I agree with this for the most part, but there is one downside. And that is the danger of what we are seeing now: When people accept that the bridge has been built and can be used and taken as a fact, they must not forget that it needs to be maintained or it will eventually collapse and people will be back to square one. The same is true for things like vaccination programs and liberal democratic constitutions and alliances and rules based international orders.
Yes, it is a triumph when a new generation no longer needs the survival skills their forebears needed, but it dangerous if they take too much for granted about the world into which they have been born. Just because something is normal does not mean it is necessarily natural.
you're rasing an excellent point Gary 🙏😊 you're quite right, we cannot take many good things in life for granted. We can appreciate the people who built the bridge while also making sure we keep maintaining it. otherwise every generation ends up relearning the same painful lessons. Thank you for this thoughtful addition, I appreciate it!
I thought the exact same thing, especially re. vaccines and medical advances like Vitamin K shots for newborns. Now we have the resurgence of diseases that were practically extinct, and preventable deaths, because people took that for granted and didn't think they had to maintain it.
What’s wrong with having the skills and not needing them. I would have never thought that Gen Z would be the ones screaming their heads off about blown up babies, money laundering, national debt but they are. I thought they were lost in the phone. They were watching the world in real time and didn’t like what they saw. I wholeheartedly support these young people who realize that this is going to drop in their lap if they don’t help stop it.
This is why keeping an accurate history and teaching history is important so we continue to improve and move forward learning from our mistakes. Otherwise, humanity is doomed to keep repeating mistakes, wars, economic failures, public health failures every other generation…
I was building on Pelle's use if bridge in his original post of the bridge for challenges overcome that enable subsequent generations to push on to even further progress. Vaccines are a perfect example. Measles was declared extinct in the USA in 2000, and now we have bigger and bigger outbreaks every year.
And what happens inside the US doesn't stay in US. The CDC acted as a sort of rapid response team any time there was an outbreak of Ebola or another infectious disease in many parts of the world. Now that the US administration has abolished that office, a virus that would normally have sprung into action when it appeared in a single digit number of cases, became an epidemic in Central and East Africa and in parts of the United States before the cause was even identified.
Every generation just wants the next to feel guilty. Parents work hard so their kids can have an easier life and then complain that their kids have an easier life. Pick a side!
I remember sharing my teenage observations with my grandmother. I believed I saw the world with great clarity. She gently reminded me of my naivety. I never felt foolish, just a little more aware that my perspective came from a place of youth and inexperience.
You write well. Your arguments are well developed, creative and a touch whimsical.
From my place of advanced age and world experience, having mothered children and grandchildren, my filters include reading your article from the perspectives of children of entitled cultures, financially secure cultures, cultures without food or housing insecurities. There are more perspectives and more filters.
A question you might ask yourself is, IF the previous generation did such a stellar job why are so many people from so many nations protesting within their own countries and globally? Why are these multigenerational protesters drawing on generational histories to back up their protests?
Ahh I appreciate this comment ❤️ and yes, this is exactly why I tried not to make it an “old vs young” thing. It’s way more messy than that 😂 One generation sees what they carried. Another sees what still needs changing. Both are looking at something real
I’d love to be around 50 years from now when you revisit this article. I don’t see it as a young vs old thing at all. I see it as a perspectives thing. And I do appreciate your perspective. Very refreshing 😁
Brilliant analysis. Sadly, we are rapidly reversing course, and our youth are not prepared. Now they do need the skills life did not shape them for, The rich have happily eaten the economy and left ordinary people the tiniest of scraps.
Yes, I agree with you Roger. sadly our youth are not prepared. Whatever happens next, I think older generations still have a responsibility to help the younger ones. every generation inherits a world they didn't create. the least we can do is help them find their footing in it
My mother tried to help me for 30 years until she died. I have also been trying to help myself, of course, and it sort of worked for some time. I cannot keep up with this avalanche of galloping gratuitous nonsense though. I am unfit to survive and unable to help my children.
This really made me think about how often we confuse healing with weakness. Perhaps the next generation is not softer because they are incapable of carrying pain, but because someone before them carried enough of it to finally say, this should not be normal. Lovely writing 😋
Ahh thank you ❤️ I love that you used the word healing because I think that’s exactly where the conversation changes. Strength isn’t only surviving the wound, but making sure nobody after you has to carry the same one
My dad sometimes would tell me about how he grew up , tough times produced tough men , he was born in 1908 + was a young married man with 2 babies all through the “ Great Depression “ he worked long hard days often 14 hrs a day 6 days a week ! So I grew up knowing what work was because he instilled it in me and I to my kids but there it ended society had become the “ make love not war “ generation and then the “ flower generation “ each succeeding one got less tough now we have a “ lost generation “ times are changing sadly !
Your dad sounds like a remarkable man ❤️ 14 hour days, six days a week, raising kids during the Depression… honestly most of us can’t even imagine that anymore. And I think that’s part of the point. The people who lived through those times helped create a world where many of us don’t have to live that way. the strange thing is that success sometimes makes the struggle invisible
I remember my wife and I discussing our early life together in front of our teenage daughter and she said to us “wow dad and mom! How did you guys manage to do all that stuff?! She realized how difficult it was to work and go to school while caring for a young child and I was touched that she saw how much effort we put into making life good for all of us and how she was sheltered from these hardships and allowed to just enjoy her childhood just like my wife and I with our own parents struggles and the generations before them. Each allowing their children to just be kids and enjoy that part of their lives.
The “flower generation” you’re talking about are now the Boomers lol! And then we moved right into that category of “when I was your age……” and repeating those sometimes fake stories over and over. Sue Rumack Life Debunked I love your talks with your own grandmother 💜 It sounds like she just knew the right way to talk with her granddaughter where you were comfortable just learning without feeling lectured or belittled 💕
Yes that “ flower generation “ hippies making love not war ! One of the most important connections we have to the past is what our parents past on to us on how they grew up . Btw the Baby Boomers are the generation who lived thru Korean War + Vietnam + getting under our school desk + put our hands over our heads to survive the A Bomb ! 😂😂😂 !
My wife and I are technically in the tail end that generation but we both felt like we missed out on the true experience of the resistance and what the positive side of the hippie movement stood for but now it seems like history is repeating itself so we are now afforded the opportunity to go to rallies and protest the Facist regime that has taken control… be careful what you wish for ?
It depends on who you’re calling the Facists ? If it’s President. Trump then you truly don’t know what Fascism is ! If it’s Democratic Politicians + the MSM then you are seeing + living in the Fascist. World they want to create here in America .
I really like the distinction between surviving a world and improving it. Every generation mistakes the skills required by its own environment for universal virtues. But if children no longer need exactly the same forms of resilience, that may be the strongest evidence that their parents succeeded.
The goal of progress isn't to produce tougher people forever—it's to make unnecessary toughness less necessary....
The problem is, it accelerates beyond our adaptability as we approach the singularity. And only unicellular organisms adapt faster than we do, but they will probably hit their limits quite soon too 🕳️
I liked Gary Holtzmann’’s point that we need to stay vigilant and maintain the advances. The key to that is education and exposure to outside cultures. We need to value and reward good education, and make sure our children travel and learn about the wider world. I love that so many young Aussies do a “walk-about” and spend time
traveling and working in other countries. That should be a part of everyone’s education. But we should teach world history, geography and Civics like they really matter, because they do.
Agree but there's a dimension missing here: rites of passage.
Men and elders guiding boys into adulthood, initiating them into what it means to be a man, marking the end of boyhood. Indigenous cultures held this as ritual. Western societies did it more informally, boys working alongside men in the fields, the forest, the trade, learning by proximity and correction.
Rites of passage weren't hardship the environment imposed. They were structure a culture built on purpose, to produce a particular kind of man: one who could carry weight without needing an audience for it, who knew where his edges were because someone older had tested them, who could stand next to men and be corrected without collapsing, and who eventually became the one doing the correcting.
That's largely gone now. Boys grow into male bodies without ever being told, by someone whose word carries weight, that boyhood has ended and something is now expected of them. What replaces the old suffering isn't visible in the same way. It shows up as men who are physically adult and still, psychologically, waiting for permission to start.
I really like this perspective. I wasn't thinking about rites of passage when I wrote the essay, but I can absolutely see how they fit into the bigger picture. thank you for sharing this 🙏😊 I agree with you that this is something that is missing these days
The inherent fragility of the artificial technological reality in which a plurality of contemporary humanity dwells renders essential the revival of routine instruction in those survival skills the acquisition of which safeguarded and ennobled our stalwart predecessors.
Evolving human incapacitation, born of technological advancement, is not something to be celebrated.
that's an interesting way of putting it. I think technology has made us incredibly capable in some ways, and a little less capable in others. right now, it seems this balance is going in the wrong direction
By its very nature, technological development is a duel edged sword. It is rendered so by the spiritual, moral, ethical, intellectual, philosophical, ideological and sociocultural incapacitation of fallen humanity.
No immediately discernible evidence exists to convincingly demonstrate to me that an ennoblement of the constituents of the human race is resulting from the head long development of information technology that has occurred over the course of the past several decades.
Readily discernibly, it has been serving to, in profound senses, debilitate the constituents of the human race, not to wholesomely elevate them.
"The betrayal begins the moment a generation decides the work is finished."
I loved this sentence, and I couldn't agree more with your article.
Yet I can't help thinking that the answer to your title lies in a darker corner of human nature—one we may not dare to talk about: envy.
To me, as you said, unless the next generation decides the work is finished, the previous generation has no right to criticize them. Otherwise, it may sometimes reflect envy—perhaps even envy of their own children, who no longer have to endure what they once did.
My reason is that anyone who looks beyond our more primitive instincts can probably see, as you also pointed out, that every generation faces challenges of its own. Each generation inherits the world from the one before it, dreams of something better, and works toward a better future. In turn, it tries to leave a better world for the next generation. That's how history has always moved forward.
Perhaps that's why this recurring criticism of younger generations has always carried the scent of envy for me.
Of course, I realize I'm speaking in broad terms here. There are certainly many specific issues in today's world that may give legitimacy to some of the older generation's criticisms of the younger one.
But far too often, in the middle of all this noise, everyone gets painted with the same brush.
thanks for sharing your perspective brother 🙏 I think you're probably right that it's rarely just one thing. fear, nostalgia, pride, envy... human nature has a funny way of mixing them all together. that's what makes these patterns so interesting
Yeah well maybe 🤔 But I think what is happening right now is against the norms based on the past’s history of adaptation and change. Claims of poverty and hunger that just aren’t true. Claims of persecution that aren’t true.
Hate not because of religion or race as in the past,just hate for anyone that disagrees with the soapbox anyone is speaking from. The problem appears to be everyone is the enemy in the undeclared societal war. I am he As you are me And we are all together.
This universal all-encompassing hate is not a natural emergency—it is invented and orchestrated by the ruling class so that we never notice while we keep fighting each other. Hatred makes you blind, and that is the whole point of it.
I agree with this for the most part, but there is one downside. And that is the danger of what we are seeing now: When people accept that the bridge has been built and can be used and taken as a fact, they must not forget that it needs to be maintained or it will eventually collapse and people will be back to square one. The same is true for things like vaccination programs and liberal democratic constitutions and alliances and rules based international orders.
Yes, it is a triumph when a new generation no longer needs the survival skills their forebears needed, but it dangerous if they take too much for granted about the world into which they have been born. Just because something is normal does not mean it is necessarily natural.
you're rasing an excellent point Gary 🙏😊 you're quite right, we cannot take many good things in life for granted. We can appreciate the people who built the bridge while also making sure we keep maintaining it. otherwise every generation ends up relearning the same painful lessons. Thank you for this thoughtful addition, I appreciate it!
I thought the exact same thing, especially re. vaccines and medical advances like Vitamin K shots for newborns. Now we have the resurgence of diseases that were practically extinct, and preventable deaths, because people took that for granted and didn't think they had to maintain it.
What’s wrong with having the skills and not needing them. I would have never thought that Gen Z would be the ones screaming their heads off about blown up babies, money laundering, national debt but they are. I thought they were lost in the phone. They were watching the world in real time and didn’t like what they saw. I wholeheartedly support these young people who realize that this is going to drop in their lap if they don’t help stop it.
This is why keeping an accurate history and teaching history is important so we continue to improve and move forward learning from our mistakes. Otherwise, humanity is doomed to keep repeating mistakes, wars, economic failures, public health failures every other generation…
Interesting leap from infrastructure maintenance to “vaccination programs.” I’d like to hear how Gary considers them similar.
I was building on Pelle's use if bridge in his original post of the bridge for challenges overcome that enable subsequent generations to push on to even further progress. Vaccines are a perfect example. Measles was declared extinct in the USA in 2000, and now we have bigger and bigger outbreaks every year.
And what happens inside the US doesn't stay in US. The CDC acted as a sort of rapid response team any time there was an outbreak of Ebola or another infectious disease in many parts of the world. Now that the US administration has abolished that office, a virus that would normally have sprung into action when it appeared in a single digit number of cases, became an epidemic in Central and East Africa and in parts of the United States before the cause was even identified.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."
-Socrates
exactly. the ancient Greek philosophers were already complaining about young people. this phenomem is probably as old as humanity itself 😊
Every generation just wants the next to feel guilty. Parents work hard so their kids can have an easier life and then complain that their kids have an easier life. Pick a side!
And stop enabling them!
I guess I’m a 63 year old child then … except the part of disrespecting my elders I’m in the youth of my old age still…
I remember sharing my teenage observations with my grandmother. I believed I saw the world with great clarity. She gently reminded me of my naivety. I never felt foolish, just a little more aware that my perspective came from a place of youth and inexperience.
You write well. Your arguments are well developed, creative and a touch whimsical.
From my place of advanced age and world experience, having mothered children and grandchildren, my filters include reading your article from the perspectives of children of entitled cultures, financially secure cultures, cultures without food or housing insecurities. There are more perspectives and more filters.
A question you might ask yourself is, IF the previous generation did such a stellar job why are so many people from so many nations protesting within their own countries and globally? Why are these multigenerational protesters drawing on generational histories to back up their protests?
From a grandmother’s perspective.
Ahh I appreciate this comment ❤️ and yes, this is exactly why I tried not to make it an “old vs young” thing. It’s way more messy than that 😂 One generation sees what they carried. Another sees what still needs changing. Both are looking at something real
I’d love to be around 50 years from now when you revisit this article. I don’t see it as a young vs old thing at all. I see it as a perspectives thing. And I do appreciate your perspective. Very refreshing 😁
it was indeed not a young vs old thing at all! we all need each other. and the world obviously needs both ❤️
Perfect! “Old people knowin’”
I resemble that remark and no... that wasn't a typo.
Brilliant analysis. Sadly, we are rapidly reversing course, and our youth are not prepared. Now they do need the skills life did not shape them for, The rich have happily eaten the economy and left ordinary people the tiniest of scraps.
Yes, I agree with you Roger. sadly our youth are not prepared. Whatever happens next, I think older generations still have a responsibility to help the younger ones. every generation inherits a world they didn't create. the least we can do is help them find their footing in it
My mother tried to help me for 30 years until she died. I have also been trying to help myself, of course, and it sort of worked for some time. I cannot keep up with this avalanche of galloping gratuitous nonsense though. I am unfit to survive and unable to help my children.
This really made me think about how often we confuse healing with weakness. Perhaps the next generation is not softer because they are incapable of carrying pain, but because someone before them carried enough of it to finally say, this should not be normal. Lovely writing 😋
Ahh thank you ❤️ I love that you used the word healing because I think that’s exactly where the conversation changes. Strength isn’t only surviving the wound, but making sure nobody after you has to carry the same one
It’s not normal but it’s the way it is. What, today would you consider normal?
All these heads in the sand confirm that it is not normal, it’s intimidating and the head stays in the sand.
My dad sometimes would tell me about how he grew up , tough times produced tough men , he was born in 1908 + was a young married man with 2 babies all through the “ Great Depression “ he worked long hard days often 14 hrs a day 6 days a week ! So I grew up knowing what work was because he instilled it in me and I to my kids but there it ended society had become the “ make love not war “ generation and then the “ flower generation “ each succeeding one got less tough now we have a “ lost generation “ times are changing sadly !
Your dad sounds like a remarkable man ❤️ 14 hour days, six days a week, raising kids during the Depression… honestly most of us can’t even imagine that anymore. And I think that’s part of the point. The people who lived through those times helped create a world where many of us don’t have to live that way. the strange thing is that success sometimes makes the struggle invisible
I remember my wife and I discussing our early life together in front of our teenage daughter and she said to us “wow dad and mom! How did you guys manage to do all that stuff?! She realized how difficult it was to work and go to school while caring for a young child and I was touched that she saw how much effort we put into making life good for all of us and how she was sheltered from these hardships and allowed to just enjoy her childhood just like my wife and I with our own parents struggles and the generations before them. Each allowing their children to just be kids and enjoy that part of their lives.
The “flower generation” you’re talking about are now the Boomers lol! And then we moved right into that category of “when I was your age……” and repeating those sometimes fake stories over and over. Sue Rumack Life Debunked I love your talks with your own grandmother 💜 It sounds like she just knew the right way to talk with her granddaughter where you were comfortable just learning without feeling lectured or belittled 💕
Yes that “ flower generation “ hippies making love not war ! One of the most important connections we have to the past is what our parents past on to us on how they grew up . Btw the Baby Boomers are the generation who lived thru Korean War + Vietnam + getting under our school desk + put our hands over our heads to survive the A Bomb ! 😂😂😂 !
My wife and I are technically in the tail end that generation but we both felt like we missed out on the true experience of the resistance and what the positive side of the hippie movement stood for but now it seems like history is repeating itself so we are now afforded the opportunity to go to rallies and protest the Facist regime that has taken control… be careful what you wish for ?
Absolutely! I will see you out there 👍
“Lost generation”. Finely put!
Yes Pelle your right about struggle and success . In times gone by it took both to be successful at any level .
It depends on who you’re calling the Facists ? If it’s President. Trump then you truly don’t know what Fascism is ! If it’s Democratic Politicians + the MSM then you are seeing + living in the Fascist. World they want to create here in America .
I really like the distinction between surviving a world and improving it. Every generation mistakes the skills required by its own environment for universal virtues. But if children no longer need exactly the same forms of resilience, that may be the strongest evidence that their parents succeeded.
The goal of progress isn't to produce tougher people forever—it's to make unnecessary toughness less necessary....
yes, you've got that exactly right. beautifully said brother 😊🤍🙏
Times are changing undoubtedly, but we as human beings adapt, align and accept as things change
Very good post as always pelle
The problem is, it accelerates beyond our adaptability as we approach the singularity. And only unicellular organisms adapt faster than we do, but they will probably hit their limits quite soon too 🕳️
thank you dear 🤍🙏😊 yes, you've got that right
I liked Gary Holtzmann’’s point that we need to stay vigilant and maintain the advances. The key to that is education and exposure to outside cultures. We need to value and reward good education, and make sure our children travel and learn about the wider world. I love that so many young Aussies do a “walk-about” and spend time
traveling and working in other countries. That should be a part of everyone’s education. But we should teach world history, geography and Civics like they really matter, because they do.
Amen❤️🙏🏻❤️
We don’t get this cranial in the UK but I get it x 🇬🇧
Jeez Louise - this is well deeep! 🇬🇧
Agree but there's a dimension missing here: rites of passage.
Men and elders guiding boys into adulthood, initiating them into what it means to be a man, marking the end of boyhood. Indigenous cultures held this as ritual. Western societies did it more informally, boys working alongside men in the fields, the forest, the trade, learning by proximity and correction.
Rites of passage weren't hardship the environment imposed. They were structure a culture built on purpose, to produce a particular kind of man: one who could carry weight without needing an audience for it, who knew where his edges were because someone older had tested them, who could stand next to men and be corrected without collapsing, and who eventually became the one doing the correcting.
That's largely gone now. Boys grow into male bodies without ever being told, by someone whose word carries weight, that boyhood has ended and something is now expected of them. What replaces the old suffering isn't visible in the same way. It shows up as men who are physically adult and still, psychologically, waiting for permission to start.
I really like this perspective. I wasn't thinking about rites of passage when I wrote the essay, but I can absolutely see how they fit into the bigger picture. thank you for sharing this 🙏😊 I agree with you that this is something that is missing these days
Happy it landed. I checked your other essays and good thoughts and writing. Subscribed.
thanks brother! 🙏 I appreciate it. i always love seeing to what thoughts an essay may lead people 😊
The inherent fragility of the artificial technological reality in which a plurality of contemporary humanity dwells renders essential the revival of routine instruction in those survival skills the acquisition of which safeguarded and ennobled our stalwart predecessors.
Evolving human incapacitation, born of technological advancement, is not something to be celebrated.
that's an interesting way of putting it. I think technology has made us incredibly capable in some ways, and a little less capable in others. right now, it seems this balance is going in the wrong direction
By its very nature, technological development is a duel edged sword. It is rendered so by the spiritual, moral, ethical, intellectual, philosophical, ideological and sociocultural incapacitation of fallen humanity.
No immediately discernible evidence exists to convincingly demonstrate to me that an ennoblement of the constituents of the human race is resulting from the head long development of information technology that has occurred over the course of the past several decades.
Readily discernibly, it has been serving to, in profound senses, debilitate the constituents of the human race, not to wholesomely elevate them.
Has anyone read Marcuse “Eros and civilization” What he was talking about was the aftermath of Technology, and was happy about it
"The betrayal begins the moment a generation decides the work is finished."
I loved this sentence, and I couldn't agree more with your article.
Yet I can't help thinking that the answer to your title lies in a darker corner of human nature—one we may not dare to talk about: envy.
To me, as you said, unless the next generation decides the work is finished, the previous generation has no right to criticize them. Otherwise, it may sometimes reflect envy—perhaps even envy of their own children, who no longer have to endure what they once did.
My reason is that anyone who looks beyond our more primitive instincts can probably see, as you also pointed out, that every generation faces challenges of its own. Each generation inherits the world from the one before it, dreams of something better, and works toward a better future. In turn, it tries to leave a better world for the next generation. That's how history has always moved forward.
Perhaps that's why this recurring criticism of younger generations has always carried the scent of envy for me.
Of course, I realize I'm speaking in broad terms here. There are certainly many specific issues in today's world that may give legitimacy to some of the older generation's criticisms of the younger one.
But far too often, in the middle of all this noise, everyone gets painted with the same brush.
thanks for sharing your perspective brother 🙏 I think you're probably right that it's rarely just one thing. fear, nostalgia, pride, envy... human nature has a funny way of mixing them all together. that's what makes these patterns so interesting
I experienced a deep and physical sigh of relief as I absorbed your examination of supposed generational weakness, especially in the following words:
‘Success reaches its highest form the moment it disappears into everyday life.
The world remembers what changed. It doesn’t remember what it cost.’
Thank you for this insight.
thank you so much Daisy! I'm very happy to hear this 🙏😊🤍
Yeah well maybe 🤔 But I think what is happening right now is against the norms based on the past’s history of adaptation and change. Claims of poverty and hunger that just aren’t true. Claims of persecution that aren’t true.
Hate not because of religion or race as in the past,just hate for anyone that disagrees with the soapbox anyone is speaking from. The problem appears to be everyone is the enemy in the undeclared societal war. I am he As you are me And we are all together.
This universal all-encompassing hate is not a natural emergency—it is invented and orchestrated by the ruling class so that we never notice while we keep fighting each other. Hatred makes you blind, and that is the whole point of it.
Thank you George. There's definitely a lot of noise right now. That's hard to argue with