Does each generation think they're better than the generation that comes after?

Drakares

Whenever this topic comes up, people of all ages say that people of younger years lack the respect and attitude which the person had when growing up.

A typical example we can probably all relate to is that kids nowadays have phones and do not listen to their parents because they're spoiled little brats..

Aristotle 332 BC said the following:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

So do people only have illusions of themselves when they were young, or are people your younger, in general, spoiled little brats?

JuliusCaesar

Yes. My generation is best generation.

pmasterson95

They think they are but they are really not just stupider and more gullible. They'll jump whatever bandwagon is cool. And i'm that generation. Its depressing.

The_Valeyard

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Yes. My generation is best generation.

Your generation stabbed you to death multiple times.

Mint Aero

I reckon there must be a cycle to it or something. Maybe it correlates with boom bust cycles, maybe it's connected to El Nino, who knows, maybe AVB knows.

But my generation growing up were very retarded, anti social, dim witted, emotionally challenged. However a couple of years after kids became quiet smarts and well adjusted for the age. Now they're retarded little sh*ts again.

Grayson

I know every generation thinks the next one is less well behaved and has less respect.

Mint Aero

pmasterson95 wrote: »

They think they are but they are really not just stupider and more gullible. They'll jump whatever bandwagon is cool. And i'm that generation. Its depressing.

T'was a hot summer that 1995 was. :cool: You were 6 for 9-11? Man, sucks to be you.

Gbear

Society is, more or less, constantly moving forward.

I don't really buy the idea that you hear in American media in particular, that the generation that won the war was the "greatest generation", or that there was something wrong with the one after it - the "Baby Boomers".
I think the war was just something that happened to them. So too were the 70/80's to those that came after.

I'm sure Ireland has had it's own distinct periods that stereotypes of people existed in - basically, old people, who are currently dying out, who were there when the whole "Ireland" thing kicked off in earnest, their kids, there for modernisation and the new crowd, who arrived when we had pretty much started to sort our **** out - divorce, contraception, homosexuality laws and so on.

It seems like fantasy to me to suggest there was something special (good or bad) about ordinary people from 50 years ago.

One could argue that, with the pretty much inexorable march of progress in civil rights, decreasing poverty, improving healthcare, that each new generation is usually the best there has ever been.

But, similarly to the war, that's just something that happens in their lifetime.
They might be better people, but not because there's anything special about them. I'm not a better person than my grandad. We just learned from the mistakes of society back then and got better at living amongst one another.

Bongalongherb

These new generations get dumber and dumber, instead of looking at reality, they look into a phone. The next generation from this new one will be so dumb that robots will be teaching them their ways and control them, and only then will the new dumb generation be enslaved completely.

Damn robot slaves.

Take their technology away and they will die.

The Backwards Man

I would have a reasonable amount of interaction with kids and I have to honestly say that there's very few of them even half as unmannerly, rowdy or as much a nightmare to contend with as I was.

Sam Kade

Gbear wrote: »

Society is, more or less, constantly moving forward.

I don't really buy the idea that you hear in American media in particular, that the generation that won the war was the "greatest generation", or that there was something wrong with the one after it - the "Baby Boomers".
I think the war was just something that happened to them. So too were the 70/80's to those that came after.

I'm sure Ireland has had it's own distinct periods that stereotypes of people existed in - basically, old people, who are currently dying out, who were there when the whole "Ireland" thing kicked off in earnest, their kids, there for modernisation and the new crowd, who arrived when we had pretty much started to sort our **** out - divorce, contraception, homosexuality laws and so on.

It seems like fantasy to me to suggest there was something special (good or bad) about ordinary people from 50 years ago.

One could argue that, with the pretty much inexorable march of progress in civil rights, decreasing poverty, improving healthcare, that each new generation is usually the best there has ever been.

But, similarly to the war, that's just something that happens in their lifetime.
They might be better people, but not because there's anything special about them. I'm not a better person than my grandad. We just learned from the mistakes of society back then and got better at living amongst one another.

Don't mention the war.

Mechanical Clocktail

Society is always essentially the same. One generation matures and their views and attitudes change. The next younger generation lacks that maturity (obviously). The older generation are different to what they used to be and can't help viewing the younger generation more poorly. They think back of themselves with an amount of fondness and forgiveness because that's the easiest thing to do, especially after a couple of decades when the memory of things becomes more vague.

Grayson

Bongalongherb wrote: »

These new generations get dumber and dumber, instead of looking at reality, they look into a phone. The next generation from this new one will be so dumb that robots will be teaching them their ways and control them, and only then will the new dumb generation be enslaved completely.

Damn robot slaves.

Take their technology away and they will die.

People said the same about my generation with our MTV and our walkmans and cassettes

conorhal

Grayson wrote: »

People said the same about my generation with our MTV and our walkmans and cassettes

You killed the radio star you bastard! :mad:

melissak

Yes

jorex88

Just because a culture advances in time does not imply progress.

I would argue that Western culture is regressing.

Sam Kade

jorex88 wrote: »

Just because a culture advances in time does not imply progress.

I would argue that Western culture is regressing.

That's a very true observation.

The majority of children I know, are good nice kids, they have manners and are respectful. There are one or two who are not so.

And I'd bet if you'd asked my mother and my grandmother the same question at my age, their answers would have been the same.

bolopapa

My Grandfather do say this generation happen to be the worst.
But i mean we made life easier with technology and science.
So by far I believe the next generation will be better since their will be more improvement to science and technology.