That is a function of your age, not of your generation.
This is exactly the impression I have from my encounters with kids as well.
And it’s a little weird that this is exactly what was predicted by the guys mentioned above who theorized this generational cycle of “prophets,” “artists,” etc.
Weird because as far as I can tell they had no sensible method for coming up with their cycle or their predictions.
I’ve read Generations and The Fourth Turning, and come to think of it, I can’t recall any statement of method, other than what might be expressed as, “We looked at American/English history from a certain perspective and this is the clear pattern we discerned.” They do have a theory as to how every generation’s upbringing by the previous affects its characteristics, but that’s all an after-the-fact explanation of the pattern.
Well, so what, they’re not even claiming to do falsifiable science, here. (How one would do falsifiable science on this topic is a daunting question.)
Here’s an interesting graphic. When was the highest teen birthrate? In the 60’s with free love and no legal abortion? Nope. The 1950’s peaking in 1957 at 96.3 births per thousand to girls 15-19. By the 60’s it was dropping fast. The drop leveled out a few years after abortion was legalized and then went up late 80’s early 90’s to peak then at a more modest 61.8 in 1991, dropping significantly since.
Why should you be cynical and nilhistic? I can understand some cynicism but nilhism?!?!
In the 1950s, I daresay, a significant number of those teenage girls were married.
After they dropped out of school in “shame”. I recall my mother telling me how about half her female classmates just vanished.
Eh, drop-out rates were in general quite high back then.
No, I was thinking how the average age of first marriage has risen over the years. In the '50s – especially in rural areas – probably there were still a some families where marriage at 16 or so was simply expected.
I agree that the impact of the internet has been underappreciated. But in the 1800s, a large proportion of people could not read at all, and those who could often had access only to a few books and maybe a local newspaper. It took longer, but the difference between that and generally accessible public libraries, TV and radio was probably comparable to the impact of the internet.
Here is where I lose you. I believe the internet tends to magnify the difference between the ignorant and the knowledgeable. People who are ignorant, credulous or fixed in their beliefs, and God knows most people are like this, are becoming more set in their ways because of the internet. One can find the most false and useless information professionally and cleverly presented on the internet. The only way to develop a critical or skeptical point of view is to have a real person demonstrate its value to you, or to compare what you see in the internet to what you see in real life, and draw your conclusions accordingly.
I do think there has always been a tendency for people who start out below a certain level of awareness to become dimmer and dimmer because they learn the wrong lessons from their experiences. For example, a guy plays the lottery and loses, and concludes that his lucky number must be the one that was picked, so he’ll improve his odds by playing that one in the future. I think it’s possible for this to account for the exponential difference between the very able and the totally incompetent.
BG,
There is also this factoid (pdf) to throw into the mix -
Not so sure that living in a society that had kids often ignorant of contraceptive choices, and that made being an unmarried parent so horrible of an option that kids married the first or second person they were unlucky enough to get lucky with rather than suffer that stigma, discounts that high 50’s rate in any meaningful way.
Cheers!!!-One thing I think is happening, though, we have a dissappearance of the quote ‘middle class’ and the kids in the ‘hopelessly poor’ group are growing in numbers, which is very sad…I live in an upper middle community and the kids are amazingly brilliant and make good, fair choices, but I drive through my downtown and there are hundreds of youth that can’t find jobs or any way out—in a way deliquincy for them is ‘fitting in’ and dealing drugs is an ‘avaiable job’. You can’t wash off your social class (the way you talk, dress, present) if you don’t know how, and it creates a viscious circle of these teens not getting hired for real work.
The change in attitude is perhaps put into perspective by the fact that when I graduated high school in 1990, I couldn’t understand why my parents were proud of me. Graduating high school struck me as being no greater an accomplishment than, say, completing the seventh grade, or turning 15, or getting a haircut. Probably 97% of the people I went to high school with graduated and the only ones who didn’t were total losers. I found the pomp and ceremony baffling, although I was looking forward to the party.
But to my parents’ generation it was a bigger deal. Graduating from high school wasn’t something everyone without a drug problem did. My father never finished high school (although he later got a university degree anyway.) To them it WAS a big deal.
You may also find you have a different appreciation for it when it is your own daughter: I also thought graduating high school was pretty “meh”, but man, oh, man, am I proud of my students when they do. It’s not the pride of an unusual accomplishment, it’s the pride of passing a landmark–like pride in a child’s first steps. It’s a moment when you reflect on all the things about that child that you are proud of.