The Good Old Days Require A Certain Point of View

In one of those funny coincidences, a couple of months ago Alex J Cavanaugh whined on Michael Offutt's blog that young people today don't really want to work hard; they just want to work hard enough not to get fired.

Pretty much the same night I was watching an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Pluto TV and they showed a 1940 short made by Chevy called "Hired!"  The plot of that is there's a new salesman who has trouble selling cars.  At the end of part 1 his boss is lamenting that young people today just don't work hard like back in his day.

The irony comes when you realize the boss is criticizing someone who would a year or more later probably be fighting in Europe or the Pacific in World War II.  Yes, according to this guy the generation that we came to call "the Greatest Generation" were a bunch of lazy slackers.

So yeah every generation thinks the one(s) after them are lazy and not as good and destroying the world.  Provided any of us are still around in 20 years, Millennials will be whining that the young people of that time just don't work hard like they did.

It's kind of like how your grandparents or parents would tell you they had to walk uphill ten miles through the snow to get to school--and from school to home too!  It's pure bullshit.  By the same token people whine that people had longer attention spans or were smarter or read more back in "the good old days."  It always strikes me as bullshit.  Like whether the younger generation is lazy, it's not something we can really verify scientifically since we don't have a time machine or anything.  It's just something old, bitter people believe so they can feel like they're the special ones, the chosen ones, and it gives them an excuse for things being fucked.

Mostly I think it's just our solipsistic view of the universe.  You ask a Baby Boomer when the "good old days" were and they might say the 50s or 60s.  You ask a Gen Xer like me and we'd say the 80s or 90s.  And even then it can vary depending on your age.  An older Gen Xer might associate the 80s more as the best while I'd lean towards the 90s.  Why?  Because they were MY good old days!  I'd wager if we could do this scientifically people's golden age would generally coincide to their teens and early 20s.  Because that's the period where you're breaking out on your own, maturing sexually, and making memories that largely aren't shared with parents and/or siblings.  Or I guess you could say it's really when you start to form your individual identity.  And yet it's before you hit your 30s and 40s when family life and obligations stifle your individual identity and/or your youthful dreams are slowly smothered and your body starts breaking down...where was I?

The point being that we look down on the younger generations because we aren't young anymore and we're bitter and resentful because they are.  Plus now that we are in our 30s, 40s, or older and hope is slowly being crushed in our lives, these days don't seem that great to us.  And naturally we tend to focus more on the good things of the past than the bad things.

Though I can make a case for the 90s in that you had no serious threat of nuclear war, no ongoing wars in general, terrorism was mostly crazy white guys or happened in other countries, no segregation, less overt racism/homophobia, an Internet that hadn't completely become a cesspool of trolls, scams, and porn (wait, probably not that), 3 Star Trek series (and movies), Beast Wars Transformers, X-Files, golden age Simpsons, no Star Wars prequels until the decade was nearly over, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were still alive, and Donald Trump was just a bumbling businessman largely confined to New York and New Jersey.  But then you could make a case for any decade, though it probably wouldn't be so convincing.

The point being that the problem isn't with the young people; the problem is with YOU.  Not to say that some young people today aren't lazy.  Like the ones who live across the hall from me and can't be bothered to walk a hundred feet to the dumpster right away and probably by the time this is published still haven't taken down their Christmas tree.