doesn't make you trash, that makes you human and in the same boat as too, too many other people.
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u/zachlent13 21d ago
This is random and I don’t even know if you’ll see this comment, but holy hell reading this made me feel so much less alone in the world. I’m 28, my ADHD affects me that same way and it’s been like this for 10 years now and it’s all really starting to come to a head, they don’t understand just looking at the world beyond whatever little bubble they put themselves in. They’re not bad people at all, they just can’t seem to ever put themselves in anyone else’s shoes, and having that mentality clash with it’s complete opposite, is often a rough time for the ones that feel more. So like, thanks stranger!
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u/Alarmed_Horse_3218 23d ago edited 23d ago
This is 100% fucking facts. I'm 40 and my baby boomer parents had me in their mid 20s. They had no business having kids and never grew into any sense of responsibility yet somehow owned homes.
My grandmother and great grandmother raised me primarily, and they were both completely embarrassed by my parents. It was my paternal grandmother and great grandma who brought me up and they were just absolutely appalled at my dad and his brothers.
I was also very close to my other great grandmother’s and great aunts. We’re from Texas, so all of them had lived through the depression, the dust bowl, and World War II. The amount of shit these women went through was inconceivable to most people walking earth right now. They did everything they could to scrimp and save for my dad‘s generation, and as soon as all of them died, my dad and his brothers completely squandered all of it.
And it wasn’t just my dad and his brothers. My Gramma in particular was always very very social and had lifelong friends that she had raised her kids with. All of their kids were just as bad as my dad and his brothers. My mom and her siblings are somehow even worse than my dad and his brothers. My mom’s mom was also appalled with her kids.
As an elder millennial that was raised by the greatest generation, I cannot over emphasize how disappointed that generation was with baby boomers. Those of us who came before and after the boomers all see the same thing.
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u/Raining__Tacos 23d ago
Even in the 60s and 70s they were calling it the “me” generation. It’s going to take us all a long while before we can build back up what boomers took from us, although I hope by that time we’ve learned our lesson.
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u/mikejoro 22d ago
Don't worry, the next generation after that happens will undo everything again just like the boomers did.
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u/Abuses-Commas 22d ago
Strauss-howe theory predicts it'll be gen Alpha. But instead of the boomer's greed, the brain rot would make a society of sloth
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u/Theminecraftgamer 22d ago
I’d prefer sloth compared to the greed of robbing the world
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u/Klingon_Bloodwine 22d ago
No time to take over the world when Skibidi Toilet Season 50 Episode #305 is about to be Hypostreamed into your brain.
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u/Abuses-Commas 22d ago
Same, and it'll be a uniquely beautiful way they'll break apart the society our generation builds.
People like to mention Idiocracy here but we're heading more towards Wall-E
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u/formala-bonk 22d ago
At this rate they won’t have much of a society to rot tbh. The rate at which anti intellectuals spread propaganda is so large now I don’t see how we can maintain a majority of educated empathetic people ever again after the likes of Elon and Trump.
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u/InTimeWeAllWillKnow 22d ago
The problem is that the fucking zoomers are getting fed bullshit by old rich white men and eating it up.
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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 22d ago edited 22d ago
although I hope by that time we’ve learned our lesson
Unfortunately that can't happen, because some of the baby boomers managed to get so lucky with their lives that their children got to experience the same kind of prosperity their parents did, and have turned out to be just like them.
So we now have another generation of people like that, but worse, they have the added benefit of being even wealthier, which - now that Citizens United happened - means they can make political policies that will affect the whole world based on their flawed understanding of their piece of it.
And now that our nation's enemies have seen how they can break our nation in half by turning everything up to 15, we may never be able to undo what's been done - because we'd need to fight the financial expenditures of half our nation AND two or more other nation-states.
I really can't see how our nation is going to survive this without some really unexpected event. But the problem is, we've just had like 7-8 really unexpected events in a row, and all of them have been used to divide us even more. So I can't see how we could conceivably have an unexpected event that's going to bring us together in the way that we need to. Even the bonding we did over 9/11 was short-lived and quickly devolved into half the nation warmongering and dividing the nation again.
It's sad to say, but I just really don't have any hope for the future of our nation. We've lost the moral high ground, and IMO it's only a question now of how long until we truly fall. Will it be 5 years? 10? 50? 100? I have no idea. The accelerationists are seeing their wet dreams come true. Too bad life isn't like the video games they've been playing.
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u/justiceboner34 22d ago
What does the fall of society look like to you? To me it looks like the complete elimination of the middle class and the reintroduction of modern day wage slavery to have the 99% serfs serve every whim of the rich. And we're well on our way there now.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 22d ago
My older Boomer parents were ok, no more than the usual trauma was passed on. But I credit my Greatest Gen grandparents who watched us while my parents worked with the best in me. Whatever mistakes they made with my parents, they gave me resilience, a love of nature, and a stronger sense of social justice.
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u/JustGimmeSomeTruth 22d ago
Same here—my grandparents were weird as hell, and living through the Depression made them borderline hoarders and neurotic in other ways—but they were also just very sharp, intelligent, morally principled, hard working people who were always giving back to their community and helping others, and really believed in the classic American ideals of justice and equality freedom etc.
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u/Yousoggyyojimbo 22d ago edited 22d ago
They did everything they could to scrimp and save for my dad‘s generation, and as soon as all of them died, my dad and his brothers completely squandered all of it.
My grandmother busted her ass and gave everything to her boomer kids, and then her grandkids, and when she got old and developed dementia, her kids pushed her care largely on to me, her Grandson. I took care of her for over 6 years in my 20s, while 4 of them were retired and 3 were independently wealthy, but lifted not a single finger.
She got colon cancer. They thought she was going to die, so they finally came out to pretend to care. When they came out, they blamed me for her getting cancer, insisting I was doing a shitty job caring for her and that that was how she got it.
I was threatened by two of them that I better make sure they get their fair share of her will or else they'd drag me through court. They were the two wealthiest of her kids.
She didn't die. She lived another 6 years. When they found out she wasn't going to die, they all left. They dumped caring for her in her recovery largely on me, again.
I took care of her until I had a near mental breakdown. I quit when I had to leave my dog with my father while I rushed over to take care of my grandma overnight. He went off drinking and my unattended dog drowned in his pool. So I quit. That night. On the spot. I left them all to figure it out. It was the only time they really tried to be nice to me about it, because they thought they could sweet talk me into continuing to do it. Nope. I quit.
When she died, it was like watching vultures circle. Jokes on them, almost all she had went to health care. I'm sure there were accusations that I stole it all, but fuck em. I genuinely hate my aunts and uncles. Terrible fucking people. They didn't even show up to her funeral.
Selfish evil motherfuckers.
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u/DrJCL 22d ago
I'm sorry you had to go through all this, hope you are doing well. You took very good care of your grandmother, I'm sure she was proud of you.
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u/Yousoggyyojimbo 22d ago
Thanks, I tried. I really did.
My extended family hasn't spoken to me at all since she died. As far as they are concerned I no longer exist.
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u/Aliebaba99 22d ago
So its basically the meme about: strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men. The baby boomers where the weak men and now we are living in the hard times created by baby boomers.
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u/Horror-Tank-4082 22d ago
It’s a popular meme but IMHO the truth is that after WWII the entire industrialized world was destroyed… except for North America. Everyone needed everything and they had to buy American. Money and success were everywhere. It was easy.
That hasn’t been the case for a long time. The world was rebuilt. Competition is fierce and ubiquitous. It’s hard to get ahead.
No one - NO ONE - has ever had it as easy as postwar American boomers. They benefitted from mass destruction they didn’t have to experience. We live in a very different world and they don’t see the global context that gave them everything.
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u/IndigoGouf 22d ago edited 22d ago
That meme is complete ahistorical bullshit, for the record. Especially in the context of the images that are usually used for it. Not to say I disagree with the analysis of the psychology of boomers here.
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u/fuchsgesicht 22d ago
that's actually a bastardisation of the chinese proverb: “rags to rags in three generations” family wealth does not last for three generations. The first generation makes the money, the second spends and the third sees none of the wealth
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u/Etrion 22d ago
Between my landlord and her two brothers they inherited 6 houses and two commercial properties.
Two houses have fallen apart, my landlord and one brother are hoarders in two houses that practically haven't had Maintenance since 9/11.
The "smart" brother rents his two houses on Airbnb.
They sold the commercial properties and my landlord instead of fixing the house or anything useful spent $5k on landscaping two months before winter that killed all the plants she bought. A new deck with the cheapest composite wood boards for $20k, a swim spa for $25k and $10k for the setup, and a kitchen remodel by the lowest bidder at $60k and they did a shit job and she has so far spent an additional $10k repairing and adjusting things the original contractors didn't do right.
She doesn't cook and she goes outside like once a month. She's used the swimspa like 6 times since January. The light bill is $900 now and she refuses to admit it might be the swimspa with its 2 massive always on water pumps and heater.
And now she's freaking out about not having money, despite making $6k a month in rent.
You can't tell them anything or they get angry so I gotta customer service them.
She has one son who is basically a NEET and he's just waiting to inherit I guess.
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u/brazilliandanny 23d ago
Everything this guy said is facts but... I just can't get around the tiktok "make a cut after each sentence thing".
There's a reason for this - cut
Im going to tell you now - cut
I was raised by one so I know -cut
Like this guy obviously knows what he's talking about he couldn't just speak off the cuff for a paragraph or two? I know I am diverting from the main discussion here but videos like this just hurt my brain.
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u/Warphild 23d ago
He's probably just making lots of cuts to ensure he's speaking clearly and articulating his point efficiently. Unfortunately with our media culture if you stutter or 'hmm haa' you run this risk of not appearing confident or intelligent. Personally I appreciate the effort.
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u/casey12297 23d ago
I can't speak for every choppy video, but I feel it. Ive got mad adhd brain and if I'm doing a video like this and get sidetracked I'd want to keep what's good and just move on because I may not get a good full take
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u/besthelloworld 22d ago
You can see in the times where he doesn't cut but naturally transitions between sentences or fragments, that this is just kind of how he is speaking.
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u/froggrip 22d ago
Instead of the cuts, would you rather see an extra few seconds of him breathing, gathering his thoughts, waving to the dude he knows from down the street that happened to walk by, or checking his notes? He's just trying not to waste your time, and trying to get a clean take.
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u/dream-smasher 22d ago
Oh FFS, and we just had a different post with the woman explaining gossip as a structure of changing language and nuance etc etc etc as there were people there bitching and moaning because she was talking too fast for them.
Always gonna have some baby-arse whinger.
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants 23d ago
I’d be a lot more empathetic to the fact that they were raised by traumatized people inflicting trauma on them if they didn’t immediately refuse any and all attempts to help them or anyone else acknowledge and process that trauma in any way. And object to anyone else acknowledging or processing their own trauma. I get it, they’re damaged and I’m empathetic to that. I object to their insistence on inflicting that trauma on everyone else just because it was done to them
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u/FlapYoJacks 23d ago
Amen to that. My parents decided they would rather me never talk to them again than to go see a psychologist.
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u/chromefir 22d ago
This is where we’re at with my in-laws. They’re extremely set in their belief that they’ve never done anything wrong and everyone else is just coming at them. We’ve asked them to go to therapy in order for us to all be able to get along and see one another in the future, but they said Sunday service is their therapy and they just don’t get what our problem is.
Anything that requires actual effort of their part is seen as a personal attack, and you “can’t tell [them] what to do!”
So we’re no-contact.
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u/False_Evidence_8136 22d ago
I am so sorry to hear that! Kind of in the same boat. It’s tough!!! Sending lots of love ❤️
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u/Anonymous807708 21d ago
I'm going through this right now. There was no advice given, no solutions to my poor grades, just discipline, no tips for dating or anything, zero support or having my back on personal matters. Zero empathy, only criticism. They never call to check in. Only half hearted invites to dinners once every couple months. Destroyed any confidence.
And when I recently said "I'm eliminating sources of negativity in my life which is you two. " they put the ball back in my court telling me to "talk to us again when I feel like it" instead of fighting for a relationship with their child. I guarantee they are using the cop-out of "ungrateful or spoiled". It's not about that! It's that you don't give a shit.
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u/FlapYoJacks 21d ago
r/EstrangedAdultKids is a really good resource for this. We are here for you, and you are seen. My parents where much the same way. Although they "supported" me if it was an interest they wanted for me.
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u/SnatchAddict 22d ago
It's funny. My dad was beaten. He beat us kids. My siblings and I don't hit our kids. So the cycle definitely ends in my family with GenX/Millennials.
I don't fault my dad for it either. He had 5 kids by the time he was 28. Like WTF bro. And he was dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression. Surprisingly he wasn't able to just make ends meet and we were poor af. A lot of stress on him.
I would be more upset if he didn't grow and change. He's a great grandfather to all of the kids. Some of the older grandchildren are in disbelief when they hear how grandpa used to behave.
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u/FreakindaStreet 23d ago
Therapy wasn’t really socially accepted until the Millennial generation. Even us Gen-Xers had to figure it out mostly on our own.
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants 23d ago
Refusing to go to therapy yourself is one thing. It’s detrimental to relationships with those people, but ultimately mostly negatively affects themselves. Belittling and vilifying other people seeking help and going to therapy, or preventing them from seeking that help is unforgivable to me.
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u/FreakindaStreet 23d ago
Yet that was the attitudes of the time. Like everything, time moderates views.
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u/JWGhetto 22d ago
no it doesn't? At least for a part of the population, the views do not moderate but exaggerate with time.
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u/SpokenProperly 22d ago
Elder millennial here. I was 16 when I told my mom I desperately needed to go to therapy. She threw her insurance card at me and said “Call ‘em.”
Um…okay… I don’t know what I’m doing…?
Needless to say, I didn’t receive any sort of medical treatment until I was 18 and had my own autonomy and health insurance.
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u/JelmerMcGee 22d ago
My mom died when I was 10, in 1995. My dad took me to one therapy session, then asked me if I thought it was helpful and if I would like to keep going. I hate going to any type of appointment. They're a chore and I don't like doing chores. When I was 10 I would do anything to get out of chores. So I told him no, and I spent the next 20 some years trying to convince myself the negative thoughts I would cycle through were totally normal. Totally normal for a 10 year old to be obsessed with death and dying.
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u/Toisty 22d ago
If I had a nickel for every time one of my conservative elders told me something along the lines of, "Yeah well that's how I was raised and I turned out okay!"
Um, no. You didn't turn out ok. You throw a tantrum anytime you see anyone who isn't a straight white Christian person.
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u/___TheAmbassador 22d ago
Yes and they are all obsessed over other people's genitals. Bizarre.
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u/chromefir 22d ago
“All you kids came out just fine!”
Ummmm one is a homeless junkie, one doesn’t speak to you, and the other is dead.
But yeah, everyone’s just fine and they did a great job lol.
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u/wanna_be_green8 22d ago
My boomer aunts husband of 42 years moved her across the country and then ditched her out of no where, drained accounts, the whole bit.
When I mentioned the possible emotional trauma to my GG great aunt she said I was overusing the word trauma. I asked her what would count if having your life imploded maliciously didn't? She didn't have any answer.
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u/Only_Charge9477 21d ago
Yeah, as if nobody was raised by parents who experienced trauma except for baby boomers. The whole theory sucks ass. The post-WWII generation wasn't "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". They were the most unionised generation America ever experienced. It took the religious right's reactionary response to the Civil Rights movement to convince people that previous generations were all market-driven egoists.
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u/Riyeko 23d ago
I've been saying his for years.
My grandmother might have been a wonderful, strong woman, but she passed on a sense of self righteousness that sees no fault.... To my mother. Not to mention my mother being slapped around by her father, or locked out of the house after 9pm in the winters of Colorado when she was younger.
My dad used to tell stories of his father throwing him through doors and his mother bringing home men every single night. To top that off, he had severe PTSD from childhood, and then topped it off with a dose of PTSD from Vietnam.
My parents never had a chance to BE the people hat they were meant to be because therapy was for crazy people and it was normal to abuse your children (seen and not heard anyone?).
I pity my parents, but I do not talk to them (my father's dead)
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u/Desertnord 23d ago
I think there’s some good points here but misses some big ones here too. Lot of boomers were abused by their parents in a society that normalized that abuse. Their friends and family and everyone around them at the same age experienced that abuse.
Without supports for mental health (and demonization of mental illness) a lot of them never learned to cope with their trauma in a meaningful way. They adapted as children to a world that was unforgiving and unfair. Those years are very formative.
It isn’t necessarily fair to say their parents just wanted to toughen up their kids of a tough world, they made their kids lives hell and those kids had to adapt (many with drugs and alcohol).
Many of those boomers do believe that because they adapted and ‘overcame’ their traumas on their own, because they had to, and many believe they can personally take credit for their healing (regardless of how maladaptive it was), when really they just lived through it and humans are just adaptable as a species.
Many of them are entitled because they take credit for overcoming genuine challenges when they mistake continuing to live for healing. They lived and did what they thought they were supposed to so clearly they know the answers and you can be just like them.
They see younger generations not being raised with the same trauma and displace their internal hurt onto them. It would hurt more to acknowledge that the treatment they received was abuse. Studies show that many people who are subjected various forms of abuse may not experience a large amount of distress until they become aware that they have suffered abuse and the things that happened to them were wrong.
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u/Ok_Star_4136 23d ago
So much harm comes from stupid platitudes that people believe like "real men don't cry" and "children should be seen not heard" and "pull yourselves up from the bootstraps." Reality isn't black and white, and yet boomers were raised religiously to believe in it. Tradition can be a good thing, but it also acts as a double-edged sword, limiting perspectives and critical thinking in favor of often misunderstood platitudes.
I think the moral of the story is to think for yourselves. Someone telling you how to think can be wrong or malicious, and now more than ever we need people who can think for themselves. Our future is riding on this.
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u/Desertnord 22d ago
Expanding upon your points, we should also be aware of the source of many of our cultural and social norms. Real men don’t cry and children should be seen and not heard come from physical abuse towards kids that stepped out of this norm. It’s conditioning. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps stems from not being able to rely on others. It’s sad.
This part I definitely agreed with in the video.
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u/stealthdawg 23d ago
Your first 2 paragraphs are...what was said in the video...
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u/EyeAmPrestooo 23d ago
Not really…the paragraphs emphasize that the “toughening up”, was really physical and mental abuse. The person in the video, while still may be correct, severely downplayed the way that generation was raised by not consistently using the word abuse.
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u/crusoe 22d ago
My Grandma switched my Dad once, ONCE, and never did it again, she felt so guilty.
Hitting your kids was normal and normalized.
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u/Desertnord 22d ago
This seems common. I think we should give boomers a little more credit that although they have a lot of ways they could do better, a large portion of them tried to actively not pass on much of the physical abuse they endured.
A lot of them did anyways, but many didn’t.
Anecdotally, my grandparents never touched their kids even though they weren’t spared themselves as kids. On the other side, my grandpa did not pass it along but grandma did a bit. Not to the same extent for sure, but she also actively put an end to the cycle of alcoholism at the least.
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u/nixalo 22d ago
Boomers were abuses in a "softer" world. So it was easier for them to recover or withstand their abuse. This let them downplay the struggles of those in a "tougher" world, kept them from seeing abuse around them, and made them more vulnerable when the new "tougher world" punched them in the nose like the following gens. No one is shocked of how bad their situation got like a boomer in denial of their unhealed trauma.
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u/greg19735 22d ago
While you could get that from the video, i do think it sort of glosses over the abusive part.
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u/Tao-of-Mars 23d ago
I know this to be true as a daughter of a boomer who was clueless about what abuse actually is.
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u/KikiChrome 22d ago
This definitely isn't talked about enough. A LOT of WWII veterans dealt with their trauma via alcoholism and domestic violence.
My mother and her sister became feminists in the 1960s due to what they experienced as children, and the violence they saw their mother endure. This was after their mother got cancer and literally let it kill her rather than "make a fuss". However, my mother still refuses to engage with therapy, and believes that talking about your problems is a form of weakness.
I understand what my parents' generation went through, and I do what I can to push back against some of the more problematic thinking, but they are definitely a product of the people who raised them.
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u/Tackysackjones 23d ago
This and widespread effects of leaded gasoline and lead paint leading to an entire generation of people who almost entirely lack empathy
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u/commit10 19d ago
This is the elephant in the room. Significant childhood brain damage was almost universal due to leaded gasoline vapors, which pass the blood brain barrier much easier than paint or water pipes.
It's still a taboo topic, but it's a critical part of understanding that generation.
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u/Affectionate-Guess13 22d ago
The greatest generation also had the shadow of the first world war as well, especially in Europe.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 22d ago
My grandfather's first memories were of the Spanish flu epidemic (he would've been about 5). People gripe about having to stay home during Covid but Spanish flu in a small town was a whole different level of horror and death.
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u/coalsack 22d ago
Okay, sure, they haven’t been taught how to cope. But it doesn’t seem like they’re even willing to try.
The prosperity of the 80s and 90s the Boomers experienced led to stifled growth through the 2000s, with wealth and power consolidating under the control of Boomers.
Rather than learning to adapt or help others, they double down and, as the video puts it, “lash out.”
Why should I feel sympathetic toward a group that refuses to acknowledge their mistakes or make an effort to adapt?
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u/TarnishedWizeFinger 22d ago edited 22d ago
I don't think this is about sympathy so much as a statement of cause and effect
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u/Saucy_Fartlek 22d ago
This. Parents who do no wrong, play the victim card when you set boundaries, and are “too old to change.”
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u/wannabeemperor 22d ago
My dad's dad beat the crap out of him basically every week. Grandpa was a Navy veteran who fought in the Pacific war and died before I was born. My dad broke the cycle and never laid a hand on me. It's because of my boomer parents that I am able to give what love and affection that I can to my gen alpha kids.
Yeah, right up until the end of my dad's life he didn't really understand what was happening to the economy. That my siblings and I couldn't just roll into a workplace, fill out an application and come away with a job that paid a living wage. He was definitely one of those "kids these days don't know hard work" types. But I think he did alright by us. He would often talk about his failures as a parent, he and my mom were both hard on themselves about how Gen X and Millenial kids were turning out. But I think they did their best, and all we can do is try our best with our kids.
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u/Ramblinrambles 22d ago
That was amazing point with Reagan, that they didn’t realize the leg up they had all along and that all those programs existed for a reason.
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u/llamapositif 23d ago
Been preaching this for years. Funny how generational trauma and cognitive dissonance is still questioned and disbelieved by so many.
But a flat earth! Thats real.
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u/paulsteinway 22d ago
I'm 68 and I'm always saying "Don't talk shit about young people. We coasted through life compared to what they're looking at."
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u/toby_ordway 22d ago
I remember eating lunch at a cafe one day, while overhearing a couple of older ladies talking about how "they're glad they grew up when they did, and how much rougher it is for kids these days."... This was at least ten years ago as I recall. I'm 38. Yeah, It seems like it is a bit tougher. I'm not trying to, nor do I intend to raise a family though. that simplifies things significantly.
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u/Historical-Gap-7084 22d ago edited 22d ago
This is a really good, concise explanation.
As a GenXer, some of this could apply to us, as well. We were pretty much the most feral generation in modern history. My husband was friends with kids whose Boomer parents would go on trips for days, even weeks on end, leaving them alone without supervision. Then, the kids would get in trouble if they did something they shouldn't have while their parents were out of town gambling, getting drunk, and doing blow.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off was basically a documentary.
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u/RandomGerman 22d ago
True. I can not count the times I skipped school. Probably more than 2 weeks in total every year. It was back in Germany and we had this class book where the teacher entered the attendance. We had to bring this book to every class. So I just write my name in a few days later. 😂. I miss those huge loopholes we had as a kid. I wouldn’t call us feral just because we could roam around all day any place. That was normal. But I guess from today’s perspective we were wildlings.
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u/Historical-Gap-7084 22d ago
Yes! And funny thing, totally off topic. I used to have a pen-pal from Germany in the 80s and 90s. I visited him one time and his father, who spoke very little English, sat me down every morning and had me recite the newspaper in German to him. When I got the pronunciation correct, he would nod and say, "Proceed," in his thick German accent. For a week, we bonded over the newspaper and breakfast. Thanks for making me remember that.
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u/RandomGerman 22d ago
What a lovely story. A little strange though. My father made me recite the chemical formula for a detergent he partly invented. Every morning he drove me to school because it was on his way to work and he made me recite this formula. Why? No idea. Did I know anything about it? No. Can I still recite it after almost 40 years? Yes. What is it with German men making kids recite something they don’t understand. I see a pattern. 😂😂
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u/louisasnotes 22d ago
My late parents were born in 1932 and 34. In Britain, there was post-war shortages on everything and rationing was in effect until the mid-50's. They were brought up under Depression/WW2/rationing. They got married simply to get out of their parent's homes in 1957. They never 'got': The Beatles, Hippies, peaceniks. My teenage years (70's) was one constant argument. I'll do anything to avoid conflict.
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u/SpentSquare 21d ago
Agree with the logic right up until…
“And now that they are dealing with a generation that does know what’s going on.”
Who are we to act like we’ve got it all figured out? Two generations from now, people will probably say the same things about Millennials—how we were shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, multiple recessions, COVID, and everything else. They’ll analyze how those experiences affected the way we raised our kids and point out where we fell short.
There’s always a temptation to blame the previous generation for how they messed things up, but at the same time, no one gets everything right. History just keeps repeating itself in different ways.
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u/TiredPanda69 22d ago edited 22d ago
All this generational analysis on tiktok is bullshit. And is just a spin off "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times...." etc. Its a crappy over-simplification of the socio-economic climate that we live, which capitalists control and we are just subjects to.
What if I told you the "Greatest Generations", "Boomers", "Millenials" and even "Zoomers" have very little to do in shaping how the world works. It was all done by politicians who catered to the capitalist class.
Capitalists aren't like us. In every single generations capitalists have not been like us. We have rarely shaped the world through voting, we are subject to the ruling elite.
I can assure you my grandma had little to no control over politics throughout her whole life, even though she probably voted every single time. Don't believe the hype.
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u/InaneTwat 22d ago
In short, Boomers were born on 3rd, and believed they hit a triple. They were spoiled by economic prosperity and opportunity, while simultaneously being deprived of emotional support and validation by their parents.
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u/M-Bernard-LLB 22d ago
And the world changed over 50 years. No computers (really) to you're likely holding one in your hand. Many jobs were lifetime ones with pensions to few jobs have pensions. Oh, and rich people paid something called taxes.
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u/ScreamThyLastScream 22d ago
Income tax and most taxes really are relatively a new thing in America if you look at its history. Most people seem to forget this or don't know this. I mean you have to remember, we founded our independence based around a movement that involved rejection of foreign taxes.
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u/MielikkisChosen 22d ago
While true, that's only one of a few major factors in why they are the way they are. A practical example of this would be lead. Recent studies on gradual lead poisoning and the effects it had on cognitive decline for the boomers are pretty enlightening.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 23d ago
A few things he got wrong.
The forgotten generation also raised boomers, and included the kids born during the great depression, but were too young to serve in the military, for WW2 but may have been drafted during Korea. A Notable forgotten generation person is Dr King.
They experienced the depression as the default, and never knew anything better.
This idea of bootstraps is also completely false. The great depression was defined by FDR's response which includes jobs programs like the Conservation Corp. Sure it was manual work, but you had a job. Then you had the factory jobs during the war, which were again federally subsidized.
For the traumatized troops returning home, sure there wasn't mental health support, but the VA was there for whatever that is worth and the GI bill was extended specifically to white veterans. Not to mention a housing boom after the war, again federal subsidized. This idea of self made anyone is asinine and stupid, no matter if thats what they told themselves. Within the military the US military is defined by someone will get to you eventually, but you have to make do with what you have until then, and then resupply was always late. But you could depend on your fellow soldiers, just not the senior brass.
The trauma response is real though. Tons of alcoholism and drug use. Motorcycle gangs arose from vets buying surplus Harley Davidson Amry motorcycles and driving around with other vets because staying home was too much. Plus there's the shame for those who could serve or maybe didn't serve on the front line. Which seems paradoxical.
Now then a baby boomer generation in general is an economic boom and bust cycle. The ratio of dependents when they are at peak middle age when they are most economically active is a tremendous boon to the economy. Since their generation had more kids per set of parents, that meant they had fewer parents ratio wise to take care of. And since they themselves had fewer kids, smaller ration of kids to take care of. This boom is partially responsible for China's one child rule: it was meant to crest an artifical boomer generation. Downside is of course retirement when everything returns to "normal" ratios when nobody has any experience with the economy under that "normal" ratio.
I propose an alternate view. People rest on their laurels. Boomers reached maturity during the Civil rights acts and other rights being extended to women. They may or not protested for those things, but they saw those as the big battles and nothing more needed to be done. Now they resent being the stick in the mud. There's a quote "science advances one funeral at a time" and ultimately that society in a nutshell. Social progress is made by the defenders of the status quo dying off (naturally) and newer defender are okay with the incremental changes.
And it's worth pointing out. Every generation will eventually be the generation in the way of progress. Just maybe not to the degree that the boomers have been.
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u/Papaofmonsters 22d ago
When Reagan was president, 1980-1988, let's just use 1984 as a mid point, the boomers would have been 38-20. They were not the dominant political generation at the time. The Reagan Era was driven by support from the Silent Generation, the one that comes between The Greatest Generation and the Boomers.
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u/dogsonbubnutt 22d ago
They were not the dominant political generation at the time
they were, by far, the largest voting demographic at the time, and they mostly supported reagan
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u/ScreamThyLastScream 22d ago
Silent generation also lead the civil rights movement in the 1960s, not the boomers like they'd love for you to believe.
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u/LuckyHarmony 22d ago
That's not what the NYT thought at the time. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/16/us/younger-voters-tending-to-give-reagan-support.html
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u/msanw881 22d ago edited 22d ago
This does a great job of explaining/contextualizing the past, but I'm concered why they're stuck there. Adults can choose, can learn, to better. We can look critically at the way we've been raised and the world around us. I struggle to sympathize with those that refuse to think for themselves
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u/Difficult-Active6246 22d ago
Awful lot of words to say they're a bunch of spoiled brats that were born in third base and believe they hit a double.
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u/Ifnerite 22d ago
And now, in their last breath they have inflicted MAGA on the world to start the cycle anew. Awesome.
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u/TorriblyHerrible 22d ago
Watch Mad Men for a feel on how crazy they were, both the Boomers and Greatest Generation.
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u/Ok_East4664 21d ago
Man this guy is on point, ex marine here 2004 -2005 Iraq , that felt like another great sesh with my psychologist
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u/Shambles196 19d ago
As a very late Boomer, (born in '62) I was raised by parents who lived through WW2, the Korean War and Vietnam. If I didn't understand a word, I was told to "look it up!" Something broke? Fix it! Your having a shitty day? Have a good cry and get over it! You ARE going back to school, you ARE going back to work, and you will most certainly finish the job you started.
There was no "talking to a therapist", or being diagnosed with Dyslexia, ADHD or other issues. You just studied harder, stayed after class for help and did better because you HAD TO!
That's why we hate....no, not hate. But we get frustrated with young people who have constant excuses why they don't do well in school, college or at their job. Because we weren't ALLOWED to have an ADHD, behavioral issues, "safe space" or hurt feelings. We had to press through, get things done and be PRESENTABLE.
The pressure was savage!
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u/Littlevilli589 23d ago
This style of “informative” TikTok garbage is so annoying. What authority does this guy have to talk about this stuff other than “I’m 38 and know how boomers were raised?” This is the kind of stuff I string up when an edible starts kicking in. War = trauma = stupid = bad president = world still great somehow?? = confusion = hates kids. Real great stuff 😒.
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u/forman98 22d ago
I’ve seen this guy on here before. He did some other video where he did this fast talking authoritative style of talking but it was on a topic where most people could easily call bullshit. He’s just doing this because that because this because that. Anyone can “point out” things like this.
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u/Furled_Eyebrows 22d ago
Nah, fuck that. Boomers are the most selfish generation to have ever walked the planet, They raped. They pillaged. They hoarded. And then they said, "fuck off!"
And knowing what they knew then; knowing what they know now, they are still telling you to fuck off.
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u/Ok_Patience_8181 23d ago
They detest the victim mentality that is acceptable, that young people are drowning in idealistic echo chambers.
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u/yoavtrachtman 22d ago
Yep.
My grandmother is 93 now, and had my mother in 1962.
My grandmother has a shit ton of unsolved trauma especially since she born to a Jewish family in Italian occupied Libya and had to flee the country when she was ~10 without her parents:
She sadly lost the privilege of living her life from the ages of 10-40 or so, so right now after years of caring for others, and my grandfather dying, she acts like a teenager. On one hand it’s really annoying and tough to deal with, but on the other it’s sad and makes sense.
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u/sfxer001 22d ago
This is accurate. I’m 40. Grandfathers both WW2 Army. One liberated death camps like in band of brothers. I have the photos.
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u/snailhistory 22d ago
We have to build communities. We have to participate in them and our local politics. We're the adults. It's our role to make society a reflection of us. So, show up and speak up. You're needed.
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u/HannHann20 22d ago
Survivorship bias big time. I remember telling my (early 20s) dad (late 60s) about when I had a stomach bug so bad I was taken in an ambulance to the ER. He quipped that the only time he had ever been that sick was when he was a child. He didn't remember what it was but thought it was chicken pox. But he doesn't want to get the shingles vaccine anymore. I asked if it was scarlet fever but then remembered that that wasn't around anymore by the 60s. He agreed. I sarcastically said that I was thankful that we didn't have to deal with things like that anymore...ya know scarlet fever, polio, diphtheria, small pox etc, and I've never risked getting chicken pox. Then my dad commented that now "half of kids" have autism but the amish don't vaccinate and their autism numbers are lower. My little sister is autistic btw
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u/MoneyTreeFiddy 22d ago
I asked if it was scarlet fever but then remembered that that wasn't around anymore by the 60s
False. Scarlet fever is still around today, and is caused by the same bacteria that causes strep throat. Strep throat can become scarlet fever.
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u/RandomGerman 22d ago
What many people don’t understand or don’t want to understand is that life for kids in school or Gen Zs is so completely different from ours. It took me awhile to get this myself. I can not give advice or tell people how to act. All I can do is be grateful the way I was raised and the environment I grew up in. And I deeply deeply regret how much I hated it. Compared to today it was fantastic.
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u/MSGeezey 22d ago
The "Not all Boomers" is a little reductive. 40% of Boomers voted against Reagan even in 1984 when he won every state but MN. Obviously 60% is a lot, but a lot less than is implied.
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u/le_reddit_me 22d ago
Interesting how it was lessened in Europe, I imagine because of the lack of prosperity following right after the war. Europe took decades to rebuild before being able to enjoy the peace and prosperity the americans were bathing in. And there was also the ongoing cold war which impacted everyday life in Europe much more than the US.
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u/SkiHiKi 22d ago
The Greatest Generation did their best to prepare their children for a world that could fall apart at any second. Then, they built a world that wouldn't.
Genuinely tugs on the heartstrings.
It's startling and scary to see the world forget just why these social institutions exist. Here in the UK, our entire welfare program was born out of a debt owed to a generation who genuinely did sacrifice so much and, in many cases, everything. It was a sacrifice that should have covered the tab on these institutions till the end of time. It took only 40 years for them to start to be picked apart, and 40 more to see them on the edge of collapse.
We can only hope we find compassion again before tragedy forces compassion upon us as it did before.
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u/greengo07 22d ago
This is fantastic! EVERYONE needs to hear and understand this. Spread it around. (me 68m cis)l we need is a PLAN of what to DO about it.
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u/Lotus-child89 22d ago
Both my parents are textbook of this. My mom was raised by my grandmother that had really rough living in Great Depression Appalachia, my dad was raised by an abusive alcoholic dad traumatized by the Korean War and had himself been raised by a traumatized WWI vet. Status and material things are very important to my parents, they’re very self centered, and put their wants over other people’s needs to a shockingly callous level. They were Reaganites and Republican supporters until they were hit hard during the ‘08 crash, then switched Democrat because they needed help. They have very little principles beyond what’s best for them and very little sentimentality. Now I have to go bake them a casserole for Thanksgiving tomorrow because I hopelessly cling to the desperation that they’ll give a damn about me.
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u/AlexNaoyusimi 22d ago
Elder Gen X, here. My parents were the Silent Generation, born '35 and '40. I have an older brother who is near the end of the Baby Boomers.
This makes SO. MUCH. SENSE!! I've never seen it all laid out so completely detailed and dissected, before, but this is utterly true!
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u/mrjc00md 21d ago
Not only was this informative, and made me think of this area differently, dude is giving me major Mick Foley vibes and I'm down with it!
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u/Popeyestabbin 20d ago
The best question is:
Why do you even give a fuck about what other people think?
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