As a climate skeptic I couldn’t care less about recycling, carbon footprints, “lights on” Earth Hour, or any of the other claptrap associated with the green religion. But the breathtakingly wasteful lifestyle choices of the allegedly green “Millennials” put my efforts to enjoy the advantages of consumerist living to shame.
Cereal, a Taste of Nostalgia, Looks for Its Next Chapter
…
“The cereal category is certainly shifting,” said Melissa Abbott, director of culinary insights for the Hartman Group, a consumer food research organization. “Consumers over all are less interested in industrially processed grains as a meaningful start to their day.”
Some organic and other brands perceived as more healthful are selling well, so General Mills has added three organic cereals to its Annie’s line of children’s foods. By April, it hopes to introduce Frosted Oat Flakes, Berry Bunnies and Cocoa Bunnies in Whole Foods stores.
Kellogg’s, which Mr. Bryant told investors this month had not always been on top of consumer tastes, is banking on a better mix of healthful cereals. It has just introduced a Nourish line of Special K with quinoa, and is looking at ways to repackage cereal into single servings and more eco-friendly bags.
The dream of all these companies is to capture the all-powerful and elusive millennial eater, who just isn’t all that into cereal for breakfast. It’s just too much work, for one thing. Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.
…
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/dining/breakfast-cereal.html
I mean, wow, I’m impressed. Millennials can’t be bothered eating cereal, because it is too much bother to sling the used bowl into the dishwasher – the cereal doesn’t come in a disposable container.
I’d love to see green ideas like reducing your carbon footprint get serious traction with that demographic.
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My parents came from a generation of eco friendly environmentally conscious people. Of course, back then everyone reduced, re-used and recycled because they couldn’t afford not to. When you knew that your food had been shipped across the Atlantic despite the best efforts of u-boats trying to stick a torpedo in it, then you have a better understanding of its value.
Correct, Bloke down the pub.
If things keep progressing the way they are between China, Russia and the USA, far too many people are likely to get a crash course in that lesson once again.
‘. This action will open a modal dialog.
When it comes to a delicious and nutritious breakfast, King Vitaman rules. The sweet and tasty little crowns pack a royal crunch of corn. You loved it as a kid, so why not treat the loyal subjects in your castle? This tasty breakfast cereal is fit for a king, queen, prince or princess.
Good source of 11 essential vitamins, minerals and iron ‘
______________________________
You know that Vitamins in the end are just
acids –
so mechanic fabricated to slushies, moreover combined with the new silliness ‘superfood’ – even more acids – you’re always walking on the brink of self intoxication.
I have to object to this overall painting of an entire generation as lazy and unproductive. I teach college physics, am a conservative, and climate skeptic, and will retire in about two years. The Millenials I have had as students in the last 8 years of so are the best students I have seen in 34 years of teaching college. In fact the two top students I have ever worked with graduated in 2015 and 2013; both women, and both now doing some amazing, ground breaking work in graduate school. There is no comparison between these students and the students from about 1998-2007, who were the epitome of “entitled”.
Now, that being said, I do know that the science students I encountered both in physics and when teaching the intro physics course for bio/chem/premeds, are very intolerant of their peers outside of the sciences. That’s where the majority of the SJWs reside. There is a schism in the Millenials, It’s just the 70% outside of the sciences and engineering get the press, while the other 30% quietly go about being smart and productive.
agreed, but I am already retired – didn’t mind the misguided, idealistic kids so much as their faculty; quit going to faculty assemblies completely that last few years … and I was dept chair, albeit natural sciences
Would you care to comment on what effect if any, the fin crisis/recession may have had on these cohorts?
An article in the WaPo magazine had all these GMU students going on about safe spaces and trigger warnings and all the other special snowflake ideas. It is all about common courtesy! *eye roll* I looked very carefully at the interviewed students’ majors. Every single one was a liberal (hah!) arts or social science (hah!) major, primarily in the more activist subjects.
This confirmed my hypothesis that most of the current nonsense is coming from a particular corner. These subjects tend to encourage the idea that facts are not facts, interpretation is everything, anything is valid if you can make a good argument, and so on. Of course, current MO is to ignore any fact or idea that is politically incorrect or that one does not like, and to ignore what actually constitutes a good argument/defense.
The other part of my hypothesis is that science majors generally avoid this fluff for two reasons. One, they generally understand the difference between facts and opinions (with the possible exception of AGW, in part because of the indoctrination), and are less likely to run on pure emotion. Two, they simply do not have time to waste constantly whining and protesting. When you attend classes and labs, write multiple weekly lab reports, read textbooks, and study for exams, free time tends to be more limited. When you have to know that 2+2=4, and you cannot get away with “making a case” for why the answer is 3, blowing off classes to protest the morality of the college’s food supply chain is a lot less attractive.
This is human nature. It has always been such. I’m a Boomer. The ones that got the TV time were the SJWs of my day. The rest of us put our noses to the grind-stone and kept on working. There is a split among the Boomers also. The bulk of the hippie types were As (1946-54, but not all of them). The bulk of the Boomers in number, the Bs, were born after that, though, (1955-64). Check out the raw live-birth numbers.
Might it be possible that the Millennials are simply getting tired of one harangue after another about how they will be responsible for the destruction of the planet unless they do exactly what their betters tell them to do?
They soon will want their food pumped into their body intravenously to avoid the hassle of chewing. They should just wrap themselves in bubblewrap and sit in their safe space all day. What a way to live. When some cataclysmic event happens – nuclear war, pandemic, Sweet Meteor of Death, whatever it is – these snowflakes will be the least prepared. I put my money on the people making $2 a day living in the least developed parts of the world. They have to scratch and claw for everything. They still have the natural instincts and skills to survive.
Sorry, but I can see nothing referring to Green (unless you are taking colour) in the above intro.
The intro has also the saddest statement I have seen for a long time from a presumably intelligent person
“Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As a climate skeptic I couldn’t care less about recycling, carbon footprints, “lights on” Earth Hour, or any of the other claptrap associated with the green religion. But the breathtakingly wasteful lifestyle choices of the allegedly green “Millennials” put my efforts to enjoy the advantages of consumerist living to shame.”
I completely agree. It’s like folks who drive around in Hummers grinning ear to ear at how much gas they consume. For the life of me, I don’t understand why anyone should oppose recycling and having a modest impact on the environment.
Because it’s all Cultural Marxist BS?
We wouldn’t even be here if our ancestors had decided to ‘have a modest impact on the environment’
Wastefulness and thoughtlessness are never cool.
At first I was a little concerned by that first sentence, but in context, I believe the author is stating that he is unmoved by the reasoning behind the environmentalist pushed actions. When I see signs that say that not turning out the lights makes Algore cry, I have an unholy urge to run around turning all the lights ON. Being responsible and avoiding wastefulness are virtues in my opinion, but the self-righteousness and nonsensical claims of leftist greens are not reasons for the worthiness of those actions. I also think that the author is making the point that people who do not buy into the green nonsense are often tagged as wasteful consumerists, yet those pointing the finger are often significantly worse offenders.
I turn off lights to keep my electric bill low and because waste of anything bothers me, not because OMG, Gaia is going to die if I do not. I try not to speed because I do not want a ticket and because better gas milage means spending less money at the pump, not because my emissions are going to raise temperatures a gazillionth of a gazillionth of a degree. (Also, safety.) Acting in an environmentally friendly way, in the best sense of the term, does not need to be inspired by climate doom and gloom lies. Based on the green cohort’s actions, such inspiration has limited effects on its acolytes anyway.
I guess my question, then, is — do millennials actually eat breakfast, at all? For me (I’m 69), breakfast is the most important meal of the day. For 19 years, I got up at 3:55 AM every weekday morning to commute 75 miles one way to work. I liked cereal, because it was easy to make. I had two big bowls of Post Fruit and Fiber Cereal (not an endorsement), with reconstituted non-fat powdered milk every morning. I liked the cereal, because it tasted good, and it was actually heavy enough in my stomach, to make me feel like I ate something. I used the powdered milk, because I got tired of smelling the milk carton each morning, to see if the milk was turning sour. And I bought the store-brand generic milk, because it was dirt cheap. BTW I didn’t have this problem with the milk while in Germany — they sold UHT milk in smaller containers, and I could store them at room temperature until I opened them.
Try rice milk?
Not attacking the mud slingers here but seriously folks….
The Millennial generation is not learning in a vacuum–they learn from the generation(s) before them. So if you’ve got a problem with their ‘standards’ I suggest you look at your own.
Remember when you point a finger, there are 3 pointed back at you.
The literature of every culture reveals a common lament, that the latest generation does not fit within yesterday’s measure.
I took a class about the history of gardens (it was for a historic preservation track), and at the start of one of the first classes, the professor read an extract from Pliny the Elder (IIRC) lamenting the current generation. It could have been written today. Tolstoy’s line about how “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” could be changed to “each generation is worse in its own way”.
Fair enough!q I have great, hard working and responsible kids. Also very green and principled. Any faults they acquired from me I blame on my parents. As for their qualities, thank you, thank you very much!
Sorry, but no. If everyone only learned from the previous generation, the morals, ethic, and values of society would never change. Each generation incorporates its own values, sometimes created out of whole cloth. What I have seen is that a critical number of youth in each generation sinks to the lowest acceptable level. When a society begins to stress acceptance of all levels, that decline becomes rapid.
You’re missing the point, Jenn. I am just had a back and forth with a 21yo, because we were picking on her idol, President Obama. It was really very sad. She had no idea when to use capital letters, and punctuation was generally a mystery to her.
I don’t think so at all. Every generation has its own identifier problems according to the previous generation. It happened with mine as I’m sure it happened with yours. The previous generation always going on and on and nitpicking the current one about intelligence, dilligence, responsibility and ethics. Yet with each suceeding generation we as a species advance our collective knowledge of the universe, ourselves and those around us. Each generation advances, sometimes slower and sometimes faster but the trend is forward.
You could play devils advocate and claim the reason we move forward is because of the previous generations grumbling and there is something to that. But it is not the only reason. As humans we learn as we grow older and come to understand that certain ideologies we once held as absolute are more flexible later in life. But the one thing every generation has learned as it got older is the previous generation might be have been right when waving their canes about some things…..usually about the time they start waving theirs at the generation next in line. 🙂
It’s one thing to grumble, it’s another to point a finger.
How many is “too many”? My old hometown, Seattle, famous for its’ deep eco-wisdom, recently “outlawed” the dreaded plastic shopping bag; they were utterly convenient, disposable and sanitary (ho-hum). Apparently nothing signals virtue like FORCING other people, innocent bystanders, to use a cloth shopping bag. Everything I buy comes in a plastic bag or is containerized in some way, so why pick on the oh-so-useful plastic shopping bag? “Too many plastic bags” was their rationale for the “ban”. Are there “too many” banana peals or egg shells? Maybe their is a disposal problem, but nature itself loves containers. You can’t blame millennials for stupidity that seems to be everywhere.
There are still paper bags, which do the job and are biodegradable.
..So chopping down trees is “Green” now ??
In Portland, Oregon they first banned paper bags to “save the trees” and switched entirely to plastic. Then in a few years they banned plastic and went back to paper (saving trees lost its political clout). At first they mandated recycled paper bags but it rains a lot in Portland and the recycled bags (I speak this from multiple personal experience) were falling apart within 50 feet of the store. (Broken pasta sauce jars, broken pickle jars, broken almost everything jars encircled the supermarket.) Now their bags are all from freshly killed trees and hold up a lot better. And the store will sell you plastic bags for 25 cents each!
Eco-economics! The road to hell.is paved with recycled products. But, hey, in Portland morality is political and decided by whatever green group is in ascendancy.
Eugene WR Gallun
Eco-economics — the invisible hand of government regulation? — Eugene WR Gallun
Might be invisible but it sure is getting heavy!
Good luck finding a paper bag at the grocery store, even where no bans exist. In D.C. and in Montgomery County in Maryland, customers are charged 5 cents per bag of any kind. I believe the money is supposed to go towards river cleanup but I have my doubts about where the money is really going. It is the new sin tax.
Personally, I use plastic grocery bags as small trash can liners in bedrooms and bathrooms. I fail to see how this is less environmentally friendly than buying same-size plastic bags in a box at the store. At least my bags are being used twice. Extras go back to the grocery store. I also use the plastic bags to transport potentially messy things, usually things that might spill or leak. When the dog and cats were still around, newspaper bags were used for dog waste and litter box waste went in plastic grocery bags. I have no problem with cloth grocery/shopping bags, though I suspect most of us do not wash them as often as we should. Hello, germs.
Chris:
Which means that instead of using the plastic bags for garbage bin liners, you have to BUY plastic bin liners. So where is the saving. I never throw out plastic grocery bags unless they are filled with something that is headed for the garbage bin.
Biodegradability is a non-issue. Paper doesn’t degrade in a land fill. They have dug up old land fills with a proper cap, and found that the paper is perfectly preserved. So are most other things put into landfills. The whole idea of nasty things leaking out of landfills just doesn’t happen in properly constructed works.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/13/nyregion/seeking-the-truth-in-refuse.html
All my paper and cardboard becomes fire starter but of course if you live in the city that isn’t an option.
It was 7 degrees C outside this am so fireplace went on to take the chill off. It got all the way to 19 today. Loverly climate. High last month was 30, low was minus 3. SNAFU.
As a climate skeptic I couldn’t care less about recycling
This is not the kind of statement many of us would identify with or want to see in AUWT posts. CAGW might be wrong but it is still goid to recycle and protect the environment from real threats that can be avoided by reasonable lifestyle choices. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, environmentally speaking.
Not wanting to be patronising but –
Eric, your prolific posts here are informative and entertaining, and you’re doing a great service taking the weight of Anthony. But the antics of the green goblins are making you see the red mist. Take a good break and some time to reflect. Then come back and continue your good work.
erratum
“weight of Anthony” should be “weight off Anthony”
or in US millenial grammer, “off of” (??!!)
ptolemy2 — ok but just don’t try to force your choices on me as recycling laws do. — Eugene WR Gallun
The Millennials we’ve hired in a software division that develops a cluster file system that runs on several operating systems have been pretty impressive, both technically and in non-geek terms.
It helps they come from MIT, Brown, Stanford (non-swimmer), Libya, India, etc. It probably also helps when we don’t tell them it’s the most complex piece of software we’ve ever developed. 🙂
Others, like my daughter, have their financial heads screwed on well, except maybe for the daily stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. Coffee is much cheaper brewed at home!
P.J. O’Rourke from the great “All the Trouble in the World” in 1995:
“And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is especially true if we’re careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
Another gem:
“The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. ‘Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out.”
I know the moon well. I’ve spent the night with her many times!
I think mothers everywhere would confirm that first quote. 🙂 I have been saying for years that we worry about the wrong things. Oh no, it might be too hot for tigers in 2100, better spend all the tiger conservation funds on AGW reparations! Never mind that at the current rate, tigers will be extinct in a decade or two because of poaching and stupid land management. You cannot solve problems if you attack non-symptoms.
“You cannot solve problems if you attack non-symptoms.”
But you can make a lot of money. If you actually solve a problem, the money flow stops.
I think it was P.J O’Rourke who said “teenagers are in favor of cleaning up the environment everywhere except in their bedrooms.”
Phew. Thankfully I did something right. My millennial children like to cook. Cleaning up not so much. But with enough threats you can get anyone to do anything. 😉
Wow, amazing how one comment about millennials and their attitudes spawns a string of derogatory and condescending comments about the whole group.
Amazing how one mention of millennials and their attitudes spawns a litany of derogatory comments.
Clearly you and arcticobserver are soulmates, brought together by fate and WUWT to share almost identical posts within 3 minutes of each other. Or just multiple usernames for the same troll.
Why can’t they eat it right out of the box?
It’s certainly crunchier that way. But, I find something satisfying about slurping the remaining milk out of the bowl after finishing off the cereal.
They actually can. You don’t have to buy the big boxes. You can get individually-packaged servings. Tear off the lid, pour in the milk, and you’re good to go. Can even use a plastic spoon so that you don’t have to wash that.
It is really inconvenient when I go to my liquor cabinet and pour myself a few fingers of Jameson and even more inconvenient when I go to my humidor and choose a cigar, unwrap it, cut the tip and light it and totally inconvenient when I go out on my patio and start a fire in my fire pit so that I can enjoy all my inconveniences.
The horror, having to do such menial tasks yourself. Maybe you consider hiring some servants. 🙂
I have not forgiven Kelloggs for changing their cereals nor Nestle Quik their powdered drink mix. I didn’t buy this stuff because it was “healthy”, I bought it because it tasted good. Last box of so-called “frosted” Rice Krispies looked exactly like regular ones. Invisible frosting, I guess. Quick now tastes so bad it’s undrinkable. Sigh.
Not just the US. It is contagious.
One of my frustrations of latter years is the difficulty of finding leaf tea and bars of soap in supermarkets. One has to scour through a wall of tea bags and fancy liquid soap pump pots to find a few lonely brands at the extreme top or bottom – if you are lucky
Just last week it happened. In a huge wholesale supermarket a simple pack of leaf tea could not be found. I came home with a pack of lavishly branded tea bags: “packed to guarantee maximum freshness”
So, first remove the plastic outer jacket. Then open the cardboard packet, Then, rip open each individual bag packet that consists of paper lined with plastic. Then put 3 in a pot. It does not draw well so one has to dunk or stir. At last a cup of tea!
I decided to establish just how many other materials related to my humble cup of tea. The tea bag consisted of the porous bag, a piece of string, a tab and some glue. All this compared to one cardboard packet with a paper lining in the conventional pack. What is more, the leaf had been fine ground to provide “quick convenient drawing”
Then comes the soggy mess afterwards – used tea bags in the rubbish bin along with all the other convenience material. Leaf tea goes straight down the sink or on the garden
Somehow, I am not getting this convenience thing. I need to be enlightened
Don’t open a tea pot shop
It’s always the Millennials “causing” things. Funny. As someone who is variously catalogued as either GenX or Millennial – depending on one’s preferred definition, I find it humorous how often they get blamed for things they haven’t had time in the real world to even fully grasp and understand, let alone craft themselves.
As for the bold of Eric Worrall’s post, and the myriad comments following it up, about the “laziness” of it all. It’s a terrible reflection on the Boomers that huff and puff about their children. It’s well and truly just the next step of perpetuation of a generational theft that’s been going on since before the GenXers came along.
The Millennials exist in a world of problems – almost every single one of them a result of their parents, the Boomers, telling themselves that they are special and that they have fundamentally changed the world. What started as a generation who came into its’ own by heavily criticizing their own parents – who fought, died, and poured sweat into creating a better world for their children – took that world they were handed on a platter and proceeded to be the worst generation this world has seen. But you know what the Boomers’ parents had done? They stepped aside and use the fruits of their labors to buy a retirement.
The Boomers? Well, they destroyed the economy of the Western World one step at a time, one company at a time. They destroyed the institutions that hundreds of years of their fore-bearers had setup. In one single, extremely long-winded generation running the show, we went from a government that was of, by and for the people and landed in a government that exists to perpetuate itself and is endlessly reliant on extended its control by wresting more and more out of vagaries of the written words. They moved us off the gold standard to make it easier to manipulate currency for their ends. Have agitated against anything that might ever get in the way of their own power and fortunes.
Boomers even constantly kick the financial can down the road and forever bemoaning everyone but themselves as the cause for all of the worlds problems. The last time this happened was when GenX was coming of age. Remember the words that described them? Apathetic? Lazy? Anyone else getting deja vu? Hilariously, the apathetic label was applied by Boomer advertisers that were exasperated that GenX wasn’t interested in buying their products and services.
GenX fought its way into the world of work, making a name for themselves by availing of the new technology that the Boomers didn’t have full control of. But, of course, as they were in their 20s and early 30s, they were constantly told that they simply couldn’t take the reins. They were too lazy, too naive. They just couldn’t work, you know. Boomers kept the GenX crowd out of positions of power that they secured for themselves. They weren’t ready. Boomers had to, you know, continue to control things. Surely by the time their children, the Millennials, came around they would certainly be ready to go, right?
And now the Millennials are here. They come of age in a world where every single problem they look at, they can only turn around and look at their parents over. Housing infrastructure is woefully short and extremely expensive. Seems no one things that new families should happen The roads are crumbling. Seems no one thought that they should pay to repair them. The work situation is a mess. Seems that no one cared that the low-wage starter jobs that each generation needs were being out sourced to other nations. Food mandates have been screwed up since they were enshrined by the government. Seems no one cared that doing so completely messed up how one and a half generations viewed food. Education has been turned into a high priced party. Seems no one cared about holding educational institutions to standards. In fact, most of government has expanded to levels that are hilariously overbearing across most of western society. Even science, itself – a machete that human kind has spent centuries honing into an edge that could split a hair – has been utterly dulled and corroded by a single generations’ lust for power. Boomers have been the most successful generation in all of the worst qualities of both people and civilization that came before it. How far fetched is it, then, that Millennials by default believe that their parents have destroyed the very jungle itself, too?
Now, despite all of this, the Millennials have been marching forward. They work the crap jobs that still exist, do everything like they were taught and the Boomers, in something that has become predictable, are now dumping on them for their naivete. Their laziness. As if no one left cereal bowls on the table before 2000? And there was no trash on a beach or in cities before the first Millennial was birthed? Ha. But it’s just the Boomers once again keeping the generations that would usurp them down. They aren’t doing what their parents did. They aren’t stepping aside. For so long they have told themselves, cooing to themselves in the dark before sleep, that they have made the world better. That they are the reason the world is soooo much better than what came before.
See, Millennials – and GenX also – would make changes. But what changes can really be made in governments that have spent the last 50 years specifically insulating themselves from accountability? What changes can be made in companies where Boomers won’t step aside and relinquish control? Boomers have the jobs, the money, the control, and the numbers to keep themselves in power.
But, on the flip side, the GenX and Millennial generational cohorts are slowly ebbing away the power base. Since 2000, the voting public has abandoned official political affiliations like the plague in the US and more and more independent parties are flourishing abroad. It won’t be this decade that the politics finally flip, but it’s at least building away from the power centers of old. In my view, though, the reality is far from optimistic and generally quite grim – none of this vile wretchedness is going away until Boomers give up the one thing that lets them live inside their delusions of grandeur: Their numbers.
Arsten:
As a “Boomer” that has been retired for 15 years, I think your hypothesis may be geocentric to where you live and what you think you see. IMHO.
You have the power. So what are you doing about the issues you think you see?
I am an engineer. I used to tell my people to stop bringing me problems, but to bring me solutions because as consultants we were paid for solutions not problems.
Wayne Delbeke
I have clearly laid out the path that will lead to changing the situation. Perhaps you can think of others instead of complaining about my objections to the power structure? I was told by an engineer that people shouldn’t bring problems, they should bring solutions.
I have the power, hm? Perhaps you should challenge your local government with new ideas. How long do you think you will go before you can identify the different kinds of wood in government doors with your tongue. I’d place odds on six months.
As for my perception, I am not like most of my generational cohorts, no matter which generation you apply me to: I have been many places. Not only within the US but also abroad. I have seen the pattern in most places I have lived. If you have another explanation for the circumstance, I’d be all ears.
Excuses.
Nope. As a Gen-X, I’ve been lied to pretty much all my life, by teachers, media and politicians. Took me twenty years to figure out how the world really works, and I had the benefit of a number of pre-boomer teachers who actually did try to teach us something about that world, rather than feed us Marxist propaganda.
The Millenials have it even worse. They’ve been told from birth that they’re Special Snowflakes, and… they’re not. They’ve barely even begun to realize what a crock of crap they’ve been fed. I feel pity for them, more than anything, because they’ve been screwed even harder by the Boomers than we were.
Deflections.
See what I mean about stereotypes. 🙂
The Boomers have heard it all before, Arsten. Everybody wants to blame their problems on someone else. It’s easier that way, isn’t it.
Of course Boomers have heard it all before – from their own lips. Trace all of the Boomers problems, TA. See what they were blamed on. Soviets. Communists. Progressives / Liberals / Conservatives (depending on your bent and location). Immigrants. China. The list goes on.
So, have you heard the one about boomers telling the younger generations that they had minimum wage in 1970 and paid for college and we should be able to do it, today, except that they are lazy? Funny how they don’t talk about relative buying power or cost of education – as well as job requirements always tagging “Bachelor’s Degree!” into every job posting. And they certainly don’t go into the effects that Boomer policies had on things like minimum wage buying power, inflation, or even straight up tuition costs. Nope. It’s just the GenX and Millennials complaining for no reason, again.
“In my view, though, the reality is far from optimistic and generally quite grim – none of this vile wretchedness is going away until Boomers give up the one thing that lets them live inside their delusions of grandeur: Their numbers.”
You are going to have to suffer a little while longer under the yoke of the Babyboomers, Arsten. We just love being able to control all the younger generation’s lives.
I’m fairly certain I made that point. I’m glad it had such effect on you that you felt the need to quote and then repeat it in different words.
Oh wait, that was supposed to be sarcastic. Obviously, no Boomer wants to control any life. Certainly, not the way the government in the US, Canada, and EU issue regulations to cover every single aspect of life. Perhaps you should watch the film “Brexit” while paying particular attention to the part about all of the regulations that the EU makes about every aspect of a European’s life? Next, how about you consult just the myriad regulations pushed out by Bush and Obama’s administrations – both Boomers with largely Boomer contingents.
But no, there’s no thirst for control there. Not anywhere.
Stereotypical thinking is a basic human trait. It is a survival mechanism. It helped early humans to tell the good guys from the bad guys. That tribe good. That tribe bad. Trade with the good. Stay away from the bad.
Stereotypical thinking can also lead one astray, and hide reality behind a generalization.
Stereotypical thinking is a lazy way of thinking in the modern era.
Stereotypical thinking seems to make it easier to make sense of the world, because you just generalize, and don’t have to take many factors into consideration, but that “sense” may be wrong, if you don’t consider all possiblities.
All of us have stereotypical thinking. If we want to know the real truth, we need to suppress this human urge as much as possible, otherwise we blind ourselves to reality.
“All (put name of group here) do this or that”, is never the case.
And yet you exhibit stereotypical thinking rail against stereotypical thinking. Why do you need the world to be so hypocritically simpler to understand? Do you enjoy being blinded?
But you are wrong. Suppressing generalizations does nothing but obscure the world. Generalizations are just that: A general abstract that generally holds true. “Forests tend to be green and brown.” would likely get nary an askew glance. Why? Because the generalization holds true, even if you can often find as many colors as you desire should you venture into a real forest.
Stereotypes, on the other hand, are generalizations that are weaponized – most often about people. They are used to excuse behavior and action that is counter to prevailing morality. Racism, for instance, is generally founded on stereotypes because it gives an excuse to exclude those you are stereotyping from the moral order. Common throughout history, for instance, was the stereotyping of the enemy as the worst examples of the tribes’ moral order. ‘They’ killed children, pregnant women, didn’t worship the correct god, and so forth.
The “GenX” and “Millennial” notes about apathy and malaise are stereotypes. They are specifically used to keep power from those that suffer those stereotypes. My assertions are generalizations about Boomers – they generally hold true, even if you can and will meet individuals who were not involved and/or against the power claimed by the generation. I have advocated nothing against them and don’t say anything about keeping them from the moral order. In fact, I noted that the world will have to continue to suffer them due to circumstance.
Arsten wrote: “My assertions are generalizations about Boomers – they generally hold true, even if you can and will meet individuals who were not involved and/or against the power claimed by the generation.”
You are welcome to your bias, whatever you call it. If you want to wear blinders, go ahead.
TA Wrote: “You are welcome to your bias, whatever you call it. If you want to wear blinders, go ahead.”
You’ve provided no counter information or even alternate assessments of the same information. The bias here is your own.
Arsten, One can legitimately generalize/stereotype about people who think alike, who have the same mindset, such as the political Left, or the political Right, or Alarmists, etc, but saying a whole generation is of the same mindset is a different matter.
For example, Boomers make up all sides of the political spectrum. You can’t say that a Boomer on the political Left looks at the world the same way a Boomer on the political Right looks at the world. Generational generalizations/stereotypes are too simplistic to describe the real situation.
Yes, except that I am generalizing about their overall actions and effects on the media, world, and government and not about their personalities or specific beliefs. Part of those effects are knock-on effects to the world that the GenX and Millennial generations are inheriting, along with the mythos as propagated in general. I did not say “All Boomers were pot smoking hippies.” I said “The Boomer generation has done these things.” and it is true.
It wasn’t just the side you don’t like that told the younger generations that the only way to succeed was with a degree. It wasn’t just the side you don’t like that supported risk-less education loans by financial institutions. And it wasn’t just the side you don’t like that, when something like the Occupy movement arose, wanted the movement crushed. All of this is public record – go see who voted.
Just like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, everyone was on board until it became politically expedient to demonize one side of the illusory aisle for political gain. Republicans and Democrats refusing to cooperate in any way shape or form is an artifact of the last ~10 years as the populace has gotten increasingly annoyed and angry with their inability to be sane and is not the norm for the past 50.
If you want to look at when the government stopped being of and by the people, you need to go all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. Teddy Roosevelt also did yeoman’s work in making the government bigger and more powerful.
But neither of them can hold a candle to the other Roosevelt, FDR.
The seeds were certainly planted long before the Boomers, but they cultivated those seeds and saplings as a master gardener. The redwood grove that stands now is a result of their tender care.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!!!!
If all recycling were to end — half the green jobs in America would be lost!
Eugene WR Gallun
I was attending a computer conference a number of years ago in Kalifornia and had breakfast with a young couple on their first visit to the US. I asked them what differences they observed. The young man said that in his home country they would never have coffee creamer in little disposable plastic containers, but would serve it in a small ceramic pitcher. He ended by making note of how wasteful the plastic was of natural resources.
I countered by saying that if you took all the plastic creamer containers that it would require to fill up the little ceramic pitcher and burned them, the amount of heat the fire was generate would not be nearly enough to heat the hot water required to properly wash the ceramic pitcher each day.
You could see that answer was so totally out of his range of thinking that he stripped a mental gear right in front of me. But, he replied it would still be nicer to have the pitcher. I agreed but said that the free market allows the restaurant to make that choice. I don’t want a government agency compelling me to use one solution or the other. He agreed.
I grew up eating out of tiny boxes of cereal that opened in the center to make a bowl. You could pour your milk in and throw it away when done. A generation saved!
“I mean, wow, I’m impressed. Millennials can’t be bothered eating cereal, because it is too much bother to sling the used bowl into the dishwasher – the cereal doesn’t come in a disposable container.”
Dishwasher!? Well, when we were kids, we had to wash the bloody bowl, dry it, and put it back in the cupboard … like somebody once said, ” … we didn’t have this “green thing” in our day!”