In the past they would’ve been old and grumpy and then died before they could cause real problems. Now with old people living longer than ever they can fuck things up for the rest of us.
I know this is a political post, but I’m going to respond to the longevity part
Telomeres in the human genome would indicate the maximal lifespan of about 120 years.
I don’t think it’s normal for humans to become diminished as they age. Dementia, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, these are not historic problems. These are new plagues of prosperity that we’re dealing with in the modern context.
Something with our industrial food system, or our medical system, or are farming system… Is making old age less graceful then it could be.
My new life goal: live long, die fast.
Partly
No. Young people can be just as fucking stupid.
Look at dipshits like “Big Balls.” Only 19 and doing their best to fuck up the country. They also think “big balls” is a cool nickname.
I don’t blame Big Balls. If I was 18-19 and the richest man on earth asked me to fix the government with him, I don’t think I would have turned him down. Kids aren’t known for their judgement skills.
Really curious what ever came of the 4chan breach.
My pet conspiracy theory is that 4chan was used for psyops…manipulating teenagers/20-somethings, breeding the whole incel/mens rights shit, and using it as a megaphone for Trump…and the admins were in on it.
I’m more talking about material conditions. Older people need more and produce less and if you’re a young person today you have more older people to support than ever before. On top of that a growing older population is a growing population with a vested interest in not changing society. My rhetorical question is deliberately inflammatory but I do honestly think that the average lifespan has grown faster than our society’s ability to adapt to an ageing population and young people will be the ones most impacted.
Humans required tribes and close-knit communities to survive up until extremely recently in our evolutionary history. The last few hundred years massively shifted how where and how we see our identities and tribes, and what information is available. Modern social media and algorithm-based content has taken advantage of this in a huge way. People are not taught proper critical thinking and are not immunized against disinformation. Our ancient brains still think losing our tribe as being sentenced to loneliness, danger, and death. The opinions and actions of many are now more public than ever and there is more pressure there as well.
Thats great, what’s your point
That these elements are a greater cause of societal problems today than people living longer.
If anything, living longer will give people better perspective.
Source: At 30 I had a much more nuanced perspective of just about anything than I did at 20. And I bet most people would say the same. Partly just from experience, but also because I was able to read a lot more about any subject, such as things like Studs Terkel’s “Hard Times”, or understand the complexities of WWII better, and how today is very much a result of it.
And I’ve read even more since then. By now I’ve spent more time reading than I had the hours to read, let alone the background, at age 20.
Pitting young against old, black against white, and one religion against another, sowing discord among people… you reap what you sow … yet …
Even though many young are less able than older folks, this trend of electing old senile men should by stopped.
Old senile men elected by old senile people.
Unfortunately many young also voted for “Tramp” … please don’t try to divide people solely by age.
Americans in general voted for trump
No.
Our problems are caused by capitalism. Yes. Literally all of them. Anything you can think of.
That isn’t to say that the would would be a utopia without it. But it would be a lot closer than it currently is.
Stubs toe
“Fucking Capitalism”
Well, Mr Smartypants, if it weren’t for capitalism you would’ve had to make that chair/table leg yourself so then you’d only have yourself to blame which is the same as having no one to blame!
I didn’t choose to be born and raised to eventually get an idea to build what caused me harm!
This is clearly the fault of my parents, and bob the builder!
Capitalism is not a cause, it is an effect. It is not the disease, it is a symptom.
The root problem is selfishness. Capitalism is like a Plato’s cave shadow of selfishness - a projection of selfishness onto politics and economic policy.
No, capitalism is a system that encourages and rewards greed and lack of empathy. It is directly part of the problem.
Yes, it is part of the problem… the symptom part.
You’re saying, “There’s a monster that’s killing people.” I’m saying, “Yes, but you’re pointing at its foot. We need to aim for the head.”
You’ll never get rid of the problem by trying to address capitalism in isolation. Even if you were successful, the problem would simply return under a new label.
Well why are we struggling to move away from capitalism? Perhaps a disproportionately large older generation with an entrenched interest in maintaining the status quo?
While I played up the title for engagement bait I do think there is something to say about an aging population smothering its youngest simply by virtue of demanding more resources than it produces.
No
No
Possibly the opposite.
There were plenty of little Nazi groups around the United States before and after WW2, but they weren’t allowed in polite company after the war. Not even among conservatives. Some of them stuck around using anti-communisim as a cover, but they were usually asked to leave if the mask slipped too much.
The Greatest Generation fought Nazis, and they weren’t going to let overt ones have any political power. They may not have had sophisticated ideas about what a fascism is (Ur-fascism wasn’t even published until 1995, most people still haven’t read it, and it’s not even the final word on the subject), but they weren’t going to ally themselves with overtly ideological ones.
The Greatest Generation is also dead enough that it no longer has much political power. Just the situation the mask-off fascists have been waiting for.
The implication that conservatism and right wing ideology is a young people’s game is hilarious to me.
Truly the progressive left wing socialist elderly will save us
No. There are no simple anecdotes like this.
One of our biggest problems is cultural across the entire West. We have a mindset like we are at some final state of technology and extraction of wealth is acceptable. It largely stems from unchecked inherited wealth. Meritocracy is critical for success in any system. Inherited wealth will always cause stagnation and decline because intelligence and business acumen are not inherited traits. For example, Donald Trump is worth far less now than if he had taken his vast inheritance, bought government bonds, and stayed on Epstein island permanently.
When you’re young, such ideas about the burden of others lack perspective. Your view will change as those around you that you care about face the probabilities of life poorly and you notice the injustices they encounter where the social safety net is their only lifeline. If you do not develop to the point of such depth of self awareness, you’re likely to be the one in need of assistance eventually.
Globally our biggest problems are cultural. West vs. East rhetoric should have been left in Ancient Greece.
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It is really ignorant to assume that 1) All “Western” culture is the same and 2) “Eastern” culture doesn’t have numerous issues itself.
The point is the problem is cultural globally. Everyone has problems, and they are all rooted in their cultures.
I am already the one in need of assistance. I am part of the first generation of Australians to be poorer than their parents. And the burden of the elderly is only expected to grow as I age. For most people my age their main prospects are the inheritances from their parents that is sure to come later and worth less. I think there is something to say about the expected lifespan of people growing faster than the cultural changes needed to support an on average older population.
I was disabled by a terrible driver at 29 while riding a bicycle to work. That was 11 years ago. When my folks die, I will die shortly thereafter because I face homelessness in an impossible system in the USA. There is direct evidence of people taking care if the disabled and elderly in the remains of ancient humans many tens of thousands of years ago. If we cannot rise to the standards of prehistoric people living in caves, perhaps none of us has a right to exist.
Eh I’m not in the US so my situation is different from yours. Modern welfare systems are more comprehensive than anything seen before in human history, I support them. I pay more for groceries than my parents did in rent when they were my age. My parents never had to pay for a university education while I have accumulated more debt than them before getting a full time job than they did until they started getting mortgages. And I am gonna have to deal with the economic slump of supporting their and my grandparents retirement. Our societies aren’t built to support aging populations. My retirement plans are death or moving to a low income country.
It was much the same nearly 20 years ago too. My folks got their first house for less than $100k. I barely scraped by with my business painting cars around 04-06. I went back to it around 07 and did alright until used car lots flat lined for 3 months straight in late 08. I never recovered from the criminal shit the banks did to real estate and fucked the economy. I tried to gt a good job but stuff like an apprenticeship with a local Union had 3k+ applicants show up for 15 positions. I would have been 3rd generation and work my ass off but it did nothing. I did the Los Angeles Fire Department interview one time. They literally use the Long Beach convention center’s basement level to do the first two stages. The first stage had over 10k people show up to take the written test. I made it to the last 600, but they filtered on EMT experience and that cut me in the second to last before the fire academy. When I worked in the bike shops as a Buyer for a chain, everyone working there had a university degree but me. Such is life here. Nothing is made here so it is a race to the bottom. And this is as good as it gets in the USA. I have lived mostly in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia but south of LA now. The rest of the country is much worse than here.
So, like, in the book Logans Run, the cutoff was age 21. In the movie this was raised to 30.
But, then they found out people could live to be old, and everybody wanted this.
I think wanting to live long and being frustrated at an ageing population are two entirely different thoughts
Sounds like cognitive dissonance.
I’m glad you know the buzz words. Good for you. The next step is understanding how to use them :)
It’s just a concept, Im flexible.
Honestly, and surprisingly, it’s the older people who have the most decency nowadays, from what I’ve seen … A lot of people around my age (30-ish) and many, many younger than me seem to be exhibiting something akin to sociopathic tendencies.
I’m not talking about politics or other such grand scale stuff, I’m talking day-to-day interactions. More and more new neighbors are demonstrating a complete lack of respect for others in their neighborhoods, playing loud music at ungodly hours, parading around in their overrevved cars with the bass thumping directly into your brain stem, younger people (30-40 and below) are far more impatient in traffic, far more self-absorbed, self-concerned, and egotistic. Of course, the older people aren’t all good, with outdated and regressive mentalities still flourishing among their ranks, but in terms of habitual decency, they’re in the lead…
These are all purely personal observations, of course, but I genuinely think an innate sense of respecting other people’s existence has been diminishing, if not entirely lost generation to generation.
These can, of course, all be tracked all the way back to the voracious consumerism engendered by Capitalism. The main symptoms are not clustered around older people, though.
You only see it that way because of your age. Old people have mostly aged out of those behaviors, but believe me, people have been doing all of those things you list for as long as the technology to do them has.
I’m sorry to say, but I disagree. I remember older people having been more respectful ever since I became aware of the world around me, even those only slightly older than myself.
I used to hang out with the “older kids” during high-school, Seniors and beyond, and these groups have been calmer and more polite, even when out drinking and doing stupid things.
On the flipside, the generations immediately after mine started behaving like… well, like animals early on… I still remember entering a 6th grade class while I was in the 8th and witnessing one of the students being hit in the head with a chair. I knew most of my generational peers and can tell you with absolute certainty that no such thing ever happened for as long as I was in school with them.
This extended throughout University as well, as the dorm in which I was staying got a lot (I mean, a LOT) noisier and more chaotic, to the point where the surroinding neighbours started calling the police pretty much regularly, because the freshmen were throwing mattresses and fridges out the window (literally). Edit to add: the worst we ever did during the three years I spent there (I’m talking my generation and those above us) was play the guitar a bit too loudly while hanging around in the hallway, sharing cheap beer.
And it goes for what I’ve said about neighbourhoods, too, the only people pumping music and constantly yelling at all hours are usually teenagers, students, or people my age. Most 40s and above can barely be heard after 10PM. I’ve never heard as much noise in the neighbourhoods in which I’ve lived throughout my life (I moved around a lot) until about 6-7 years ago. Everything got WAY worse starting with the tail end of the Lockdowns, too…
