While I really dislike painting with a broad brush about any sort of “good ol’ days”…
I think there’s been a huge loss of generalist knowledge since Gen X. Gen X got to grow up with adults familiar with the pre-tech world and where a lot of things could be and needed to be fixed by yourself, and they grew up with the advent of household technology. From mending fences to replacing a capacitor in a electric motor to fixing your own car. Some of that got passed on to the kids by the boomers. I’m not trying to say this kind of knowledge was common, it was just more common. I dunno if millennials got this knowledge dump too, but if you did, you’re on the hook to pass it on as well.
I looked at the fence and couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t take the ten minutes to trim the bottom off and buy a small box of the correct nails, but then someone could be in the position of never having been taught to think of those things. Maybe it was just laziness.
So, I appeal to my Gen X brethren - peel yourself and your kids away from the screens and find a way to get your collective hands dirty. Change some brake pads. Fix a fence right. Change the spark plug or oil in a mower. Build a raised-bed garden, even a small one, from scratch. Make the kids do the work they can. Trll them why you chose to do what you did, how you chose the parts, what you need to look out for, etc.
It’s better for problem solving skills, planning, and just understanding how things work. Spare everyone the embarrassment of a shitty fence repair job.
I was raised by a parent who didn’t know shit. Didn’t know how to maintain a house, didn’t know how to cook, barely knew how to do anything. I wished so desperately when I was a teenager and in my early twenties that I could have a mentor of some kind to teach me how to just take care of things in life.
But that wasn’t an option. So now I mostly pay other people.
This isn’t a “kids these days” at all. No need for you to be offended.
It was a request to pass on generalist knowledge from generations that had a lot more exposure to it.
I left plenty of room in my statement with conditional language to allow those with knowledge like this to exist regardless of age, but you went and made it all about you.
Again, you’re making this all about you. Jist because you might possess a little knowledge you make it a case to exclude anyone offering any to others, and patently this image shows there are some in meed.
“Generational trashing is actually eternal human behaviour,” wrote the novelist Douglas Coupland in an essay for The Guardian earlier this month. And he should know: he coined the term “Generation X”. Baby boomers, he recalls, once poured scorn on Gen-Xers like him, who themselves grew up to be sniffy about the [avocado-and-toast eating habits of “snowflake” Millennials. And now it’s the turn of Generation Z, with their TikToks and identity politics, to be judged by their elders.
There’s actually a scientific term for this: the “kids these days” effect, which can be traced all the way back to the writing of the Ancient Greeks. “Since at least 624 BC, people have lamented the decline of the present generation of youth relative to earlier generations,” according to the psychologists who named the phenomenon. “The pervasiveness of complaints about ‘kids these days’ across millennia suggests that these criticisms are neither accurate nor due to the idiosyncrasies of a particular culture or time – but rather represent a pervasive illusion of humanity.”
The rest of the article isn’t about people forgetting how to mend a fence and generally being incapable.
Again. This fence thing didn’t have to be generational. You. Went. There.
As each new generation inherits the world, vital knowledge is forgotten. In the latest in our Wise Words series, Richard Fisher explores the language that has emerged to describe that phenomenon.
And the article goes on beyond the part you quoted to feed your argument to point out that yes, indeed thing are lost between generations. No, they don’t specifically mention fence mending. Generational amnesia is a far broader concept than just how to fix a car.
You went straight for the fight.
You turned an appeal for people to pass knowledge on to those who may not get as much exposure to it as past generations and what…? Fuck you, don’t teach? Everyone knows everything already - apparently you do?
Boomers dying off and you gotta pick a fight with a new generation? I don’t do “kids these days” arguments because they’re stupid, but pot meet kettle, I never intended a generational argument but you certainly made it one.
In fact, Millennials are unfamiliar with a broad range of life skills. They are less likely than older generations to know how to sew, make basic home repairs, or drive manual-transmission cars. With GPS always at their fingertips, many never really learned to use physical landmarks to guide them. Some can’t even imagine how people functioned before mobile IT. One Millennial wrote an article asking older people how they used to look up information, meet up with friends in public places, and handle getting lost without smartphones.
While I really dislike painting with a broad brush about any sort of “good ol’ days”…
I think there’s been a huge loss of generalist knowledge since Gen X. Gen X got to grow up with adults familiar with the pre-tech world and where a lot of things could be and needed to be fixed by yourself, and they grew up with the advent of household technology. From mending fences to replacing a capacitor in a electric motor to fixing your own car. Some of that got passed on to the kids by the boomers. I’m not trying to say this kind of knowledge was common, it was just more common. I dunno if millennials got this knowledge dump too, but if you did, you’re on the hook to pass it on as well.
I looked at the fence and couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t take the ten minutes to trim the bottom off and buy a small box of the correct nails, but then someone could be in the position of never having been taught to think of those things. Maybe it was just laziness.
So, I appeal to my Gen X brethren - peel yourself and your kids away from the screens and find a way to get your collective hands dirty. Change some brake pads. Fix a fence right. Change the spark plug or oil in a mower. Build a raised-bed garden, even a small one, from scratch. Make the kids do the work they can. Trll them why you chose to do what you did, how you chose the parts, what you need to look out for, etc.
It’s better for problem solving skills, planning, and just understanding how things work. Spare everyone the embarrassment of a shitty fence repair job.
I was raised by a parent who didn’t know shit. Didn’t know how to maintain a house, didn’t know how to cook, barely knew how to do anything. I wished so desperately when I was a teenager and in my early twenties that I could have a mentor of some kind to teach me how to just take care of things in life.
But that wasn’t an option. So now I mostly pay other people.
Bro, you can grab any old saw and cut off an end it -takes practically zero knowledge.
Stop bitching about “kids these days”.
More likely, the person either didn’t have a saw or was just lazy. This isn’t a generational issue. Don’t be ageist.
This isn’t a “kids these days” at all. No need for you to be offended.
It was a request to pass on generalist knowledge from generations that had a lot more exposure to it.
I left plenty of room in my statement with conditional language to allow those with knowledge like this to exist regardless of age, but you went and made it all about you.
You literally start off with
Your comment is inherently ageist. Full stop. And by the way, there’s plenty of boomers who never knew how to fix shit.
You didn’t have to, but you made it about entire swaths of generations.
And I’m not wrong in those two paragraphs.
Again, you’re making this all about you. Jist because you might possess a little knowledge you make it a case to exclude anyone offering any to others, and patently this image shows there are some in meed.
Well done.
My opinion not good enough?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210623-generational-amnesia-the-memory-loss-that-harms-the-planet
The only really relevant thing in that article is
The rest of the article isn’t about people forgetting how to mend a fence and generally being incapable.
Again. This fence thing didn’t have to be generational. You. Went. There.
Think about that.
Your’e a real asshole looking for an argument
You skipped right past
And the article goes on beyond the part you quoted to feed your argument to point out that yes, indeed thing are lost between generations. No, they don’t specifically mention fence mending. Generational amnesia is a far broader concept than just how to fix a car.
You went straight for the fight.
You turned an appeal for people to pass knowledge on to those who may not get as much exposure to it as past generations and what…? Fuck you, don’t teach? Everyone knows everything already - apparently you do?
Boomers dying off and you gotta pick a fight with a new generation? I don’t do “kids these days” arguments because they’re stupid, but pot meet kettle, I never intended a generational argument but you certainly made it one.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/07/02/millennials-struggle-to-pass-life-skills-101/
And I don’t even like the fact they singled out millennials. It’s simply knowledge lost over time, not an X vs zoomer thing.