Life is now a mental health problem to be treated with drugs. The real problem is that drugs never solve any mental or physical problem. The road to death is paved with drugs.
And the medication generation (20s-30s) are grown up now. I saw my daughter's friends on so many different drugs as children, and I asked the parents if they knew that the frontal lobe is not fully developed until at least 21, and did their doctor discuss this with them, and most of them said - oh, it's fine.
haha. IDK, but I live next to two families of that age and they both seem pretty drugged out and apathetic – so much so they do not take care of their properties, or their dead tree that landed on my fence…
When I was a kid, "attention deficit" was called "not paying attention" and the inability to do so meant a U's on progress reports concerning metrics like "self control" and other behavioral issues. U meant "Unsatisfactory"
I think this goes back 20 or 30 years when we started identifying ADHD and treating it long term with drugs like Ritalin. As Bare-Faced said in these comments, we used to call this not paying attention and it would get you a slap in the head to bring you back.
100%! Brain drugs for "mental health" issues mask the problems; the root of the problem remains. What doesn't remain are the $$ in one's bank account. When people figure out that this is a cha-ching for the medical industrial complex, maybe then, it will sink in.
That said, there are drugs needed in emergency situations that do save lives.
It's a great scam. How much wealth is transfered in our society to grifters claiming to address "mental health" problems? While the one obvious mental health issue - gender disphoria, they all want to treat with surgery.
I watched reactions by therapists to "HI REN, BY REN" on YouTube and the ones who got his message wrong the most were therapists. The therapist often talked though it all (loving to hear themselves speak and impart their "wisdom" on us great unwashed), while the ones who understood right away were people who had struggled with their own mental issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_nc1IVoMxc
> Life is now a mental health problem to be treated with drugs.
Enh, I contemplated drugs, but didn't consider them to be a sufficiently guaranteed method of solving my "life" problem.
> The real problem is that drugs never solve any mental or physical problem.
"Solve"? No. Generally not. Well, maybe antibiotics.
But even those are more of a "get the patient through the thing that will kill them immediately" remedy than an actual "cure". Still, that has its occasional benefits.
> The road to death is paved with drugs.
Mine was paved with a high tension zip-tie of 42 inches length and a pair of foot long sections of one and a half inch doweling, which when assembled, properly placed, and adequately tensioned would have cut off all blood flow to my brain through both carotid arteries, in the darkness of a hotel room, timed to give me a solid ten hours before anyone would have found me.
Ketamine infusion therapy kept me from taking it.
Again, "get the patient through the thing that will kill them immediately".
You will hopefully forgive me for having a slightly more nuanced view on the question of medication. And if not, well, at least I'm still here to be unforgiven.
everything is fixed by a pill. When you take these prescribed pills, many times many different pills at many different doses and then happen to strangle your 3 young kids to death, well, blame the husband who wasn't tuned in to his wife, or blame her mental break because post partum is very hard...but don't blame the pills or the person that strangled her kids, blame anything but that.
I’m a physician and once I had a young woman come in concerned about anxiety. I asked her what she was anxious about and it was stuff we’re all nervous about- meeting new people, new situations, etc. I told her we ALL have that. We call it being nervous and we do the stuff anyway. Stop pathologizing normal feelings. She went away happy. I’ve met many more people with the same issues. Let’s not turn the normal into abnormal.
I told my doctor that I thought anxiety and stress were contributing to my high blood pressure. He asked what I was anxious and stressed about. I told him "having high blood pressure."
If you've been to a high school football game recently you'd know that that dance routine is what all the cheer leaders do now. Shocking, but you get used to it.
A note of caution however. It was genX parents who raised the genZ children.
If genX was so resilient, how is it their kids are so fragile? They ( genX ) are the helicopter parents shielding the offspring from reality.Was that a reaction to the much lauded “ you’re own your own” childhood?
Was the spirit of independence lost.
As a late much maligned “ boomer” my childhood years were similar. Go outside and play, settle your own disputes, figure it out.
the kids were not allowed to go play by themselves and build their own worlds.
the system and schools were fundamentally at war with gen z stealing their independence and replacing it with pathologized anxiety. i have a bunch of friends still doing "free range children" and their kids are all growing up great.
you basically never see these problems in homeschooled kids. public school has become a public menace.
So GenX parents raised GenZ kids, and it must have been them that prevented the unsupervised experiences.
GenX were the teachers in the schools GenZ attended.
It is unclear what system prevented GenZ from gaining independence.
Home schoolers are self selected for independence and accountability for themselves and their children. I would expect them to have a greater chance of successful transition to adulthood.
Maybe GenX parents should contemplate why their children turned out in this particular set of beliefs and behaviors.
That’s the rub with generalities. It is never me, it’s the system or the schools or the internet that is responsible.
> It is unclear what system prevented GenZ from gaining independence.
Milk cartons. Or rather the "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" printed ubiquitously on the backs of them.
GenX and Elder Millennials grew up with freedom, but being bombarded with messages about how dangerous and terrifying the world was. And paradoxically, the *end* of the threat of nuclear annihilation at the fall of the Soviet Union may have contributed, via the snap back effect of "OMG, we're *not* all gonna die?! I better armor my kids in bubble-wrap to keep them safe, if they might actually *LIVE!!!*"
It's just a theory, and I'm not exactly the best one to comment on it, being a childless GenX Uncle. I've never felt the stresses of being an *actual* parent.
Gen X parent of Gen Z kid here. We struggle to keep kids feeling free, but not against our small-town school. The struggle is against social media and 24/7 news, both of which are designed to create fear, hate and anxiety in both parents and kids.
I think with this premise, you assume that the kid’s school and environment were similar to yours.
Hard to accept that these kids were indoctrinated and propagandized by TV, the schools, their books, Culture (Hollywood), without our awareness. Our minds had difficulty accepting this may such evil exists.
And, just as the environment changed based on "evolution" from say the 60s or 70s to today, there exists a different environment from rural to suburban to urban. In many cases, rural areas today retain more of the character of previous generations. The US "red/blue" map by county shows the blue areas (mostly urban and suburban) where these mental deficiencies thrive.
Those red/blue maps can be misleading. A district only needs a plurality win to get a color - max 50% +1, but less if there are more than two parties. A friend of mine reworked the maps using the percentage of the vote for each party, and the result was large areas of purple (red + blue mixed according to percentage).
*Developed* by, yes. But we all *grew up* (at least a little bit) without them, for the very most part. I'm a *significant* outlier for GenX, having been on the 'net in one form or another since '81. And, well, it was a very different place back then.
Yeah, *and so were we*. I speak of GenX (myself) and later generations. The "Long March Through The Institutions" has been *long*. GenX was the third or possibly even fourth generation subjected to its ever tightening ratchet.
I still think GenX (particularly *late* GenX) had it best: We got the remarkably darn free childhood, and the end of the Cold War *while* we were still kids to some extent. I was a month past my 15th birthday when the Hammer and Sickle went down over the Kremlin for the last time. The 90's were *fucking amazing* for me -- everything looked *astonishingly* bright for my future.
But I'm sure the same system you speak of had fed my generation a pile of crap, and we didn't rise to strike it down with wrath and mighty vengeance, and parents of my generation (and my younger sister's, the Millennials) raised their kids with the lessons we'd been taught, and the ratchet still only ever went one way.
I think the real problem is that most people did what most people do, which is "not pay attention". *I* certainly don't assume that GenZ’s schooling and environment were similar to mine, but that's a fairly recent revelation, as to just *how bad* it has gotten.
FWIW, this is me *agreeing* with you, and adding to your point. 🤣🤣🤣
By High School, and definitely College years, we were increasingly subjected to “Group Study”. I rebelled strongly, but many found it easier to just go along to get along.
I think it matters a lot if you are in genX and born before 1976'. Those born after that have more in common with millennials. In fact there's a quite distinct blurring in a shoulder generation called xillennials from roughly 77' to 84'. Regardless genX is a small generation over a shorter period of time than the prior or subsequent gens.
The same is true of late boomers born between 1960 to 1965 and early genX. I was born in early 71' and I personally share much more in common with someone born in 62' than someone born in 78'.
So all of this goes back to whether, as a genXer, your parents were younger greatest generation or the oldest baby boomers. My parents were born in 47'. There's quite a big gap in worldview from someone born in 47' vs 60'.
But the biggest difference between any generation of the 20th Century is between solid genXers and xillenials. It is stark imo. My wife and youngest brother were born in 79' (official genXers) and I have far more in common, from a generational standpoint, with someone born in say 62'.
In other words, I truly believe if you can't vividly remember the 70's as a child/teenager you are not in the same generation as those before that and those after that.
If I were to pick an exact date it would be anyone that could vividly remember the Iran hostage situation in 79'. So basically anyone in GenX old enough to distinctly remember Reagan getting elected the first time.
So parents born between 60' and 74' did not, in general, raise their kids to be brats and crybabies.
I guess it also matters to an extent to how old you were, in that period, when you decided to have kids.
So, I'm a woman born in '78, but my husband was born in '70. I'm a first-born as well. So I've always felt much more in common with Gen X than my younger siblings as millennials.
“ Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) has a split reputation: they are praised as tech-savvy, socially conscious, and values-driven, but criticized in the workplace as entitled, difficult to manage, and quick to drop jobs that clash with their personal boundaries” Newsweek 2024.
No doubt you have been a dedicated and involved parent.
Is the GenZ reputation in error? Are their work habits and sense of entitlement misrepresented? Is none of this related to how they were raised?
The "GenZ reputation" depends a lot on gender and location. The boys are much better than the girls on average, and rural GenZ of either gender is probably going to be just fine.
Honestly I think genZ gets a bad rap. I see the "residue" of genX with my twins who just turned 16 and their friends. They seem to have the same mentality as genX:
Break shit and question everything. Neither one of my kids are satisfied with, "well, thats just how it is".
Bottom line i have more faith in young GenZs and old Alphas than I do with millennials and old genZers.
Another thing to consider is that the "Average" GenZ is only 21.5 years old. The youngest are still 14, and the oldest aren't even 30 yet. As I said elsewhere today, I think we still have a solid ten to fifteen years before we can actually judge the mettle of GenZ.
Certainly, no generation is homogeneous. Most dates for various generations are arbitrary with a few landmarks ( such as the Great depression/ WW II “ the greatest generation”.)
Your suggested parameters for the current cohort of generations is as good as any other.
The question I have is why GenZ generally has a reputation as “ brats and whiners”? The behaviors did not arise spontaneously. Possibly GenX parents were generally not as
effective as they believe themselves to have been.
Well, you're right of course, but what im saying is society as whole dramatically changed for parents raising kids in the 70's and 80's vs those raising kids in the 90's.
So a lot of decisions of late genX and early millennials raising kids was based on the conditions of society that did not exist in the 70's and 80's.
In fact, Ive seen it first-hand even with my early boomer parents. . My brother who was born in late 73' was raised differently than my youngest brother born in 79'.
Not necessarily because my parents changed, rather because society changed in terms of what was acceptable.
Right. It's more of a gradual blend than a hard switchover, which is both what you'd expect and something nobody thinks of in relation to generational traits. I was born in 1973 and my brother and sister were each 2 years later down the line. We're all more alike than unalike, but there are noticeable differences.
> I think it matters a lot if you are in genX and born before 1976'. Those born after that have more in common with millennials. In fact there's a quite distinct blurring in a shoulder generation called xillennials from roughly 77' to 84'.
Geez, I really *don't* belong anywhere, having been born **in** 1976...
No generation to call my own...
I choose to interpret this as my being Timeless. 🤣🤣🤣
> My wife and youngest brother were born in 79' (official genXers) and I have far more in common, from a generational standpoint, with someone born in say 62'.
What's your thesis on the driver of that? I'm not arguing -- I was born in '76 and my little sister in '81 -- I just figured it was always far more of a continuum than the rather artificial declared "generations" that sociologists like to use. But you think there's a more stark divide at the '76 line. Was it the Bicentennial? Some other event or social trend? Gas prices? Abandonment of the Gold Standard? (Though both of those things would have happened in different years to 1976.) I'm very curious as to what you think may have driven that?
FWIW, two of my closest friends are from '77 and '71 respectively, and my ex-wife is a '73 model, and I don't really see a *significant* difference. Of course, none of us are exactly great examples of "normal", either.
well. i really think it comes down to not only remembering the 70's, but also "being of age" in the 80's.
For example do you remember where you were at when MTV debuted it's first song? What song was that? Do you vividly remember the 1984 Olympics? Do you remember where you were at when the space shuttle exploded. Did you understand in the 80's that Guns and Roses changed music forever and was the bridge between hair bands and paved the way to grunge? Did you appreciate how utterly different grunge was? Did you truly understand the significance of when the soviet empire imploded overnight?
Did you truly experience the "digital divide", where you were an adult, on both sides of the divide, and went from analog to digital in a couple of years? The early cohort mostly finished high school before the internet was mainstream and often didn't get a personal computer until college or the workforce. The late cohort was more likely to have used a computer in high school and came online (dial-up, early AOL) as teenagers rather than adults. That's a meaningfully different relationship to technology.
There were a lot changes culturally, technologically, and economically that happened within that span. what i'm trying to communicate is that even five or six years can put you on opposite sides of a cultural hinge point. And I don't think there has ever been more fundamental changes in how life is lived in such a short period within any another generation in the 20th century.
Good question, but not sure there's a clear answer. I'm a senior GenX and our kids run from about your age to senior Gen Z. My wife and I embraced the idea that we were raising adults. While we were much more hands-on with our kids than our parents were with us, it was always with an eye toward making them fit to make their own decisions and fly on their own power. On balance, I think we all figured it out.
Absolutely! I think these broad-brush Gen-this and Gen-that ideas mostly serve to drive ink and clicks for our unimaginative brain-dead media class. That said, there are experiences that imprint on certain populations, which is what gives the conversation some traction. After my comment above, I talked with our youngest, who's 20. She felt she had a lot of freedom and the ability to explore autonomously, and that we encouraged it--but was also leaned on what hazards she should watch for and choose well. In her opinion, at least, we found a healthy balance. I think that's also why we now enjoy such happy, healthy relationships with our kids. While they are our kids, mostly we're now dearest friends.
Same here. My husband is solidly Gen X, and I'm very tail-end of Gen X being born in '78. We've, so far, raised 3 of our 5 children to adulthood, and I'm so proud of the independent, intelligent, and resilient people they are! We're ultimately working to our own obsolescence! 😂
Now that we're grandparents, I think a lot about the role we play as extended family. We naturally understand the parent/child bond, but I find it's no less automatic and profound that that of aunts, uncles, etc.
same here, at tail end of "boomer" gen. That vid describing playing all day until street lights came on perfectly described my childhood, except that our neighborhood had no street lights. I've no idea why so many boomers who once protested "the man" now support him. I don't think I was ever part of what's attributed to the "boomers." I was too young to protest during the war, go to Woodstock, or do much of whatever the "boomers" did.
“To explore that cross-generation connection, Bloomberg spoke with experts, scoured data and also asked CivicScience, a consumer research company that works with big brands like T-Mobile and Microsoft, to crunch some numbers. One key finding: Generation Z shares the pessimism their parents had at the same age, based on an annual survey given to high-school seniors since 1975 by the University of Michigan.”
An excellent analysis of the influence of genX on their children.
Most of genZ was taught by genX teachers in primary and secondary schools, and even to some extent at college via grad students.
Social media was pioneered by the Xennials.
I agree there are profound and lasting differences in urban, suburban and rural experiences and attitudes in every generation.Certainly every generation is heterogeneous. Every generation faces challenges( Boomers; Vietnam, race relations, Watergate and Nixon eroding government legitimacy,increasing divorce rates, hyper inflation under Carter, the Cold War ) met with varying degrees of success.
GenZ attitudes, beliefs, philosophy and behaviors did not arise de novo. GenX was the primary source.
As my dad (a young boomer but not in the mold) always said, "My give-a-damn is broke." That's Gen-X. We homeschooled our kids (youngest is now 30) so fortunately they didn't get indoctrinated in this crap. We're also in the South, where I think we have a lot less of it in general. But it's been absolutely crazy watching what's happened, which was only possible at scale because of the internet. I worked in a state psych hospital in grad school and not one person in there was as batshit as these people now.
I’m kind of in your cohort. Technically, I’m barely a boomer (three days from 1965), but on this chart I’m in that 50-64 group.
My parents fed me and let me sleep in the house, but other than that, my siblings and I just grew up. Unmanaged.
I raised my kids much the same way, maybe more opportunities because I let them do athletic stuff if they wanted to and I home schooled them.
They are 26-30, faithful Christians, married, children, the men work and the girls are home makers.
But their kids…
I did not expect them to be so protective. I sent my eight year old granddaughter out the door to walk home (about a quarter mile through the timber) and her mom about died.
I’m like, what?!? Where did my daughter get the idea that walking outside in the country needed supervision?
And my granddaughter is the least independent 8 yo I’ve ever known.
The next two are boys and more unmanageable, so I hope they defeat their mother and break her of it. Otherwise, I’m going to have to let them spend summers with grandma. 😆😆
Went to the beach last Saturday and could not believe what I saw/heard. Men in bikinis, really obese women in g-strings, obese children, womens bodies entirely tattooed, music blaring on huge speakers, kids cursing, pot smell everywhere, idiots speeding through the parking lot, ugh 😩….so disappointed in today’s society.
you are not alone. So sad about your beach adventure. Hubbs and I are hoping to go to the beach in Delaware in September or October. I am hoping to find someplace clean to stay. 😑 $200+ a night to sleep on a used mattress with an ocean view. (and I can't get charity to pick up two barely used beds bc it is unsanitary or something?)
Yeah I was certainly shocked and disappointed. This was a public beach I’ve never been to before. My private town beach is very different. Enjoy Delaware! Lewes (?) is quite quaint. Yep charities will not take mattresses. Crazy 🤪
Yeah, Rehoboth is pretty family oriented. There have been a lot of gays in the past 20+ years but .... well, I have not been in a while so I hope that has not changed negatively. I know Dewey is the beach the gays claim, but they are in Rehoboth. Just don't be disgusting and I do not care.
The drugs/pot, obese, profanity and tattoos is completely undesirable.
Last time I stayed in Dewey Beach it was over 100 degrees in August and yes there were Gays and everyone was decent.. That was a very long time ago. Now anything goes and obesity is “healthy”! They can change the words and language all they want but you can’t change biology!
💯‼️‼️ We do have to get “mean”. By that I mean not suffer fools. Call out crazy whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head, and give no space to those who want you think otherwise.
I don’t think it’s strictly a generational mindset though, the exception being that in the last 20 years the intensification of the brainwashing in the school systems has poisoned more young minds than in the previous generations who could still call out - or at least shake their head at nonsense when they encountered it.
I’m a boomer who was raised just as you described free from anything even resembling helicopter parenting. We woke up, jumped on our bikes, and weren’t seen again until sundown. We were daredevils and creative and made our own fun. But there was always a learning curve involved in all those activities. You found your way, you stood your ground, and mangled to learn something new every day. But, while not everything, that independence was key to it all. But- BIG BUT - we weren’t being taught the insanity at school as kids to day are. Therein lies the difference.
The school systems - especially the colleges - need to be utterly purged of the purple haired, sexually deviant, and rabid Marxists who currently have a hold on them. There truly needs to be a reckoning there if this country wants to have any kind of future.
Bottom line is: we do have to get a lot “meaner” and totally intolerant of their tolerance for all things abnormal or they’ll just trample right over us.
That's why they call themselves "Queers"....they seek to "queer the norm". They are un-serious people and I treat them with disdain. I'm tired of the tats, the weird piercings, the strange colored hair, the androgyny, the lack of personal hygiene. I say they form a commune in the middle of the desert and try to live among each other as their new social experiment....it would devolve into Lord of the Flies very quickly.
Great piece. In a recent Tucker Carlson interview, Glenn Greenwald referred to it as the deliberate zombification of society through pharmaceuticals. You can see the tangible effect of the collective desensitization in the lack of opposition to the latest neocon war of choice.
It was through my experience raising my sons that I was confronted with bizarre and foreign concepts of helicopter parenting, participation trophies, and super-scoring standardized tests, all obviously designed to insulate youth from consequences and the very notion of “normalcy”, I.e., sometimes in life we get our butt kicked and we have to learn the lesson.
My youngest was ten years old and playing in the local soccer league and his team was literally the worst in the league, finishing winless. After the final game, his coach was handing out trophies to the team.
As his coach attempted to hand my son a trophy, my son looked at him and asked him why they were getting trophies. His coach replied, “for participating and being part of the team.” My son politely replied “No, thank you” and refused the trophy. This same kid was expelled from his suburban Detroit middle school for refusing to wear an obedience mask. We ended up home schooling until we left Michigan.
I’m pleased that my sons and their select group of friends appear to still have a grasp of objective normalcy. It gives me hope.
I love this post! Everything said is spot on target. Only, I wish the concept of Generation Jones was more recognized. Born in ‘59, I can’t identify with Boomers and I’m a bit too old for Gen X. The husband and I were discussing these same ideas recently, and we both said we feel like we’ve been noticing and preparing for this societal upheaval for decades, but now we’re older and weaker…although our arsenal is better equipped. 🤷🏻♀️ Hopefully when Gen X calls for action, we won’t get lumped in with the rest. Again, nice post, I’ll be sharing!
"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
This essay touches on a lot of points, but one stuck out to me, about how earlier generations used to let their kids "free-range." There's a stronger cultural current to this than appears at first.
If anything bad happens, the first thing we do is blame the parent. ("Why were you letting a 7-year-old ride their bike on a road with traffic??!!") It's gotten to the point that parents are criminally prosecuted any time something bad happens, if that "bad" come from having taken the slightest safety risk at all.
All of this comes from a general intolerance for risk. We, as a culture, expect almost 100% guarantees of safety for everything. It's getting harder to do any kind of business, as insurance costs creep up and liability exposure is almost boundless in every industry. Every mistake must be punished. Who would want to be a surgeon these days? Or any kind of medical doctor? Or truck driver? Or bridge engineer? Due diligence isn't enough; we demand absolute perfection, or face the consequences. Is it any wonder the younger generations are grade-A responsibility shirkers? There are just too many ways to make a mistake, so it's better, and rational, to do nothing.
It's possible the root of all of this can be explained by Sowell's "Conflict of Visions." The progressive mind sees perfect safety as possible. The conservative accepts that imperfection and risk, and having bad things happen, is the price we pay for civilization. It's all a trade-off.
But here we are living in the age of "Every tragedy was avoidable." Avoiding risk has become its own goal; building or accomplishing anything is secondary.
Whether intentional or not, I think Enes and White have the correct plan in place. Mock them and go after their ideas with reductio ad absurdum. After all, as EGM has said, these people "are" their ideas; they don't "have" their ideas. They won't be able to handle it.
Did you see the argument Kat Timpf was having on X with everyone? She seems to think a bit differently, which surprised me.
However, I do worry it's too little, too late for us. The Dems (DSA) get back in and we're done for, and it won't surprise me to see people voting left and right for them. Just so weird how many people I hear in my daily life talking about voting that way in November and in 2028.
Normalcy begins with the understanding that men and women are unique and different, and that we need each other and need to work with each other to keep civilization running a little more smoothly.
Life is now a mental health problem to be treated with drugs. The real problem is that drugs never solve any mental or physical problem. The road to death is paved with drugs.
if you think you have problems now, wait until you see the ones an SSRI or a nice dose of "children's methamphetamine" can cause...
And the medication generation (20s-30s) are grown up now. I saw my daughter's friends on so many different drugs as children, and I asked the parents if they knew that the frontal lobe is not fully developed until at least 21, and did their doctor discuss this with them, and most of them said - oh, it's fine.
How many of them are living in their parents basement now?
haha. IDK, but I live next to two families of that age and they both seem pretty drugged out and apathetic – so much so they do not take care of their properties, or their dead tree that landed on my fence…
I have known a few of those people, too
I’ve been following Dr Robert Malone on SSRIs (and SNRIs).
A general reading of all the effects suggests that
Normal feelings are disrupted
Sex life is suppressed
And going cold turkey drives the synapses in your brain crazy.
In short, you end up with a bunch of frustrated incels with self control issues.
That could explain a lot.
I was going to add you didn't comment on the ADD-hype to medicate K-8 kids who are "too hard to handle"...
100% showed up in gmail.
When I was a kid, "attention deficit" was called "not paying attention" and the inability to do so meant a U's on progress reports concerning metrics like "self control" and other behavioral issues. U meant "Unsatisfactory"
https://youtu.be/bqR_PwcyyWo?si=K21lgDwk6SAS2OB7
the old ways were best
and your dad would slap you in the back of the head and say sit still, or quite acting like a moron.
I think this goes back 20 or 30 years when we started identifying ADHD and treating it long term with drugs like Ritalin. As Bare-Faced said in these comments, we used to call this not paying attention and it would get you a slap in the head to bring you back.
Hmmm. You must have attended the same school as I did. Or we had the same mother.
Are you my brother from another mother??
If you were a boy, Mr. Taylor would grab your ear and twist it. If you were a girl, he would smack a yardstick on your desk. Yup; sexist.
100%! Brain drugs for "mental health" issues mask the problems; the root of the problem remains. What doesn't remain are the $$ in one's bank account. When people figure out that this is a cha-ching for the medical industrial complex, maybe then, it will sink in.
That said, there are drugs needed in emergency situations that do save lives.
It's a great scam. How much wealth is transfered in our society to grifters claiming to address "mental health" problems? While the one obvious mental health issue - gender disphoria, they all want to treat with surgery.
It appears the idea of “saving lives” has been lost in drugging to kill life.
This is the nub of the issue imo:
https://x.com/_info2019/status/2089607262100660688
And thats why it was attacked first so they could get to the kids.
and another road to death is paved by therapists
I watched reactions by therapists to "HI REN, BY REN" on YouTube and the ones who got his message wrong the most were therapists. The therapist often talked though it all (loving to hear themselves speak and impart their "wisdom" on us great unwashed), while the ones who understood right away were people who had struggled with their own mental issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_nc1IVoMxc
You said it best!
> Life is now a mental health problem to be treated with drugs.
Enh, I contemplated drugs, but didn't consider them to be a sufficiently guaranteed method of solving my "life" problem.
> The real problem is that drugs never solve any mental or physical problem.
"Solve"? No. Generally not. Well, maybe antibiotics.
But even those are more of a "get the patient through the thing that will kill them immediately" remedy than an actual "cure". Still, that has its occasional benefits.
> The road to death is paved with drugs.
Mine was paved with a high tension zip-tie of 42 inches length and a pair of foot long sections of one and a half inch doweling, which when assembled, properly placed, and adequately tensioned would have cut off all blood flow to my brain through both carotid arteries, in the darkness of a hotel room, timed to give me a solid ten hours before anyone would have found me.
Ketamine infusion therapy kept me from taking it.
Again, "get the patient through the thing that will kill them immediately".
You will hopefully forgive me for having a slightly more nuanced view on the question of medication. And if not, well, at least I'm still here to be unforgiven.
T+8 years, 14 days, and counting...
"Kicks just keep getting harder to find". Paul Revere and the Raiders circa 1970
Hey, let's not throw all drugs under the bus. Some of them are fun.
Nothing that Ozempic can't fix....
💯
Insightful summation as usual. I was unfamiliar with the term chiasmus.
I'd like a link to share the 1970s video if possible.
everything is fixed by a pill. When you take these prescribed pills, many times many different pills at many different doses and then happen to strangle your 3 young kids to death, well, blame the husband who wasn't tuned in to his wife, or blame her mental break because post partum is very hard...but don't blame the pills or the person that strangled her kids, blame anything but that.
I’m a physician and once I had a young woman come in concerned about anxiety. I asked her what she was anxious about and it was stuff we’re all nervous about- meeting new people, new situations, etc. I told her we ALL have that. We call it being nervous and we do the stuff anyway. Stop pathologizing normal feelings. She went away happy. I’ve met many more people with the same issues. Let’s not turn the normal into abnormal.
I told my doctor that I thought anxiety and stress were contributing to my high blood pressure. He asked what I was anxious and stressed about. I told him "having high blood pressure."
Nowadays would you not get your kiester in a jingle with the practice for such council, were the practice owned by a healthcare consortium?
I'm perfectly fine with the ASU Alpha Phi video... just don't want my wife to catch me watching it... over and over, on "repeat."
You know, since you made this comment I felt obliged to watch it 7 more times!
On the 57" monitor with surround sound!!
Glorious! You crack me up.
I'm a straight woman, but I'd rather be forced to watch those girls than Lizzo.
Right?
It's been a while, but I don't recall girls who looked like that at my college.
Sounds like it is time to work on the second degree!!
For the intellectual rigor, of course.
It's AI. That's why the girls you knew in college didn't look like that. They're fake.
Don't ruin it for me, I’m almost 60, dreams are all I have left!
Rigor, lol
Those offended by that video see nothing wrong with twerking, proving bad cat's POV.
My first encounter with twerking was visiting a friend’s church dance- I still cringe at the memory of it.
If you've been to a high school football game recently you'd know that that dance routine is what all the cheer leaders do now. Shocking, but you get used to it.
Plenty of good ideas here.
A note of caution however. It was genX parents who raised the genZ children.
If genX was so resilient, how is it their kids are so fragile? They ( genX ) are the helicopter parents shielding the offspring from reality.Was that a reaction to the much lauded “ you’re own your own” childhood?
Was the spirit of independence lost.
As a late much maligned “ boomer” my childhood years were similar. Go outside and play, settle your own disputes, figure it out.
the kids were not allowed to go play by themselves and build their own worlds.
the system and schools were fundamentally at war with gen z stealing their independence and replacing it with pathologized anxiety. i have a bunch of friends still doing "free range children" and their kids are all growing up great.
you basically never see these problems in homeschooled kids. public school has become a public menace.
So GenX parents raised GenZ kids, and it must have been them that prevented the unsupervised experiences.
GenX were the teachers in the schools GenZ attended.
It is unclear what system prevented GenZ from gaining independence.
Home schoolers are self selected for independence and accountability for themselves and their children. I would expect them to have a greater chance of successful transition to adulthood.
Maybe GenX parents should contemplate why their children turned out in this particular set of beliefs and behaviors.
That’s the rub with generalities. It is never me, it’s the system or the schools or the internet that is responsible.
> It is unclear what system prevented GenZ from gaining independence.
Milk cartons. Or rather the "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" printed ubiquitously on the backs of them.
GenX and Elder Millennials grew up with freedom, but being bombarded with messages about how dangerous and terrifying the world was. And paradoxically, the *end* of the threat of nuclear annihilation at the fall of the Soviet Union may have contributed, via the snap back effect of "OMG, we're *not* all gonna die?! I better armor my kids in bubble-wrap to keep them safe, if they might actually *LIVE!!!*"
It's just a theory, and I'm not exactly the best one to comment on it, being a childless GenX Uncle. I've never felt the stresses of being an *actual* parent.
Gen X parent of Gen Z kid here. We struggle to keep kids feeling free, but not against our small-town school. The struggle is against social media and 24/7 news, both of which are designed to create fear, hate and anxiety in both parents and kids.
> The struggle is against social media and 24/7 news, both of which are designed to create fear, hate and anxiety in both parents and kids.
Well, *that's* absolutely true. OK, thanks for the answer from someone with actual, y'know, *experience*. 🤣🤣🤣
I think with this premise, you assume that the kid’s school and environment were similar to yours.
Hard to accept that these kids were indoctrinated and propagandized by TV, the schools, their books, Culture (Hollywood), without our awareness. Our minds had difficulty accepting this may such evil exists.
And, just as the environment changed based on "evolution" from say the 60s or 70s to today, there exists a different environment from rural to suburban to urban. In many cases, rural areas today retain more of the character of previous generations. The US "red/blue" map by county shows the blue areas (mostly urban and suburban) where these mental deficiencies thrive.
Those red/blue maps can be misleading. A district only needs a plurality win to get a color - max 50% +1, but less if there are more than two parties. A friend of mine reworked the maps using the percentage of the vote for each party, and the result was large areas of purple (red + blue mixed according to percentage).
Yes, geographic location makes a significant difference.
Dont forget the internet, YouTube, social media.
These entities were all developed by GenX and Xennials. Zuckerberg, Huffman, Ohanian, Dorsey,Glass, Stone and Williams. All of this generation.
Yes, GenZ was raised differently with a huge influencence by GenX.
*Developed* by, yes. But we all *grew up* (at least a little bit) without them, for the very most part. I'm a *significant* outlier for GenX, having been on the 'net in one form or another since '81. And, well, it was a very different place back then.
These entities were all developed by GenX and Xennials. Zuckerberg, Huffman, Ohanian, Dorsey,Glass, Stone and Williams. All of this generation.
Yes, GenZ was raised differently with a huge influencence by GenX.
These entities were all developed by GenX and Xennials. Zuckerberg, Huffman, Ohanian, Dorsey,Glass, Stone and Williams. All of this generation.
Yes, GenZ was raised differently with a huge influencence by GenX.
Yeah, *and so were we*. I speak of GenX (myself) and later generations. The "Long March Through The Institutions" has been *long*. GenX was the third or possibly even fourth generation subjected to its ever tightening ratchet.
I still think GenX (particularly *late* GenX) had it best: We got the remarkably darn free childhood, and the end of the Cold War *while* we were still kids to some extent. I was a month past my 15th birthday when the Hammer and Sickle went down over the Kremlin for the last time. The 90's were *fucking amazing* for me -- everything looked *astonishingly* bright for my future.
But I'm sure the same system you speak of had fed my generation a pile of crap, and we didn't rise to strike it down with wrath and mighty vengeance, and parents of my generation (and my younger sister's, the Millennials) raised their kids with the lessons we'd been taught, and the ratchet still only ever went one way.
I think the real problem is that most people did what most people do, which is "not pay attention". *I* certainly don't assume that GenZ’s schooling and environment were similar to mine, but that's a fairly recent revelation, as to just *how bad* it has gotten.
FWIW, this is me *agreeing* with you, and adding to your point. 🤣🤣🤣
By High School, and definitely College years, we were increasingly subjected to “Group Study”. I rebelled strongly, but many found it easier to just go along to get along.
I think it matters a lot if you are in genX and born before 1976'. Those born after that have more in common with millennials. In fact there's a quite distinct blurring in a shoulder generation called xillennials from roughly 77' to 84'. Regardless genX is a small generation over a shorter period of time than the prior or subsequent gens.
The same is true of late boomers born between 1960 to 1965 and early genX. I was born in early 71' and I personally share much more in common with someone born in 62' than someone born in 78'.
So all of this goes back to whether, as a genXer, your parents were younger greatest generation or the oldest baby boomers. My parents were born in 47'. There's quite a big gap in worldview from someone born in 47' vs 60'.
But the biggest difference between any generation of the 20th Century is between solid genXers and xillenials. It is stark imo. My wife and youngest brother were born in 79' (official genXers) and I have far more in common, from a generational standpoint, with someone born in say 62'.
In other words, I truly believe if you can't vividly remember the 70's as a child/teenager you are not in the same generation as those before that and those after that.
If I were to pick an exact date it would be anyone that could vividly remember the Iran hostage situation in 79'. So basically anyone in GenX old enough to distinctly remember Reagan getting elected the first time.
So parents born between 60' and 74' did not, in general, raise their kids to be brats and crybabies.
I guess it also matters to an extent to how old you were, in that period, when you decided to have kids.
So, I'm a woman born in '78, but my husband was born in '70. I'm a first-born as well. So I've always felt much more in common with Gen X than my younger siblings as millennials.
Plus I didn't get married until I was 35 so that makes a bit of a difference.
I know this for sure:
I have had to make many compromises with my wife on how to raise our kids.
Fortunately I think we found the right balance.
Bottom line if you can't appreciate Zeppelin and The Clash you are from a different generation...lol.
I think that definitely makes a big difference.
Im also using broad generalities but I still think it holds up.
Oh, I agree! Good points, I just like being the exception to rules. 😂 It's my gen x showing!
“ Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) has a split reputation: they are praised as tech-savvy, socially conscious, and values-driven, but criticized in the workplace as entitled, difficult to manage, and quick to drop jobs that clash with their personal boundaries” Newsweek 2024.
No doubt you have been a dedicated and involved parent.
Is the GenZ reputation in error? Are their work habits and sense of entitlement misrepresented? Is none of this related to how they were raised?
Just something to consider.
Thanks for your insight and civil conversation.
The "GenZ reputation" depends a lot on gender and location. The boys are much better than the girls on average, and rural GenZ of either gender is probably going to be just fine.
Honestly I think genZ gets a bad rap. I see the "residue" of genX with my twins who just turned 16 and their friends. They seem to have the same mentality as genX:
Break shit and question everything. Neither one of my kids are satisfied with, "well, thats just how it is".
Bottom line i have more faith in young GenZs and old Alphas than I do with millennials and old genZers.
It seems obvious to my wife and me.
Another thing to consider is that the "Average" GenZ is only 21.5 years old. The youngest are still 14, and the oldest aren't even 30 yet. As I said elsewhere today, I think we still have a solid ten to fifteen years before we can actually judge the mettle of GenZ.
Certainly, no generation is homogeneous. Most dates for various generations are arbitrary with a few landmarks ( such as the Great depression/ WW II “ the greatest generation”.)
Your suggested parameters for the current cohort of generations is as good as any other.
The question I have is why GenZ generally has a reputation as “ brats and whiners”? The behaviors did not arise spontaneously. Possibly GenX parents were generally not as
effective as they believe themselves to have been.
Well, you're right of course, but what im saying is society as whole dramatically changed for parents raising kids in the 70's and 80's vs those raising kids in the 90's.
So a lot of decisions of late genX and early millennials raising kids was based on the conditions of society that did not exist in the 70's and 80's.
In fact, Ive seen it first-hand even with my early boomer parents. . My brother who was born in late 73' was raised differently than my youngest brother born in 79'.
Not necessarily because my parents changed, rather because society changed in terms of what was acceptable.
Right. It's more of a gradual blend than a hard switchover, which is both what you'd expect and something nobody thinks of in relation to generational traits. I was born in 1973 and my brother and sister were each 2 years later down the line. We're all more alike than unalike, but there are noticeable differences.
Yes. Its hard to explain, but you get it. I didn't realize how close we were in age
> I think it matters a lot if you are in genX and born before 1976'. Those born after that have more in common with millennials. In fact there's a quite distinct blurring in a shoulder generation called xillennials from roughly 77' to 84'.
Geez, I really *don't* belong anywhere, having been born **in** 1976...
No generation to call my own...
I choose to interpret this as my being Timeless. 🤣🤣🤣
> My wife and youngest brother were born in 79' (official genXers) and I have far more in common, from a generational standpoint, with someone born in say 62'.
What's your thesis on the driver of that? I'm not arguing -- I was born in '76 and my little sister in '81 -- I just figured it was always far more of a continuum than the rather artificial declared "generations" that sociologists like to use. But you think there's a more stark divide at the '76 line. Was it the Bicentennial? Some other event or social trend? Gas prices? Abandonment of the Gold Standard? (Though both of those things would have happened in different years to 1976.) I'm very curious as to what you think may have driven that?
FWIW, two of my closest friends are from '77 and '71 respectively, and my ex-wife is a '73 model, and I don't really see a *significant* difference. Of course, none of us are exactly great examples of "normal", either.
but i still think you're awesome, Warmek....and smart as fuck.
well. i really think it comes down to not only remembering the 70's, but also "being of age" in the 80's.
For example do you remember where you were at when MTV debuted it's first song? What song was that? Do you vividly remember the 1984 Olympics? Do you remember where you were at when the space shuttle exploded. Did you understand in the 80's that Guns and Roses changed music forever and was the bridge between hair bands and paved the way to grunge? Did you appreciate how utterly different grunge was? Did you truly understand the significance of when the soviet empire imploded overnight?
Did you truly experience the "digital divide", where you were an adult, on both sides of the divide, and went from analog to digital in a couple of years? The early cohort mostly finished high school before the internet was mainstream and often didn't get a personal computer until college or the workforce. The late cohort was more likely to have used a computer in high school and came online (dial-up, early AOL) as teenagers rather than adults. That's a meaningfully different relationship to technology.
There were a lot changes culturally, technologically, and economically that happened within that span. what i'm trying to communicate is that even five or six years can put you on opposite sides of a cultural hinge point. And I don't think there has ever been more fundamental changes in how life is lived in such a short period within any another generation in the 20th century.
Good question, but not sure there's a clear answer. I'm a senior GenX and our kids run from about your age to senior Gen Z. My wife and I embraced the idea that we were raising adults. While we were much more hands-on with our kids than our parents were with us, it was always with an eye toward making them fit to make their own decisions and fly on their own power. On balance, I think we all figured it out.
GenZ like any other generation is not a homogeneous cohort. I applaud your dedication and success. A wonderful life for your family. Priceless.
Absolutely! I think these broad-brush Gen-this and Gen-that ideas mostly serve to drive ink and clicks for our unimaginative brain-dead media class. That said, there are experiences that imprint on certain populations, which is what gives the conversation some traction. After my comment above, I talked with our youngest, who's 20. She felt she had a lot of freedom and the ability to explore autonomously, and that we encouraged it--but was also leaned on what hazards she should watch for and choose well. In her opinion, at least, we found a healthy balance. I think that's also why we now enjoy such happy, healthy relationships with our kids. While they are our kids, mostly we're now dearest friends.
Same here. My husband is solidly Gen X, and I'm very tail-end of Gen X being born in '78. We've, so far, raised 3 of our 5 children to adulthood, and I'm so proud of the independent, intelligent, and resilient people they are! We're ultimately working to our own obsolescence! 😂
Isn't it absolutely amazing?!!! The only thing that matches the joy I find in my grandsons is watching their parents be amazing adults.
> My wife and I embraced the idea that we were raising adults.
That's always been my operating theory as an uncle. Treat them as you want them to grow up to be.
Now that we're grandparents, I think a lot about the role we play as extended family. We naturally understand the parent/child bond, but I find it's no less automatic and profound that that of aunts, uncles, etc.
I was also born during the second half of the baby boom. Some are now referring to this group as "Generation Jones": https://youtu.be/KVo4Fazy6BY
The video in the article that begins with "Our parents" describes my childhood during the 1960s.
same here, at tail end of "boomer" gen. That vid describing playing all day until street lights came on perfectly described my childhood, except that our neighborhood had no street lights. I've no idea why so many boomers who once protested "the man" now support him. I don't think I was ever part of what's attributed to the "boomers." I was too young to protest during the war, go to Woodstock, or do much of whatever the "boomers" did.
“To explore that cross-generation connection, Bloomberg spoke with experts, scoured data and also asked CivicScience, a consumer research company that works with big brands like T-Mobile and Microsoft, to crunch some numbers. One key finding: Generation Z shares the pessimism their parents had at the same age, based on an annual survey given to high-school seniors since 1975 by the University of Michigan.”
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/how-gen-x-parents-raised-gen-z-kids--different-than-millennials-50775.html
An excellent analysis of the influence of genX on their children.
Most of genZ was taught by genX teachers in primary and secondary schools, and even to some extent at college via grad students.
Social media was pioneered by the Xennials.
I agree there are profound and lasting differences in urban, suburban and rural experiences and attitudes in every generation.Certainly every generation is heterogeneous. Every generation faces challenges( Boomers; Vietnam, race relations, Watergate and Nixon eroding government legitimacy,increasing divorce rates, hyper inflation under Carter, the Cold War ) met with varying degrees of success.
GenZ attitudes, beliefs, philosophy and behaviors did not arise de novo. GenX was the primary source.
Good point
As my dad (a young boomer but not in the mold) always said, "My give-a-damn is broke." That's Gen-X. We homeschooled our kids (youngest is now 30) so fortunately they didn't get indoctrinated in this crap. We're also in the South, where I think we have a lot less of it in general. But it's been absolutely crazy watching what's happened, which was only possible at scale because of the internet. I worked in a state psych hospital in grad school and not one person in there was as batshit as these people now.
I’m kind of in your cohort. Technically, I’m barely a boomer (three days from 1965), but on this chart I’m in that 50-64 group.
My parents fed me and let me sleep in the house, but other than that, my siblings and I just grew up. Unmanaged.
I raised my kids much the same way, maybe more opportunities because I let them do athletic stuff if they wanted to and I home schooled them.
They are 26-30, faithful Christians, married, children, the men work and the girls are home makers.
But their kids…
I did not expect them to be so protective. I sent my eight year old granddaughter out the door to walk home (about a quarter mile through the timber) and her mom about died.
I’m like, what?!? Where did my daughter get the idea that walking outside in the country needed supervision?
And my granddaughter is the least independent 8 yo I’ve ever known.
The next two are boys and more unmanageable, so I hope they defeat their mother and break her of it. Otherwise, I’m going to have to let them spend summers with grandma. 😆😆
Went to the beach last Saturday and could not believe what I saw/heard. Men in bikinis, really obese women in g-strings, obese children, womens bodies entirely tattooed, music blaring on huge speakers, kids cursing, pot smell everywhere, idiots speeding through the parking lot, ugh 😩….so disappointed in today’s society.
you are not alone. So sad about your beach adventure. Hubbs and I are hoping to go to the beach in Delaware in September or October. I am hoping to find someplace clean to stay. 😑 $200+ a night to sleep on a used mattress with an ocean view. (and I can't get charity to pick up two barely used beds bc it is unsanitary or something?)
Yeah I was certainly shocked and disappointed. This was a public beach I’ve never been to before. My private town beach is very different. Enjoy Delaware! Lewes (?) is quite quaint. Yep charities will not take mattresses. Crazy 🤪
Yeah, Rehoboth is pretty family oriented. There have been a lot of gays in the past 20+ years but .... well, I have not been in a while so I hope that has not changed negatively. I know Dewey is the beach the gays claim, but they are in Rehoboth. Just don't be disgusting and I do not care.
The drugs/pot, obese, profanity and tattoos is completely undesirable.
Last time I stayed in Dewey Beach it was over 100 degrees in August and yes there were Gays and everyone was decent.. That was a very long time ago. Now anything goes and obesity is “healthy”! They can change the words and language all they want but you can’t change biology!
💯‼️‼️ We do have to get “mean”. By that I mean not suffer fools. Call out crazy whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head, and give no space to those who want you think otherwise.
I don’t think it’s strictly a generational mindset though, the exception being that in the last 20 years the intensification of the brainwashing in the school systems has poisoned more young minds than in the previous generations who could still call out - or at least shake their head at nonsense when they encountered it.
I’m a boomer who was raised just as you described free from anything even resembling helicopter parenting. We woke up, jumped on our bikes, and weren’t seen again until sundown. We were daredevils and creative and made our own fun. But there was always a learning curve involved in all those activities. You found your way, you stood your ground, and mangled to learn something new every day. But, while not everything, that independence was key to it all. But- BIG BUT - we weren’t being taught the insanity at school as kids to day are. Therein lies the difference.
The school systems - especially the colleges - need to be utterly purged of the purple haired, sexually deviant, and rabid Marxists who currently have a hold on them. There truly needs to be a reckoning there if this country wants to have any kind of future.
Bottom line is: we do have to get a lot “meaner” and totally intolerant of their tolerance for all things abnormal or they’ll just trample right over us.
That one video pretty much described my childhood in the late 60s.
Same.
That's why they call themselves "Queers"....they seek to "queer the norm". They are un-serious people and I treat them with disdain. I'm tired of the tats, the weird piercings, the strange colored hair, the androgyny, the lack of personal hygiene. I say they form a commune in the middle of the desert and try to live among each other as their new social experiment....it would devolve into Lord of the Flies very quickly.
Great piece. In a recent Tucker Carlson interview, Glenn Greenwald referred to it as the deliberate zombification of society through pharmaceuticals. You can see the tangible effect of the collective desensitization in the lack of opposition to the latest neocon war of choice.
It was through my experience raising my sons that I was confronted with bizarre and foreign concepts of helicopter parenting, participation trophies, and super-scoring standardized tests, all obviously designed to insulate youth from consequences and the very notion of “normalcy”, I.e., sometimes in life we get our butt kicked and we have to learn the lesson.
My youngest was ten years old and playing in the local soccer league and his team was literally the worst in the league, finishing winless. After the final game, his coach was handing out trophies to the team.
As his coach attempted to hand my son a trophy, my son looked at him and asked him why they were getting trophies. His coach replied, “for participating and being part of the team.” My son politely replied “No, thank you” and refused the trophy. This same kid was expelled from his suburban Detroit middle school for refusing to wear an obedience mask. We ended up home schooling until we left Michigan.
I’m pleased that my sons and their select group of friends appear to still have a grasp of objective normalcy. It gives me hope.
I love this post! Everything said is spot on target. Only, I wish the concept of Generation Jones was more recognized. Born in ‘59, I can’t identify with Boomers and I’m a bit too old for Gen X. The husband and I were discussing these same ideas recently, and we both said we feel like we’ve been noticing and preparing for this societal upheaval for decades, but now we’re older and weaker…although our arsenal is better equipped. 🤷🏻♀️ Hopefully when Gen X calls for action, we won’t get lumped in with the rest. Again, nice post, I’ll be sharing!
https://youtu.be/KVo4Fazy6BY
Yep!
Relatable
"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
Samuel Adams, 1779
¡El Gato en fuego!
This essay touches on a lot of points, but one stuck out to me, about how earlier generations used to let their kids "free-range." There's a stronger cultural current to this than appears at first.
If anything bad happens, the first thing we do is blame the parent. ("Why were you letting a 7-year-old ride their bike on a road with traffic??!!") It's gotten to the point that parents are criminally prosecuted any time something bad happens, if that "bad" come from having taken the slightest safety risk at all.
All of this comes from a general intolerance for risk. We, as a culture, expect almost 100% guarantees of safety for everything. It's getting harder to do any kind of business, as insurance costs creep up and liability exposure is almost boundless in every industry. Every mistake must be punished. Who would want to be a surgeon these days? Or any kind of medical doctor? Or truck driver? Or bridge engineer? Due diligence isn't enough; we demand absolute perfection, or face the consequences. Is it any wonder the younger generations are grade-A responsibility shirkers? There are just too many ways to make a mistake, so it's better, and rational, to do nothing.
It's possible the root of all of this can be explained by Sowell's "Conflict of Visions." The progressive mind sees perfect safety as possible. The conservative accepts that imperfection and risk, and having bad things happen, is the price we pay for civilization. It's all a trade-off.
But here we are living in the age of "Every tragedy was avoidable." Avoiding risk has become its own goal; building or accomplishing anything is secondary.
Whether intentional or not, I think Enes and White have the correct plan in place. Mock them and go after their ideas with reductio ad absurdum. After all, as EGM has said, these people "are" their ideas; they don't "have" their ideas. They won't be able to handle it.
One of your best ones, Gato. Ever.
Did you see the argument Kat Timpf was having on X with everyone? She seems to think a bit differently, which surprised me.
However, I do worry it's too little, too late for us. The Dems (DSA) get back in and we're done for, and it won't surprise me to see people voting left and right for them. Just so weird how many people I hear in my daily life talking about voting that way in November and in 2028.
Same here from "very affluent" Loudoun County Virginia.
Completely sad and shocking
Normalcy begins with the understanding that men and women are unique and different, and that we need each other and need to work with each other to keep civilization running a little more smoothly.
Besides, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature: https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/its-not-nice-to-fool-mother-nature?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web