Over the weekend, I went to my in-laws for a (pre) 4th of July party. One of the other guests was holding forth on the theme of “kids these days” and on “how nobody takes responsibility for themselves anymore.” It occurred to me that I’ve been hearing various individuals bellyache about these themes all my life. In fact, I suspect that folks have been grousing about “kids these days” and the demise of personal responsibility as long as there have been kids.
I can’t imagine there was a time when elders were saying, “you know, kids these days sure are more responsible than we ever were.” Following the logic of these complaints, human society has been in an unrelenting state of entropy since the dawn of time which was obviously some sort of perfect society. That’s obviously hogwash. Through the generations, I figure there has been a better than even chance that any one of these bellyaching elders were just plain wrong. Just a word of warning too look out for crotchety old men trying to pass such crap off as wisdom.
Watch it, Doug – those “crotchety old men [and women]” will soon be us.
I enjoy saying “damn kids!” as often as possible, even though I’m barely old enough to be considered an elder anything.
On an unrelated topic: did you pick up Saturday’s J&C to see the Buddhi blogger reaction story? You made it in, but for some weird reason the story didn’t run online. Um.
It was online somewhere. My wife found the link. But, I didn’t see it anywhere obvious on the J&C website. I didn’t mind too much — my reaction was fairly wishy-washy since I don’t know too much about the precise crimes Buddhi was charged with.
Ah, here is the link.
I finally found it in the daily archives! I swear it wasn’t there before. The reporter who wrote the story e-mailed me a link to it earlier this afternoon so I could bask in its online glory. Or something.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority. They show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They contadict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrranise teachers”
Socrates, 5th Century B.C.