# Am I justified in being angry at previous generations? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 25, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102 "2009-10-25T22:33:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/81 "2009-10-28T18:18:26Z")
I think the past generations coddled our generation and maybe my parents too much. My grandparents had it hard growing up on farms doing chores at 5am, but by the time my youngest aunts and uncles were born they were born into a comfortable upper middle class neighborhood life with few or no responsibilities other than maybe keeping their rooms clean. That’s good they wanted their kids life to be easier than theirs, but it doesn’t really breed a strong work ethic. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/82 "2009-10-28T19:09:25Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > I think the past generations coddled our generation and maybe my parents too much. Every generation since Roman times has complained about this. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/83 "2009-10-28T19:13:39Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Every generation since Roman times has complained about this. I don’t know about _every_ generation, but since WW2 we’ve become such a consuming society, I think the rate of change has definitely increased. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/84 "2009-10-28T19:22:52Z")
Look at it this way: if not for the work of previous generations, you’d have died of dysentery by now. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/85 "2009-10-28T19:29:24Z")
No doubt previous generations have made various mistakes, but would you have done any better? And not you as you are now, raised in your time, but you as you would have been if you had been raised in their time. Equipped with the same knowledge they had, and confronted with the same situations, would you not likely have made the same decisions? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/86 "2009-10-28T20:02:23Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Look at it this way: if not for the work of previous generations, you’d have died of dysentery by now. Fuck Dystentery, she’d have been captured by a neighboring tribe and gang-raped twice daily for the past 15 years of her life. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/87 "2009-10-28T20:03:56Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Every generation since Roman times has complained about this. In all fairness those were written by leisure class aristocrats who had the leisure time to write about such things. And yes, leisure class aristocrats tend to breed lazy no-good leisure class aristocrats. It’s a pretty recent development that we have all become leisure class aristocrats. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/88 "2009-10-28T20:05:13Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Fuck Dystentery, she’d have been captured by a neighboring tribe and gang-raped twice daily for the past 15 years of her life. Well, yeah, but her family would have gotten some goats out of the deal. ---
**Author:** ![ThirdOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@ThirdOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThirdOne)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/89 "2009-10-28T20:24:52Z")
I’m 55. My parents grew up during the “Great Depression.” At 20, during WWII, my dad was captured by the Germans and spent 16 months in a POW camp in Austria. He returned to the U.S., thanked for his service to his country, paid his back wages and turned loose. That generation did without, so their kids weren’t going to. But, they paid cash for everything. If they didn’t have cash, they didn’t buy it. I lived a pretty luxurious childhood and didn’t even know it. The cost of living was a lot lower, too. I remember gas going “up” to 30 cents/gallon for premium and people were outraged at the price hike. Today, we take recycling for granted. I was at the first “Earth Day” in 1970 when we were fighting for that. Companies couldn’t be bothered. It’s taken 30 years to get to this point. We HAVE come a long way over the last 50 years. My role model was a stay-at-home mom, that’s what I looked forward to doing. I didn’t go to college, I got married very young and had a child. She ended up a ‘child of divorce,’ which, by the time I was able to, was a no-fault divorce. Prior to that, you could only divorce for cause. Sure, blame previous generations for the ills of today. Just remember, they did the best they could with what they had. It’s easy to look back and point the finger at the mistakes made. Heh, if I could, I’d probably change things I did when I was younger. But, I did the best I could at the time. I’m sure you are, too. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/90 "2009-10-28T20:49:05Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > I don’t know about _every_ generation, but since WW2 we’ve become such a consuming society, I think the rate of change has definitely increased. There’s an essay I’m looking for, written in the first century AD IIRC, that could have been written today for all the same complaints. Any help? My google-fu is weak today. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/91 "2009-10-28T21:15:28Z")
Well, at least we don’t drive and text at the same time… Hell, I hardly text message at all and I’m only 32. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/92 "2009-10-28T22:42:54Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > There’s an essay I’m looking for, written in the first century AD IIRC, that could have been written today for all the same complaints. Any help? My google-fu is weak today. I think I know the one you’re talking about but it’s probably a hoax. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/93 "2009-10-28T23:02:30Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I was thinking the same thing. I turn 32 in December. I was like, “Wow, my generation hasn’t even inherited the levers of power yet and already I am, ‘the man’.” When they said “Never trust anyone over thirty”, it was as much a cultural declaration as it was a statement of generational conflict. If you were over thirty you probably had a short conservative haircut (if male), listened to “adult-oriented” easy-listening jazz and pop vocalists, and disapproved stridently of things associated with “hippies” but more likely to mark a college student who was, in many ways, still performing the expected duties of college students from time immemorial. In 1968 this actually had some accuracy, although not always; as for example some of the older psychedelic musicians, like Ray Manzarek, were pushing 30 themselves, and then some older cultural icons of the time, like Jack Kerouac, were well past 30. I wish the generation of the 1960s and 1970s would have had the courage to confront population growth, or more specifically, the religious and political opposition to combating it by providing for the wide availability of contraceptives, and the advocating it worldwide. We’re getting swamped in this country as more and more land has to be paved for housing, and our suburban lifestyle gets more and more entrenched. Another problem with overpopulation is that, for those of a certain mindset, when you double the population of California, you don’t get second a Malibu, San Francisco, Santa Monica, or any other of the older desirable places to live. Instead you get a dozen cookie cutter burbs, forty-mile, ninety-minute commutes, and more than twice the effective road congestion, given that the extra drivers have to travel farther and are therefore on the road longer. And in the old places you get stratospheric housing prices. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/94 "2009-10-29T02:08:19Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I think I know the one you’re talking about but it’s probably a hoax. I’ve wondered about that. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/95 "2009-10-29T02:22:31Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > I don’t deny that progress has been made in many ways, but to say that everything prior generations have done is great because we don’t have polio anymore is just flat-out incorrect. Yes, many things are better now than they were in the past, but at the same time, many things are worse. So why are you mad at them? Your generation’s the first perfect one? ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/96 "2009-10-29T02:40:54Z")
You’re tied up in chains your parents made And they were dangling by chains their parents made And they were dangling by chains their parents made… ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/97 "2009-10-29T04:00:05Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, yeah, but her family would have gotten some goats out of the deal. That’s a a few thousand years later in the development of civilization than I was thinking. > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > When they said “Never trust anyone over thirty”, it was as much a cultural declaration as it was a statement of generational conflict. If you were over thirty you probably had a short conservative haircut (if male), listened to “adult-oriented” easy-listening jazz and pop vocalists, and disapproved stridently of things associated with “hippies” but more likely to mark a college student who was, in many ways, still performing the expected duties of college students from time immemorial. In 1968 this actually had some accuracy, although not always; as for example some of the older psychedelic musicians, like Ray Manzarek, were pushing 30 themselves, and then some older cultural icons of the time, like Jack Kerouac, were well past 30. I understand the cultural context of the joke I was making. > [@](#): > > I wish the generation of the 1960s and 1970s would have had the courage to confront population growth, or more specifically, the religious and political opposition to combating it by providing for the wide availability of contraceptives, and the advocating it worldwide. We’re getting swamped in this country as more and more land has to be paved for housing, and our suburban lifestyle gets more and more entrenched. Another problem with overpopulation is that, for those of a certain mindset, when you double the population of California, you don’t get second a Malibu, San Francisco, Santa Monica, or any other of the older desirable places to live. Instead you get a dozen cookie cutter burbs, forty-mile, ninety-minute commutes, and more than twice the effective road congestion, given that the extra drivers have to travel farther and are therefore on the road longer. And in the old places you get stratospheric housing prices. I don’t really understand this obsession. Not because of where it springs but because it’s so dogmatic and completely oblivious to the fact that almost every single nation on the planet that the hippies affected have negative population growth, some to the point where they are facing economic collapse due to the lack of workers in the next generation. In the Western world, where hippies had any impact at all, where society was bourgeois enough to care about such leisure class intellectual pursuits as eugenics as personal ethics, if population growth were any lower you’d basically have no babies being born at all. It’s odd to me that liberals are so obsessed with eugenics and population growth when they don’t stop to think that what they are really saying is that brown/black people are breeding too much, because white people across the entire planet are breeding below replacement rate. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/98 "2009-10-29T04:41:07Z")
Yes, but mostly for politics. I don’t feel the older generation screwed everything up (like others have said areas of social and STEM progress advanced rapidly both domestically and globally in the last 50 years). However, it does bother me when people over 65 complain about welfare or health reform, seeing how they are living off of social security and single payer medicare. But aside from politics, no I’m not really upset with the older generation. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/99 "2009-10-29T05:04:45Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > I think this kind of sums up my thoughts about it, I guess. Things are a mess. It is not my generations fault. We get the choice of ‘continue on this path and make things even worse’ or ‘suck it up and try to undo the damage.’ > > I know it’s pointless to complain about it, but sometimes a little bit of complaining is soothing to the disgruntled soul. Yeah, ancient 33 year old checking in with a ‘suck it up.’ The rest of us are also still here trying to make things better. Your generation is not Atlas. Neither was mine, when we were bitching and moaning about the boomers. And seriously, seriously. The progress I have seen during my life, during an era that had already begun to move on from the worst excesses of racism, gender discrimination, homophobia, and blatant disregard for the environment has been huge. You’re 23? In your lifetime there have been great human rights advances in many countries including the US, and advances in the way the general population views caring for the environment. The economy is a whole other ball of wax - but it’s beyond simplistic to suggest that’s a generational thing. I think it’s a complete waste of your energy to sit around feeling sorry for your generation because you have to soldier on. That’s what life is. Doing what you have to do with what you’ve got. Which is a damn sight more than what most people have had during human history. I mean, Jesus. The dentistry alone. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102/100 "2009-10-29T05:10:56Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m going with (B). I’m 27 and have lived in the USA all my life, and it seems obvious to me that I am a member of the most fortunate group of people to ever live. For the one thing, I and my peers take for granted that we will always have food, water, housing, electricity, heat and air conditioning, sewers (you can’t appreciate flush toilets properly until you’ve tried living without them), cars, paved roads, clothing, schooling, police protection, fire protection, and everything else that makes for a comfortable life. That alone is enough that we ought to spend several hours a day thanking our elders for what we’ve inherited. Most people who ever lived did not have these things. Most people alive today do not have these things. None of these things happen by accident. Millions of people must labor hard every day so that we can eat what we want. Uncountable amounts of money and effort went into our roads, our electric grid, and our sewers. Quality police and fire departments do not appear by accident. Everything that we have comes down to us because of the hard work of our parents and grandparents and the generations that came before. > > But in addition to taking the necessities for granted, ours is the first generation to take the luxuries for granted. The most obvious example is entertainment. Many of us carry around thousands of songs, movies, and TV shows on our computers, a large percentage of which was flatly stolen via file-sharing networks. How many of us ever stop to think how unusual this is? Twenty years ago, 20 video tapes was a huge movie collection. Same with college education. The amounts of financial aid we get are huge compared with what our parents got. We live in bigger houses (or ritzier condos). We drive better cars. We eat out more often. We buy new clothes more often. We take longer, more impressive vacations. We have vastly more of everything than any earlier generation ever had, and we’ve done much less work to get it. To say that “everything is screwed up” vastly underestimates the number of things that can be screwed up. Not to denigrate those advances, but virtually every geographic region on earth saw massive advances in infrastructure, wealth, civil and human rights as well as standard of living. So those advances are important and good, but people all over the world have fought for them. They are important and laudable when they happen in the US, but improving your lot and the world so your children have a better chance is something all humans do. As an example, 30 years ago most of south and central america was made up of military dictatorships. Now almost all of the nations are liberal democracies. During the 1980s clean drinking water and sanitation infrastructure was built for an additional billion people. Rates of severe global poverty were cut in half in the last few decades and primary education enrollment went up in the world. China has lifted over 200 million people out of poverty. Medical advances have been made all over the world. The part about vacations isn’t necessarily true however in the US. People work more hours than they did decades ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-justified-in-being-angry-at-previous-generations/515102.md?page=6)