You can be mad at the previous generations but being mad is a hell of a way to live your life. You don’t like something? Join the club. You don’t like it bad enough? Do something about it!
How much do you pay your interns?
I can’t justify being mad at an entire generation. If you knew my father, you couldn’t be mad at him. He’s made a really tiny corner of the world better. He’s paid into SS and isn’t getting all that much out of it and I’ve never heard him bitch. If you can figure out how much of his Medicare you’re paying, personally out of your pocket, I’ll mail you a check for it.
My generation felt EXACTLY the same way. We didn’t create any of the problems we were handed. We thought WE had huge problems with oil. We were staring nuclear war with the USSR in the face. I thought there’d be a nuclear war and/or worldwide socioeconomic chaos by 2000 because of depletion of resources or severe pollution.
The reason things are fucked up is all of us human beings, regardless of political leanings, intelligence, or cultural conditions, are fucked up. We’re selfish, liars, greedy, controlling, stubborn, and irrational. We are simultaneously naive and suspicious and able to smell arrogance or a con. That is NOT going to change. One big reason is that there are always people who will game the system, and sincere but clear-sighted and self-interested people will NOT let themselves be taken advantage of.
Person X thinks the people on the other side are the whole problem and person X’s side is the whole answer? Person X is wrong. And arrogant.
So are you wrong to be pissed off? Yes and no.
Yes, there are many problems, many of which were foreseen but not dealt with.
No, you have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING IDEA how hard it is (read: nearly impossible) to change even the smallest things. You have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING IDEA how common it is for happy, intelligent and otherwise admirable people across the political and cultural spectrums to do whatever satisfies their own interests without caring in the least about the effects.
No, the problems might not be as bad as you think; there may be people who are exaggerating in order to provoke a crisis for their own benefit.
No, we can find solutions, at least temporary ones.
No, solutions can result in problems that very, very few can foresee. For example, banning DDT saved wildlife, but millions of people died of malaria.
In my opinion the most that can be done is to manage the problems. Do the best you can and be humble (easy to say, but very hard to do). You’ll make mistakes of your own and fail to fix other things. Your children and their contemporaries will be just as angry with you as you are with your predecessors.
Well put, RickJay. It is really easy to pick out the bad things prior generations have done, but they must have done something right as we are actually here. Most likely, our descendants will be cursing us for using internal combustion engines and plastic shopping bags.
It would be interesting to see if altruism and personal discount rates have actually changed over time (i.e., attitudes towards “look out for number one today” vs. “take care of future generations”). Sadly, my time machine is in the shop. This darn generation can’t even build a decent one of those… 
I’m far less angry at the individuals who make up the previous generations than I am at the big, faceless THEM who have perverted what were supposed to be honourable, useful governmental systems for their own personal benefit. Instead of working for the good of the people being governed, somehow getting into power became a license to rape and pillage and get whatever you can get out of it. With all of our knowledge and know-how, we should be so much better than this, but we don’t seem to be able to rise above our nature.
I just turned 64, and I’ve noticed that ***every ***generation blames the previous ones . . . and then screws up just as badly, but in different ways. Don’t assume your generation will be any different.
My great-grandparents’ generation left Europe because there was no food, no money and no land to farm. They moved to an unknown part of the world, and found ways to make a living and raise a family.
My grandparents’ generation raised families during the Great Depression and fought during World War II.
My parents’ generation worked for civil rights, sent men to the moon, and supported women’s lib.
All of their efforts were vital to letting me have what I have now.
Which ones am I supposed to be mad at?
Stop looking for someone to be pissed at, and blame things on. Do what you can to make improvements, leave things better then you found them, and hope that future generations don’t feel the same way about you (although they probably will).
I’m reminded of the strange logic I used to have in blaming my parents for my shortcomings. Being the firm determinist that I am, I somehow convinced myself that 1. they gave me my particular set of genes, and 2. they were responsible for my formative experiences which together with my genes shaped me, and because I was not satisfied with who I became (i.e. the kind of person who would even think this stuff) it was all their fault. But extending that logic just one more generation, my parents had no choice how they were born and raised, and they’re as much imperfect products of cosmic coincidence as I am. And so on. So really I had nowhere to lay the blame but in the particular arrangement and parameters of matter set out in the big bang. Now I just try to enjoy the ride.
The last generations have left the world richer, healthier, smarter, cleaner, better fed, better educated and and more peaceful than at any time in the past 10, 000 years. They have also overseen an increase in forest cover and wilderness area for the first time in the past 1, 000 years, an increase in in clean water availability for the first time in 500 years and and a decrease in pollution for the first time in 200 years.
If those are the generations that you are cursing then I have to question what your standards of generational success are. I suspect they are not realistic outside of Disneyland.
The world ain’t perfect girl, but it’s a hell of a lot better thanks to the efforts of the last couple of generations. Let’s see if *your *generation can manage to leave it in a better state than you received it.
They did the best they could with what they had where they were at.
Let it go.
The Feds pay the interns whatever they have decided is the going rate. Besides, what does that have to do with anything? I got paid a big fat ZERO when I was a law clerk (child advocacy) and I still didn’t drop the ball on my assignments like that. I left the kid an interim supervisor/point of contact, my contact information and points of contact with the private sector actor he has to interact with (these are regulatory transactions with major banks).
The reality is that many people, and I’m not just lumping millenials in this group (although they display levels of entitlement above and beyond what can be expected), want something for absolutely nothing. People just want to write “20 million dollar deal” on their resumes but have it appear there like magic, without a single ounce of work done. It’s all well “I want to go to grad school” or “I want to do X” but the minute they figure out some amount of work has to be done-they disappear. Or, if they’re a millenial, have their mom call over to the office. Which, by the way, is a phenomenon my professor friends say is on the rise (sadly).
where generations screw up is not living past their own. if they lived for their affect for a century later it would be different. i’m not saying futurists are valuable (still waiting on flying cars, free energy and meal in pill form). i’m not saying that society should be paralyzed because there isn’t a crystal ball to foretell the exact future.
societies can come out of hard times and have tendencies to both; implement mechanisms to not go there again, live high to get back what they feel they have lost. societies can go through good times thinking that will or should go on forever.
just as people where ankle deep in horse shit the automobile came along. just as urban areas were suffering pollution from decentralized coal fired heating cleaner burning oil was found. just as we were were about to have oil become too expensive for its use as a nonchemical feedstock we: made oil from algae, made electric cars powered by windmills, had wars in the Middle East or somethings other.
societies live with problems or potential problems and figure/hope/guess an easy solution will come in the future.
living more conservatively isn’t an easy deal. social systems have been developed that demand constant growth yet there are problems dealing with the consequences of that. long term social and environmental conditions would likely be better with lower world population, at this point needing zero population growth.
people seem as a whole to not have the foresight or self control to moderate. sometimes governments or societies have implemented partial controls just before a train wreak. people that promote conservative lifestyles are ignored, ridiculed and often decades later found to have had more truth than not.
Aren’t legal interns law school graduates who are waiting on bar results and are on a probationary period?
Along the same lines, I recall the same type of questions as the OP’s being asked about older generations by the younger generation back in the 60s and 70s:
“If you old folks didn’t drive big gas guzzlers, we wouldn’t have an energy crisis. Why didn’t you think of future generations? We young people didn’t create this crisis, but now we have to deal with it.”
“Why are you old folks polluting the ecology? We young people didn’t create problems with the ecology, but now we have to deal with them.” [Side question: when did the word “ecology” fall out of favour, and when did “the environment” take over?]
“Nobody’s hiring because the economy is lousy. Why won’t you old folks retire so new grads can get jobs? We young people didn’t create a crappy economic climate, but now we have to deal with it.”
I don’t know if the OP is justified in being angry at previous generations or not, but her questions aren’t really any different than the ones that have been asked before. Some things change as a result of the questions, and some don’t. And somehow, the world carries on.
My office also hires college students and law students. They’re not doing lawyer work as such, but various research and support tasks.
Late '70s? Seriously? My god, I feel like I’m in a Monty Python routine.
I’m not old, I’m 32!
One guess is that her/my/our (I’m 29) generation ended up dealing with a lot of shifts in growing up. More people go to college (good!) but the costs of going to school have skyrocketed (bad!). The cost of housing in many places (such as the Bay Area) is very high.
Many people a few generations back had better access to jobs that could support families whether they could/wanted to go to college or not. WWII veterans used the GI Bill to help fund/get loans to buy homes and go back to school. Nowadays credit is scarce even for the spendthrift and responsible and it seems like to afford a house you better show up at the bank with a big stuffed bag with a $ sign on it.
It seems like as time goes by the world gets increasingly competitive; which I guess is good from a broad global perspective; but for each individual it can be tough- it means you need more training, more education, etc to do anything that doesn’t involve flipping a hamburger patty.
My paternal great grandparents both worked in the St. Paul Stockyards - think Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” A tough brutal life. But during the depression, when only my great grandfather worked - they were lucky the job was available at all.
My maternal great grandparents farmed. During the depression sixty relatives lived on the farm. They did their best to feed them all.
People who came of age in the U.S. in the 30s and 40s had it rough - depression and war. People who came of age in the 50s and 60s had it pretty good - lots of Union jobs, college became accessible for the middle class. People who came of age in much of the 70s and 80s had it rough - not as rough as the 30s and 40s, but the 70s and 80s had a series of economic crisises that made employment and housing tough. Coming to age in the 90s was a cakewalk for anyone with rudimentary computer skills. But we are now in a rough period again. And your work career spans 40 years - getting a cushion Union job in 1953 didn’t necessarily protect you from plant closings in 1972.
Each generation makes its marks - both positive and negative. This up and coming generation will be the same.
History is a series of two steps forward a step (or two) back. Generally upwards, sometimes backsliding.
But we’re also the first generation where lifespan hasn’t increased (or so I read somewhere).