Personally I'd balance that with the enemy of economic growth fanatics ☺️ with growth fanaticism seeking to prevaricate over the life/death dynamic central to constrained consumption leading to the life/death dynamic becoming dysregulated/destabilised due to the overvaluation of life and the undervaluation of death leading to bad faith human rights lawyers defending the undefendable.
Thanks 🙏 you're helping me to get closer to my humanimal. In other words, more relaxed due to less "core self" masking ☺️
Because they feed of the sociopathic capitalists who buy the liberal left who are devoid of any true economic solutions (partly because the sociopathic capitalists have purchased their will to supply economic solutions), so instead of truly operating from a position of strength through diversity, which is a real thing, they whine and demand special treatment for having been the victims of the ones to enjoy special treatment, who tend to be the sociopathic capitalists who profit from division.
I was gonna restack this with "one of my favorite things I've read on here" till I got to the part where you listed Boomers as 1st on your enemies list. Even if it was a joke there are too many people who mean it for it to be funny.
Gen X here who thinks both that the generational sniping is beyond stupid, and that if push comes to shove Boomer culture was in many/most ways superior to millenial/gen z culture, so. Never understood where all this hate comes from (and yes, i know and like plenty of boomers!). As stupid to hate people for when they were born as for where or what ethnicity.
Also depending on what you mean by green sabateours I might have some sympathy there as well.
But mostly awesome and well written! Apologies if the part is just wanted against was meant humorously! Keep pointing fingers, I love it except when I don't!
Thanks! Boomers are only demonised online, everywhere else they are venerated as a great generation. It’s important that we call them out on what they got wrong. They have been behaving very selfishly, sheltering themselves from any difficult decisions and putting the weight on to the younger generations, while maintaining their sense of superiority. Triple lock, NIMBYism etc.
Stella, I'm a boomer (just), what did I get wrong ?...from working from my first part time job at age thirteen, leaving school at age sixteen and I'm still doing forty plus hours a week at age Sixty..I have two kids ,both working.....I pay a huge amount of tax AND I give ten percent of my gross income to charitable causes how terribly selfish of me !!!... I haven't noticed anyone venerating me, yourself included.
I never see anyone give them credit and have alas picked your otherwise great post to appoint myself their defender for no reason other than whim, but I shall await your elaboration with interest if you're gonna make it a series. Definitely won't argue against the idea that they may on balance be extremely problematic, but that can be said about humans as a whole. At least these guys gave us peak environmentalism and lots of great art!
It is the first on my series so you won’t even have to wait long! But as you say if the same can be said of humans as a whole, then we should not be able to cast a critical eye on any named group’s observed behaviour ever, be only bankers, politicians, influencers, fathers, tourists etc.
Not all groups are the same! Choosing a particular profession often (usually?) can indicate something about someone (tho father's & tourists don't seem to belong here, and even with professions I think I would disagree with you about the usefulness of caveats about overgeneralizing, albeit ideally artfully placed), but generations seem more like ethnicity or nationality or sex. Granted there can be legit cultural issues here (+ biological with sex) but i find “boomers suck” to be about as helpful as “the problems with whiteness” or “blackness” or “Greeks” or “Irish.” All this can be ripe for humor (“millennial job interview”) until it gets overdone or gets in the way of real thinking or just becomes purely stupid and pointlessly hateful and counterproductive. I guess you could say generational culture is more akin to the best Buddhist retreats or Quaker meetings or the Hot n Sexy Artsy Agnostic Society for Better Understanding of Everything vs particularly awful bits of fundamentalist religion of your least preferred sort, but well, I will wait and see!
Did they? They are generally narcissists who think they are entitled to all the things. You can still like them, but it doesn’t change that they got everything and therefore believe they deserve everything for no reason other than they want it all.
This gets said about millenials and GenZ equally much.
Gen X is of course exempt from such criticism because we are clearly the best by far and cannot help but make everyone else look bad by comparison, but even here, it's that we had a uniquely favorable set of circumstances and it would be wrong of us to run around talking about how much better we are than the rest of you, and we don't, because we realize it is pure luck, in the same way that Einstein and Feynman didn't run around bragging about their superiority over the people in special Ed classes and world class athletes don't brag about being able to outrun people wheezing when they cross the street.
You want to engage in noblesse oblige and help the less fortunate improve themselves if you're in a position of obvious superiority, and a constant barrage of insults is not the way to do this!
It gets said a lot about Millennials by the Boomers because they are the inverse of each other: industrious, sure, but also self-interested with more depth and less groovy than Booomers.
I don't know about Gen Z. I think they are a whole other breed of human thanks to the technology.
But I don't think Gen X has it easy at all.
We're the ones with all the divorced parents; are the ones who saw first hand how the American Dream in the US was just propaganda; even if it was attainable it also was limited and punitive to many; and are now the ones who are taking care of our Boomer parents while also trying to manage the disappointments and disillusionments of our Gen Z kids.
I do not run around talking about how great my Gen X privilege is. What privilege? That we are the most responsible generation in modern times because we take care of everything? I don't know what the last line about noblesse oblige means. I certainly don't feel I have any noblesse oblige. I just do what needs to get done, and I think that is the trademark of our generation generally, not me specifically.
BTW, I do sadly fit your Gen X stereotypes, from divorced parents when I was 9 months old (mom got custody, spent time in mental institution, decided was impossible to live with her ultra religious conservative mom and ran away leaving me there, raised by grandparents, consider myself lazy but always does what must be done and used to often find myself picking up slack for everyone else even tho I'm a prototypical slacker (thankfully not at my job now, everyone there is super responsible so my only reason for not slacking off is a desire to keep up with everyone else and a sense of pride in my craft).
My high school class got stereotypes by our teachers and school administrators too, now I think of it. Called us "the class with no class" and "worst class they'd ever seen," behavior wise, on s regular basis. Definitely not well behaved rule followers. Gen X stereotypes for the win 🏆 !
I was just being snarky and suggesting my generation was better than everyone else's and it was up to us to help them all improve themselves, whike trying to be as insufferable as possible about it.
I mean, we ARE all round better in every type of oersonal quality AND the least privileged both, and arguably with that comes an enhanced toughness and flexibility and clear sightedness and we do have an obligation to use that for the greater good, so, I guess I might've been secretly serious without realizing it.
It's not beyond stupid, though. One of the funniest bits of research I found on boomers is their support for child care. Till the 90s, boomers supported extensive childcare. Then their support dropped. What happened? They stopped having children. Till the 00s, they supported the expansion of in-work benefits. Then that dropped off. What happened? They stopped working. Till the 90ss, they endorsed lower inheritance taxes. Now they are the group most likely to support inheritance tax. What happened? Their parents died, and they had no opportunity for inheritance.
In the same way, the first world war generation was rightly shamed; the Boomers deserve to be shamed... to a lesser extent, but shamed nevertheless. They are a feckless and reckless bunch.
I think it is ridiculous to shame anyone for simply being part of a generation or to blame anyone for group membership in a group they had no part in choosing.
And again, looking at their sins vs others, if one must do this, I do not see them coming off particularly badly.
Yes but that way you can never say anything if you constantly have to caveat it with “please don’t take this personally I am just trying to illustrate a political argument”. Nobody is convinced by that or wants to read it or indeed is compelled to act from it.
I agree with that general sentiment but don't think that's what I was suggesting; I'm totally fine with making things personal, even, I... am just missing the applicability of your statement to mine. Perhaps I spoke with lack of clarity or am being dense! Neither would be the first time.
3A. Sociopathic politicians. In fact, most politicians are sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to gain power, while normies will not.
Neither Brexit nor Trump would have been possible without Farage and BoJo and the crafters of the messaging that told English (Scots didn’t vote for it, eg) and Americans they were special .
Bad faith human rights lawyers and activists who support any of the above!
That’s a good one
Personally I'd balance that with the enemy of economic growth fanatics ☺️ with growth fanaticism seeking to prevaricate over the life/death dynamic central to constrained consumption leading to the life/death dynamic becoming dysregulated/destabilised due to the overvaluation of life and the undervaluation of death leading to bad faith human rights lawyers defending the undefendable.
Thanks 🙏 you're helping me to get closer to my humanimal. In other words, more relaxed due to less "core self" masking ☺️
Thanks Substack algorithm ☺️
wait how are identity politics ethnonationalists frenemies
Because they feed of the sociopathic capitalists who buy the liberal left who are devoid of any true economic solutions (partly because the sociopathic capitalists have purchased their will to supply economic solutions), so instead of truly operating from a position of strength through diversity, which is a real thing, they whine and demand special treatment for having been the victims of the ones to enjoy special treatment, who tend to be the sociopathic capitalists who profit from division.
I was gonna restack this with "one of my favorite things I've read on here" till I got to the part where you listed Boomers as 1st on your enemies list. Even if it was a joke there are too many people who mean it for it to be funny.
Gen X here who thinks both that the generational sniping is beyond stupid, and that if push comes to shove Boomer culture was in many/most ways superior to millenial/gen z culture, so. Never understood where all this hate comes from (and yes, i know and like plenty of boomers!). As stupid to hate people for when they were born as for where or what ethnicity.
Also depending on what you mean by green sabateours I might have some sympathy there as well.
But mostly awesome and well written! Apologies if the part is just wanted against was meant humorously! Keep pointing fingers, I love it except when I don't!
Thanks! Boomers are only demonised online, everywhere else they are venerated as a great generation. It’s important that we call them out on what they got wrong. They have been behaving very selfishly, sheltering themselves from any difficult decisions and putting the weight on to the younger generations, while maintaining their sense of superiority. Triple lock, NIMBYism etc.
Stella, I'm a boomer (just), what did I get wrong ?...from working from my first part time job at age thirteen, leaving school at age sixteen and I'm still doing forty plus hours a week at age Sixty..I have two kids ,both working.....I pay a huge amount of tax AND I give ten percent of my gross income to charitable causes how terribly selfish of me !!!... I haven't noticed anyone venerating me, yourself included.
I never see anyone give them credit and have alas picked your otherwise great post to appoint myself their defender for no reason other than whim, but I shall await your elaboration with interest if you're gonna make it a series. Definitely won't argue against the idea that they may on balance be extremely problematic, but that can be said about humans as a whole. At least these guys gave us peak environmentalism and lots of great art!
It is the first on my series so you won’t even have to wait long! But as you say if the same can be said of humans as a whole, then we should not be able to cast a critical eye on any named group’s observed behaviour ever, be only bankers, politicians, influencers, fathers, tourists etc.
Not all groups are the same! Choosing a particular profession often (usually?) can indicate something about someone (tho father's & tourists don't seem to belong here, and even with professions I think I would disagree with you about the usefulness of caveats about overgeneralizing, albeit ideally artfully placed), but generations seem more like ethnicity or nationality or sex. Granted there can be legit cultural issues here (+ biological with sex) but i find “boomers suck” to be about as helpful as “the problems with whiteness” or “blackness” or “Greeks” or “Irish.” All this can be ripe for humor (“millennial job interview”) until it gets overdone or gets in the way of real thinking or just becomes purely stupid and pointlessly hateful and counterproductive. I guess you could say generational culture is more akin to the best Buddhist retreats or Quaker meetings or the Hot n Sexy Artsy Agnostic Society for Better Understanding of Everything vs particularly awful bits of fundamentalist religion of your least preferred sort, but well, I will wait and see!
Did they? They are generally narcissists who think they are entitled to all the things. You can still like them, but it doesn’t change that they got everything and therefore believe they deserve everything for no reason other than they want it all.
This gets said about millenials and GenZ equally much.
Gen X is of course exempt from such criticism because we are clearly the best by far and cannot help but make everyone else look bad by comparison, but even here, it's that we had a uniquely favorable set of circumstances and it would be wrong of us to run around talking about how much better we are than the rest of you, and we don't, because we realize it is pure luck, in the same way that Einstein and Feynman didn't run around bragging about their superiority over the people in special Ed classes and world class athletes don't brag about being able to outrun people wheezing when they cross the street.
You want to engage in noblesse oblige and help the less fortunate improve themselves if you're in a position of obvious superiority, and a constant barrage of insults is not the way to do this!
😎😇
It gets said a lot about Millennials by the Boomers because they are the inverse of each other: industrious, sure, but also self-interested with more depth and less groovy than Booomers.
I don't know about Gen Z. I think they are a whole other breed of human thanks to the technology.
But I don't think Gen X has it easy at all.
We're the ones with all the divorced parents; are the ones who saw first hand how the American Dream in the US was just propaganda; even if it was attainable it also was limited and punitive to many; and are now the ones who are taking care of our Boomer parents while also trying to manage the disappointments and disillusionments of our Gen Z kids.
I do not run around talking about how great my Gen X privilege is. What privilege? That we are the most responsible generation in modern times because we take care of everything? I don't know what the last line about noblesse oblige means. I certainly don't feel I have any noblesse oblige. I just do what needs to get done, and I think that is the trademark of our generation generally, not me specifically.
BTW, I do sadly fit your Gen X stereotypes, from divorced parents when I was 9 months old (mom got custody, spent time in mental institution, decided was impossible to live with her ultra religious conservative mom and ran away leaving me there, raised by grandparents, consider myself lazy but always does what must be done and used to often find myself picking up slack for everyone else even tho I'm a prototypical slacker (thankfully not at my job now, everyone there is super responsible so my only reason for not slacking off is a desire to keep up with everyone else and a sense of pride in my craft).
My high school class got stereotypes by our teachers and school administrators too, now I think of it. Called us "the class with no class" and "worst class they'd ever seen," behavior wise, on s regular basis. Definitely not well behaved rule followers. Gen X stereotypes for the win 🏆 !
I was just being snarky and suggesting my generation was better than everyone else's and it was up to us to help them all improve themselves, whike trying to be as insufferable as possible about it.
I mean, we ARE all round better in every type of oersonal quality AND the least privileged both, and arguably with that comes an enhanced toughness and flexibility and clear sightedness and we do have an obligation to use that for the greater good, so, I guess I might've been secretly serious without realizing it.
It's not beyond stupid, though. One of the funniest bits of research I found on boomers is their support for child care. Till the 90s, boomers supported extensive childcare. Then their support dropped. What happened? They stopped having children. Till the 00s, they supported the expansion of in-work benefits. Then that dropped off. What happened? They stopped working. Till the 90ss, they endorsed lower inheritance taxes. Now they are the group most likely to support inheritance tax. What happened? Their parents died, and they had no opportunity for inheritance.
In the same way, the first world war generation was rightly shamed; the Boomers deserve to be shamed... to a lesser extent, but shamed nevertheless. They are a feckless and reckless bunch.
I think it is ridiculous to shame anyone for simply being part of a generation or to blame anyone for group membership in a group they had no part in choosing.
And again, looking at their sins vs others, if one must do this, I do not see them coming off particularly badly.
Yes but that way you can never say anything if you constantly have to caveat it with “please don’t take this personally I am just trying to illustrate a political argument”. Nobody is convinced by that or wants to read it or indeed is compelled to act from it.
I agree with that general sentiment but don't think that's what I was suggesting; I'm totally fine with making things personal, even, I... am just missing the applicability of your statement to mine. Perhaps I spoke with lack of clarity or am being dense! Neither would be the first time.
Cool stories bro.
3A. Sociopathic politicians. In fact, most politicians are sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to gain power, while normies will not.
They are not but I do appreciate that this is what the job requires, hence the people we get
Still looking forward to this! I'd buy the book!
trying to work out which one I am on the list
Define “bad immigrants”
I will !
Brexiteers.
You know what, it’s a can of worms but I afraid it has a lot of truth
Neither Brexit nor Trump would have been possible without Farage and BoJo and the crafters of the messaging that told English (Scots didn’t vote for it, eg) and Americans they were special .
I cant wait for the rest..... You hit the nail on the head more often than most.
You are something else kid.
Thank you!