Blackhole wrote:the misconception that one generation is somehow more screwed up than the other is simply confirmation bias.
I know that the bias you're speaking of is often at play--it's one of the many blind spots common to humanity--but in the same way that the fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me--just because there's bias at play doesn't mean children aren't more and more screwed up (sounds bad to say it that way). What we're seeing is children who weren't given the proper guidance--growing up and taking bringing in the next generation to new lows. There are so many opportunities to knock some young person upside the head because they're doing something where they ought by all reasonable measures to know better. And I think
Spidey's Woodchip's got something when he says "then they grow up", but you shouldn't deny what is lost in the process--it is a downward trend, and it's only reversed through force of character (not naturally).
Blackhole wrote:This is actually a superb example of exactly what's going on here. You aren't placing enough importance on tolerance and are instead fixated on other problems, as if they are somehow more important. You are horrified that some kid would walk down a street and yell obscenities at you for no reason. However, you brush aside the fact that your generation denied gays the right to marry. Your generation drove kids to commit suicide and we're still trying to put a stop to it. Your generation tried to dictate what "love" was and for. That is just as disgusting and horrifying as some kid screaming at you on the sidewalk, just in a different way. A "violates fundamental human rights" kind of way.
Whole new can of worms. I was being sarcastic in the first part of that. I don't believe that homosexual behavior is healthy for an individual or a society. And I believe that the acceptance of homosexuality has been a matter of a successful breakdown of moral barriers rather than instilling any genuine tolerance--and leaving people with no good reason to oppose it, but only emotional and pseudo-scientific reasons to accept it, with the alternative of being ostracized as a biggot.
Another thing I will say is that when it comes down to it I place a lot of importance on tolerance, I just happen to know that most people have a really wacked-out, shallow concept of what tolerance is. I've worked with a man who divorced his wife and left his children for another guy. I would never consider someone like that to be a good example of humanity or morality (though the college he teaches at seems to think so), but I wouldn't use it as an excuse to treat him unfairly either. By the way it wouldn't be unfair to call him on it, or to insist that he is not a fit example for young people. IMO people have a certain amount of liberty to do what they will in this country, and in any civilized social structure, but I'm not going to lend my approval to a perverted institution like gay marriage and that's all your "denied gays the right to marry" actually means, once you decode it. I'll go a step further and say that generally speaking neither my generation, the one before it, nor yours really has a ★■◆●ing clue what love is all about, and what's left there is fast fading.
Blackhole wrote:What truly annoys me here is not that you are pointing out clearly valid flaws in my generation
Fair enough. (I'm bad)
Blackhole wrote:If you want to criticize kids, you may do so, but only without saying that your generation would somehow never stoop to that level, because your generation stooped to levels far lower than mine in entirely different areas.
Really? Besides your questionable argument about slaver... er homosexuality, throw me an example. And forget about politics, because that is not a generational issue, unless you want to argue that young people these days are taught a screwed up, Hollywood edition of democracy, America, freedom, and the constitution.
P.S. When you're talking
my generation you're actually talking late 20s to early 30s.