‘We see children as pestilent’ — A psychologist, writing in the Guardian, warns that some people in Britain already hate the young.
As a mother and a specialist in child and adolescent mental health, I despair for today’s young people, who are feared because of the actions of a minority population – the violent, aggressive and antisocial; a population that has always existed. We see young people as so pestilent that we create the Mosquito, a device only they can hear, designed to frighten them away.
The Mosquito, according to Wikipedia is an electronic device which emits a sound with a high frequency, which can typically only be heard by people below 25 years of age. “The device is marketed as a safety and security tool for preventing youths congregating. As such, it is promoted to reduce anti-social behaviour: loitering, graffiti, vandalism, drug abuse, drug distribution, and violence. In the UK, over 3,000 have been sold, mainly for use outside shops and near transport hubs.”
Considering that the dwindling number of children are going to be relied upon by the elderly to pay for their care, especially at a time when retirement funds have been wiped out by the meltdown and defend them against invaders even now pressing against Western borders, it might be best not to antagonize them too much. The Boomers were left a world by their fathers. Perhaps this generation has not been quite so provident. Leaving aside the question of morality completely, and considering people only as economic and physical units, the West has been profligate in the expending its youth. Millions and perhaps billions of people who would have been young today never got past the abortion dumpster; the ones that are left are shooed away by high-frequency Mosquitoes. The survivors robbed of their fellows, inhabit a culture they have been taught is worthless. And when they grow to manhood and if they get jobs, they’ll have to work off the crushing debt the stimulators have left them.
Maybe the youth are right to make merry while they can. Nearly a hundred years ago a poet, wondering perhaps where the love of parents for their children had gone wrote:
What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
No cannon now, but still the slow drawing down of the blinds.
..No they won’t be required to pay crushing debt, not if they live in a Republic. They’ll just vote it null and void. Don’t think for a minute that any generation can saddle the next ones with debt they decide not to pay. The Chinese are fools to loan the money, as is anyone who has any sense of history. Ask the folks who hold Czarist and Confederate war bonds. Debts that can’t be payed, won’t be paid.
I have heard that the most effective tool for reducing vandalism and shoplifting in shopping malls is Mozart. Pump it over the public abuse system and older people feel welcome while the adolescents vanish. The problem is that crowds of feral young people are tolerated because they have money. A few weeks ago I was in the local candy/newspaper/stationary/lotto store as the Korean owner stood in the door staring at two Junior High students browsing the wares. When they left to rejoin the baying crowd outside, who were working themselves up for a fight, I asked him, “Why do you put up with it?” His reply, “I have to. They are my customers.”
But Malthus, having learned the simple linear regression, was so…right…they told us so. Now the enter the greens, with the same simplistic analysis, also anti-people; no difference.
The devil is always with us and having taught us to destroy our children seems to be winning.
Some day the last man will be born. He will grow up with nothing to look forward to but old age alone, when all his elders have died, with no one to talk to but recordings of the civilization that let itself expire.
The great tragedy is that at the crucial moment when we needed someone who could stand in for Good King Harry and rally the troops for battle on behalf of Western Civilization John McCain was not up to the task. He wanted to and I think he saw the big picture, even if he was wrong on many details, but whether due to age or infirmity or a misplaced gentility he just couldn’t sustain an attack.
Re: LOM @ 2
Questions arise. Why are Jr. High kids loose on the world? (Age 13-15)? Is it because feminism (whiskey?) has convinced families that both need a career outside the home?
For example, one of four, we were raised in a 1250 sqft home and shared bedrooms. That is now considered absolute poverty. We though we were middle class.
Yes my wife and I were pulled into the two income trap, for a while. After we more or less (probably less) raised our own children, she, choose to come home and do volunteer work. She volunteered for our local church daycare. What an eye opener. We cried together after learning what we had done. The literature is full of the bad side of day care and the more of everything but love syndrome.
Our children would have shared rooms, not knowing they were deprived. They would have loved to have been met at the door by one of us each day, asking what went on at school (even if the answer would be the standard surly “nuthin”.)
We know the answer. When are we going to care enough to do what needs to be done?
Sorry all, this is a hot button for me. I will try to stay calm.
Burgess’s ‘Clockwork Oragne,’ at least in the British edition, ended with Alex having a glimmer of hope and change. But that was a novel written in the way-back time of 1962. The American edition dropped the hopeful final chapter and may have been a more accurate long-range forecast of nihilistic trends in the culture, especially among the young.
Parents in San Francisco have to deal with being called “breeders.” Gaia-centric thinking can’t easily escape seeing humankind as parasitical, a gumming up of the natural processes of nature. Hollywood produces movies that feature a human-less world.
Parents will continue to have children. And religion will continue to command honor for parents. But increasingly the privileging of parents, and of children, will become optional, just as marriage has become increasingly optional.
And as one well-known commentator liked to say, “When the orthodox is made optional, it will eventually be proscribed.”
But isn’t Obama’s concern for better funding of education a sign that we really do honor children? I won’t even bother getting into that.
Mark. While working at a University based research center, It was carefully explained to me that the purpose of the university, and therefore our R&D division, was the care and feeding of faculty. Students were/ are merely the screen cover Oz.
@Mark,
Thank you for giving me an opening to tie together my ideas on this and the last thread. In teaching BTW this is called “spiraling” and deserves a black belt.
Government, particularly at the national level, should have one role in education; inspecting and tossing criminals into jail. A provision for vouchers, designed to augment a rich variety of charitable and commercial services, should be the basis of funding for our educational system. The States should set standards and supervise tests and inspections to see that those standards are met. Parents who refuse to educate their children or who (Here is where I expect the Libertarians to explode) misuse their authority to inculcate ignorance and bigotry under the guise of and in place of education should be charged with abuse. This should not interfere with private religious and cultural schooling but would cause a problem who believe that in the name of a religion it is acceptable to refuse to provide a basic education and instead spread lies and hate. The only alternative to that is the current dysfunctional system in which real abuse is ignored while more and more money is thrown at the unionized public schools by a centralized government that in theory controls everything but in practice delivers little.
Well, the young won’t disappear. They are only replaced.
When there is a vaccuum, the void will be (had been and in the process of being) filled.
Tomorrow’s young won’t feel any need to sustain the dying and worthless West. And the Boomers in their 70s to 90s can only beg, don’t hurt me (too much).
michael hoskins,
I’m sure I used this story before. Some years ago I met the then Commandant of West Point. I pointed out to him that a College President had three jobs. As the Colonel holding the General’s bag trembled the Commandant asked “Really, what are they?” The answer, “Why General, parking for the faculty, football for the alumni and sex for the undergraduates.” Having had his job explained to him the gentleman laughed and shook his head “Then I am a complete failure. The environmentalists won’t let me fix the first, we are losing at the second, and the third is illegal.”
LOM @ 10. Only one question with an otherwise excellent statement. Who decides what is or is not education? This is the detail devil that confounds us all, methinks.
LOM…to swap sea stories, our Dean of Engineering had been the head of department at USMA (BG COE). His biggest fight was justifying the salary difference between our engineering faculty (a new school at a traditional Liberal Arts University) and the Arts and Sciences college. At the time an MS ME working on his PhD, got 50k. Brand new English PhD’s on 9 month, non tenure contracts got 19k.
The rest of the story (I was told, without verification) was that in the anti Viet Nam era English departments allowed PhD theses to be contrast and compare and criticism rather than actual literature, thus Eng prof want a bes are a dime a dozen. Who knew.
Let us not forget the frontier:
This nihilistic bend of modern western civilization, in many ways began with the closing of the frontier. For Western Europe, this was the end of the colonial era, and in the U.S., the end of the race Westward to California and into the vastness of Alaska.
When there was a frontier, the dreamer, the dis-satisfied skeptic, the person who believed the current situation was corrupt and unchangeable could pull up stakes, and move to the frontier.
On the frontier they would harness their ingenuity, their drive, their knowledge, to build something for themselves, or just to strike it rich with the goal of re-entering that previously despised society in a much improved position, or they died trying.
In an industrialized and automated society, which no longer values manual labor, and having finite resources and land area, it is no longer a lifetime or economic advantage to have children, quite the opposite in fact. Children are a giant drain of both time and money in modern society for no immediate return, and doubtful long term advantage.
On a frontier, children and family are often the only friendly people to be found within many days travel. They grew to fill the niches necessary for survival, for culture, for living more than minimal existence. Pioneers taught themselves veterinary skills, new farming techniques, midwifery, blacksmithing, wood carving, bricklaying, irrigation. Many successful pioneers knew only one or none of these skills when they “staked their claim” and learned what they needed from friends, family members, books, or through trial and error! Children were necessary to carry the load, and were the closest thing to a pention any pioneer was ever likely to have! The children might care for Pa after he’s had his heart attack. Grandma was always useful watching the little ones so Ma could go out to the barn, corn shed, chicken coop, root cellar, etc.
The next frontier awaits us, and when we begin to colonize Mars, or Titan, or some extra solar planet yet to be found, children will once again be priceless! I believe the only way this won’t happen is if we allow western civilization to self destruct before we really colonize throughout the solar system. We need a new frontier, with new resources. Without it, we will stagnate, just as the great Chinese empire of the European renaissance era.
The danger is from the short sighted politicians we have installed all across our civilization. We must take back our civilization, and spread it to the stars.
Rex@25
We must take back our civilization, and spread it to the stars.
Probably should spread it across my block, for starters.
As the father of five in an old-fashioned family I got into a discission with one of those “non-breeders” a while back. He disagreed with my contention that those who have not provided for their future deserve no place in it, or at least deserve to place no burdens upon those that follow. He misunderstood me in that he replied with the usual whine about having to pay higher taxes and school taxes etc etc.
I pointed out to him that to choose to not at least replace yourself, both physically and spiritually, is the equivalent of commiting suicide without the forthright decency of doing it directly. I pointed out the his type sit around preaching at everyone else about our sins and will doubtless live many unproductive years into retirement, demanding that my children protect, feed, house, tend and support him. All without so much as a thank-you.
The self-absorbed egotism of the Protester-Hippie-Boomers boggles my mind. The only reason they have any importance is the they represent a “bubble” in the demographics, all bubbles burst in the end.
Mark @8,
I never did understand why the last chapter of “A Clockwork Orange” was left out of the American edition. Leaving out that chapter completely changes the ending, and not for the better IMO.
My regular running route takes me through a good portion of the Castro in SF. Most of the time I have my toddler strapped into the baby jogger. Only once have I been called a “breeder” to my face, and that was by a lesbian. Mostly though, I notice the vacant, nihilistic countenances of the people we pass. Especially true during the weekend mornings, when the shenanigans of the night before must surely hang heavy in the air. Eh, or maybe it’s just a hangover.
Though nothing I have ever observed in SF compares to what my wife and I experienced when we took our “babymoon” trip through Croatia and Italy when she was almost 6 months pregnant. Based on the looks of disgust on the faces of many of the people we passed after observing my wife’s baby belly, you’d think we were the Alien and the Predator out for a stroll. This was especially true in Italy. Coming back to SF was a breath of family fresh air, believe it or not.
It was then that I determined that the Europe of old was doomed.
The Western Euros have given up. They can’t be bothered to breed; it is sooooo much easier just to import fully-grown people from the old colonies, they can be put directly to work at the crap jobs the elites can’t be troubled to do.
Never mind the erosion of centuries of culture and the abandonment of the future to the tenant-barbarians that are infiltrating the society. It is such a blast not having any responsibility and playing like a child even though the median age of natural born citizens approaches forty-something.
I wonder if any of them have contemplated what their last years will look like as the demographic swings and those “troublesome youths” with their Car-B-Ques come to rule the land.
P.S. Jrod, that may just be a cultural thing, in many Latin cultures it is (was) common for women in the latter stages of pregnancy not to go about in public.
Anton, that’s what my wife said too (she’s from Mexico). But even she was skeptical that that could be the whole reason.
Jrod, my wife’s best freind is first-gen Italian, she runs a dance school (ballet etc) and was going to close the business because she was pregnant and “couldn’t appear that way in front of children”. My wife talked her out of that and covered the classes for her when she was near-term. Old habits die hard.
It is not feminism, but rather unconstrained female choice without any limits that produces anti-natalism.
Think about it. Hardly anyone reads or cares about feminists, but everyone is affected by cheap and easy contraception, anonymous urban living, high cost for family-raising by middle-class White standards, and lack of social institutions and structures.
People remain single for most of their lives. They marry very late, if they marry at all. Increasingly, White Middle class women chase after a variety of various men, rack up many, many sex partners (around 40-60 in urban professional places like NYC), face VERY high costs for the traditional family, and remain status-driven singles for approximately twenty plus years after they leave home for College.
IF women have kids at all, it’s as a single mother, with some form of sperm donation, in many upper-class or upper-middle class professional circles. The NYT articles about this phenomena and the extraordinary positive response from their female readers online is a huge red flag. Of course most births to Black Women are single mothers, and increasingly to Hispanics and Whites. Among Blacks, according Juan Williams of NPR, the rate of illegitimacy is 70% nationwide and 90% in the urban core. Compared to the Black numbers of 24% in 1964 and the White numbers of 4% !!! that year. Now the Hispanic rate nationwide is approaching 50% and for Whites it is 41% (single mother aggregate, never-married is IIRC 37% or so).
This is a huge shift. First, women were free to pursue endlessly (and a few lucky “Alpha” men as well) a musical chairs game of find the hot guy. Social mores in an urban, anonymous, wealthy playground shifted to sex first, then relationship after, instead of the other way around. Enabled critically by cheap and easy contraception.
“Winners” are those with fabulous outfits, a smart apartment in a fashionable neighborhood, all the correct opinions and multicultural friends and beliefs, with a PC-friendly one child only, conceived if possible by an anonymous sperm donor at age 39. Anyone doubting this can watch Home and Garden Television, for the various status-displays still there for inspection.
No “evil persons” or “feminists” or “cultural marxists” created this situation. You can’t sell ice cubes to Eskimos. Shifts in technology and living, particularly wage erosion of Joe Average (making him a less good bet for family formation), rising wealth of women (they don’t need or want Joe Average, they have their own cash, often more than Joe), and endless single living enabled by a loss of social community in highly anonymous urban living … all contribute to anti-Natalism.
Consider this: it is possible now for many urban professional dwellers to live lives of almost complete social isolation, fake-phony, “polite” interaction between office-mates, blank stares on the subway, constant government surveillance by detached databases, and computer programs, but no meaningful family and social ties.
If you want an explanation for the phenomena Spike Lee dubbed “the Magical Negro” or those films extolling the “magical” Third World and it’s “warm” social structures, (the Visitor) then this is it. Western White professionals lead lonely isolated lives, interrupted by bouts of nihilistic sex, seeking connections their society cannot provide and substituting with status displays in yuppie consumerism.
And no “Gramscian Marxist” did this either — it’s the inevitable result of mass urbanization in more wealthy and humane terms and high social/physical mobility. You can find the same despair in Bombay, Lagos, Sao Paulo, and likely Manila.
“And when they grow to manhood …”
That would be “if.” Age alone does not bring manhood.
As a society we are getting ever richer because technology progresses so I wouldn’t worry too much about the next generation not having as much material wealth as us.More worried about 2 other problems;
A very large proportion of them have been brought up without a father figure (it has just been announced that 50% are now born out of wedlock). The corelation between fatherlessness & crime, illiteracy, adult homelessness & drink/drug abuse is very strong, stronger than with motherlessness.
We are close to the stage where the majority of children are going to be those of immigrants – holding such a society together will be extremely difficult. The normal justification for immigration is that we need them to pay the taxes but whether a generation nearly 50% Moslem is going to pay the social security bills of largely native pensioners is an open question.
The West has been profligate in the expending its youth.
It seems to me that the rampant sexualization of children at earlier and earlier ages is another way of disposing of the young. In a very real sense, pedophilia is the flip side of what Wretchard terms pedophobia, as is encouraging children to wear sexually suggestive clothing long before puberty. A couple of years ago there was an article in the Times around Halloween about the latest “in” costumes for kids: pimps and “hos.” There must be a growing number of adults who find the very innocence of childhood offensive and who try to turn the kids into copies of their own jadedness and corruption as early as possible.
I wanted to quote Heinlein on juvenile delinquency, but it’s too long to post, so here’s a link. Harsh and seemingly devoid of compassion, but hard to argue with Heinlein’s logic. The most striking:
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. “I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue–indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be, a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents–people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.”
“And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’…and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.”
http://kalorin.com/stuff/thoughts/juvenile_delinquents.html
“We see young people as so pestilent”
And so there it is. A society that genuinely sees children as a burden. Why fear war or terrorism when you have already chosen self-destruction?
Neil, we can look to Western Europe for our future unless things change. The problem will be that when the light goes on in a decade or so it will be difficult start replacing ourselves at age 40+. The spirit may become willing but the body would say otherwise. This is one of the reasons that I am so opposed to the “multi” mindset, we need to assimilate immigrants as completely, and as fast, as possible.
Feminism or whisky? Women having jobs? “Unconstrained female choice without any limits”? Let me offer a modest suggest to those worked up in a froth over the notion that untrammeled dames are throwing off your sons and marching away in chilly stilettos:
Calm down.
Grow up.
Teach your sons to be responsible sexual partners and responsible parents in their own right. Women, married or not, care for children far more consistently than men. Women have been left to raise millions of children alone — men . . . not so much, right? So instead of worrying about the maternal instinct, worry about the paternal one.
I promise you that if you do this, you will see the social changes you desire. If that is what you really want. if you want to whine about equality, well, have at it.
@6 michael hoskins
My wife and I dated for slightly more than 3 years before marrying – during that time we discussed just about everything we could imagine would arise in marriage, including how we planned to raise the kids that we both wanted to have. One thing we were certain of was that if we brought them into the world, we were d@mn well going to raise’em. Someone would bring in the bacon while the other handled the home – in our case, we wound up going the traditional route as my earnings far exceeded hers.
It’s not been without sacrifice – my car, for example, is old enough to drink in most states… and functions like a drunk about half the time. My wife’s car is a little bit better… it gets her where she and the kids need to go about 99% of the time.
We’ve done without a boat, an RV, European vacations… until this past Christmas, Mrs Triton’s laptop was nearly as old (8 years) as my daughter (9 years).
What surplus we have goes for private christian school tuition – they will never see the inside of a government school, and be taught a bunch of useless crap.
I travel a bit for my job, but not so much that it’s a burden; most nights, we put the kids to bed together.
They get read to, played with, and disciplined when necessary. My daughter takes piano lessons from a sweet older widow we know from church. My son just started T-ball a few weeks ago.
At the moment, our checking account holds less than $ 65, which must stretch ’till Friday. After the past year of high gas prices, high food prices, high everything else prices, we have no savings to fall back on.
But our kids are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted in a world seemingly turned upside-down.
We wouldn’t change a thing.
@25 PA Cat
We’ve labored to extend the dawn of our danghter’s innocence as long as possible – not so much that she hits her teen years absolutely clueless, but enough that while many of her 8 to 10 y.o. playmates are dressing like 20 y.o’s and running around screeching the latest lyrics from…. who do kids listen to these days?… ours is still enjoying hosting tea parties with a couple of like-minded girlfriends and their American Girl dolls.
She actually lamented to me a few days ago that she was somewhat sad that she was getting older, since she knew that the day was coming that her dolls would take their places in a display case and that’d she’d move on to what life had to offer next. She said to me, with moist eyes, “and Daddy, I’ve had such fun being a little girl, too.”
God, I’m so blessed.
Triton
Lifeofthemind:
“I have heard that the most effective tool for reducing vandalism and shoplifting in shopping malls is Mozart. Pump it over the public abuse system and older people feel welcome while the adolescents vanish.”
That would work against my 12 year old son. In the car, I turn on Bach or Mozart, almost achieve nirvana then my son starts moaning about the low quality of the music. He insists on AM/FM pop music (much of which isn’t bad). Oddly enough my son likes Led Zeppelin so at least he has good taste with heavy metal.
Mark said:
“Burgess’s ‘Clockwork Orange,’ at least in the British edition, ended with Alex having a glimmer of hope and change. But that was a novel written in the way-back time of 1962. The American edition dropped the hopeful final chapter and may have been a more accurate long-range forecast of nihilistic trends in the culture, especially among the young.”
Little Alex was a big fan of Beethoven (a weakness that was exploited). I didn’t know about the alternative British ending. I’ll have to buy a used paperback copy next time I’m in London.
Jrod said:
“My regular running route takes me through a good portion of the Castro in SF. Most of the time I have my toddler strapped into the baby jogger. Only once have I been called a “breeder” to my face, and that was by a lesbian.”
What an honor! I hope you said “thanks!” to the stupid bitch.
Jrod also said:
“Mostly though, I notice the vacant, nihilistic countenances of the people we pass.”
I live in the south Bay Area. I’ve heard it said more than once that San Francisco is becoming a city without children (many of the public schools have closed down). My kids have played in Golden Gate Park and there were plenty of other kids playing with them. It’s a disturbing notion that families are being driven out of San Francisco.
Triton’sPolarTiger said:
“It’s not been without sacrifice – my car, for example, is old enough to drink in most states… and functions like a drunk about half the time.”
I own a 1964 Rambler American. It gets horrible mileage. My Rambler is my daily driver because I love it (no sacrifice) and it’s a tank (other drivers stay away from me). I’m currently swapping out the transmission and hope to do some rust repair in a couple month (that’ll be “interesting”).
@32 Eggplant
A ’64 Rambler American… I love you, man!!
Seriously, are you north of Mason-Dixon… i.e. you have rust in places where you didn’t even know you had places? We’ve got to get Wretchard to set-up a safe zone where photos of gems like this one can be posted for all to see!
OOPS
“I live in the south Bay Area.”
Nevermind. Read; THEN post, Triton…
I chose not to have children because I could never discern a single maternal molecule in my whole makeup. And after being reared by a similarly mother-deficient maternal person, I didn’t want to repeat that embroglio on someone else.
I will pay my fair share of taxes towards schooling other people’s children but intensely resent being told that it takes a village to raise them, and that I am therefore, somehow, responsible for all the misbehaved brats I see screaming through the supermarkets and libraries, as well as feeding, clothing and educating all the little brown babies being born over there.
I also blame the youthful Gen’s X, Y and Z for believing and electing Obama. So that if our great country should fail, I will have no problem whatsoever in holding every 20-something who comes within shooting distance personally responsible.
Finally, we’re long overdue for another world war, which does have the salutary effect of winnowing out young hotheads, as well as older dictators.
As one of the young’uns (I’m 22) I should probably chip in (not necessarily because I have particularly insightful views, there are a few of us who’re trying out that old civic virtue route and respect for the permanent things).
My hunch is that, while the Eurolibs in America have the same distaste for whelps my age and big families (oldest of five, proudly eating all the world’s food and emitting C02), its a trend which still runs counter to flyover America. And perhaps, we’ll simply outbreed them (the demographic crisis in Europe however is probably a loss).
I saw polling data and analysis about the up and coming “millenial” generation, which voted so overwhelmingly for Barry. The thesis is that we’ve all been sheltered by parents who try to protect us from risk and icky bad things, and so we think we’re special, and naively believe that most of the world’s problems really can be solved, and by government at that.
That’s not good, but at the same time millenials have more of a communal sense and a willingness to work together to solve problems, which could be good or bad depending on how we can influence them. There might be a hidden conservative streak, as witnessed by a bizarre encounter I had in a mall back during the presidential primaries. I overheard two college age girls talking about their primary candidates, and one said “well, I obviously like Obama, but I also kind of like this Ron Paul guy.” While the mental disconnect between the wannabee reincarnation of FDR and the wannabee reincarnation of Barry Goldwater (if Paul could just develop a foreign policy that’s been updated since 1913…) took me aback, I realized that she was probably an Obama fan just because the pop culture told her to be. She might have a few conservatives bones and just needs to start listening to them.
When you throw in the rapidly declining poll numbers for Wonder Boy Barry (in particular skepticism for his spending binges), I suppose there’s an outside chance we can grab a bunch of the young dolts my age and learn ‘em up a bit. At any rate, it’ll keep me busy enough not to worry about paying for the rest of the country’s social security.
NanhnCee, I hold myself personally responsible too. Age might teach my generation wisdom, but for now I’m perfectly content to take away our right to vote, even if that means my own.
Fabius. A small point. I take issue with “…millenials have a more communal sense and a willingness to work together to solve problems…” Having spent a career as a problem solver, both at work and in my community, (I am 60, with two wars, two big recessions, a fuel crisis and three children behind me) I have found that millenials are particularly bad (with allowance for experience given)problem solvers. In fact, they are rarely even able to define the problem.
From you comments you may be one of the 10% or so exceptions. Good luck.
Michael,
Good clarification. I should have separated my own observations from the post-election analysis I was talking about. I’d definately agree that Millenials are bad problem solvers and often don’t know where to begin (the ease with which they fall for the “problems” of climate change or the “solution” of government money to make a bad situation worse). Some theories I’ve heard about this generation emphasize more the desire among millenials to WANT to solve problems, not necessarily their ability to do so.
Look more closely at the worldwide decline in fertility rates, sometimes called demographic winter, and you will see many interesting things. The first thing to notice is a Bell Curve; our young are not homogeneous, but divide, roughly, into two declining groups: the productive, whose taxes will be paying for everything and everyone, and the unproductive; that is, those who will be among those the productive young will be paying for. In general, those with higher IQs and less criminality will be more apt to become our future entrepreneurs, middle managers, and Nobel Prize winners. Obviously, though all deserve our love, material well-being will be more affected by the decline in the numbers of productive young. I wonder what they’ll be thinking in 20 years.
What is “pestilent” is not young people. Rather, it is the way the surrounding culture socializes them and malforms them. I’ve seen this at work. I’ve seen parents try hard to raise their kids to be proper and civilized human beings, but their peers at school and elsewhere also have an influence, as does the bad parenting of their peers. Our kids are raised by more than just us. Other parents, through their children, have influence as well.
We have to learn to be sharp enough and observant enough to separate human beings from what lures them into conformity with the culture around them.
whiskey,
It’s the urbanization of culture that can have many deleterious influences on the developing human being. Cities make housing more expensive because of the pressure from demand. Expensive housing can mean the difference between being able to make ends meet having several kids and not making it at all – all without the considerations of other blandishments that some consider to be necessary. When I was a kid my parents rented until I was five years old. We had apartments that had enough room for two adults and three kids (three of my siblings were born after my mother had three more pregnancies to go through)and it only cost Dad one-quarter of his take home pay. And the mortgage for Dad’s first house (a fixer-upper) was one-quarter of his take home pay. Those days are long gone. BTW, our apartments were in town. Our first house was out in the country, before housing developments went up within a decade of our moving out there. Today, for many people rent or mortgage payments consume up to 50% of take home pay. Today, most parents would not be able to have five or six kids under those kinds of circumstances.
I think most people structure their lives around necessity and what is possible for them. Most people tend to not live like those urban elites and yuppies. But then, my view may be limited. I don’t live in or near a big city.
Triton’sPolarTiger said:
“you have rust in places where you didn’t even know you had places?”
My car is a 1964 Rambler American model 220 station wagon. It has a 196 cubic inch flat head engine, 3 speed manual transmission (three on the tree), stock AMC carburetion and ignition, pneumatic windshield wipers, all drum brakes without power boost, old fashion sector gear steering box, no radio and trunnion style suspension system. My car was 20 years obsolete the day it was made in 1964 (a dinosaur on wheels).
It maybe the last model 220 in the Bay Area (30 years ago there were thousands of them). It does have rust issues. The floor pan under the driver’s feet needs to be cut out and replaced. I have a new pan sitting in my office. When it gets a bit warmer, I’ll saw out the old rusty pan and MIG weld in the new pan. I’ve never done this before and a bit spooked about it. I’ve own my Rambler for over 30 years and it’s an old friend.
Fabius,
“The thesis is that we’ve all been sheltered by parents who try to protect us from risk and icky bad things, and so we think we’re special, and naively believe that most of the world’s problems really can be solved, and by government at that.”
I think that deficiency is in the process of being addressed.
Tina in #29
I promise you that if you do this
Please, don’t. You may be well meaning, but you simply can’t promise something for others.
You mention sons, but neglect daughters. As if on that side of aisle is everything peachy, just if the boys are corrected, it all would be lived happily ever after.
As for me, I have 2 daughters (no sons), but knock-on-the-wood, one already an adult turned all right and another in early teens seem to be on the right track as well. I am lucky to be blessed with decent human beings.
Sorry, but those of you complaining about young people are just showing signs of getting old. It is nothing new for old people to be shocked by what the young think and do, or the music they listen to.
I’m going out but may I suggest an AIG – Ex post facto thread? In the spirit of which we should all be allowed to “revise and extend our remarks” later.
The open structure of modern society makes hooking up for life problematic everywhere women have any rights.
Only the barbarians seem to hang on to their wives anymore.
The fantastic growth in government, and in particular the growth in transfer payments per capita from young to old is THE decisive factor in delayed child rearing.
Marriage is delayed because day to day capital pressure makes setting up a baby friendly household only possible for those 12 years out of college. Paying off killer student loans is the other capital accumulation pressure point.
The only way that this dynamic is shunted by is if the Greatest Generation/ Baby Boomers hands capital down to their sons and daughters soon enough.
The tax code makes any such gifting very costly to the parents… so the assets are locked up until their death.
But that event is being pushed ever further out, and the elderly estates are being zapped for ever higher medical expenses — most notably the pharmacy — it’s a whole new bubble: life expectancy.
We’re trading away new borns so as to have more elderly. We’re collectively stealing tomorrows from our next generations, however few they may number.
@ 45. onetailtest
Actually, I think you may be surprised, if you don’t read only on a superficial level, how young people posting here are, in general, their biological age notwithstanding.
There are statistical trends that are significant, and despite the old adage that there are lies, damn lies and statistics, one has to ponder what is going on.
OT, but I want to thank weSwinger for the terrific review of my science fiction novel SOLILOQUY, and this is the only way I can get in touch with him.
Many thanks,
Walt
Walt I’m going to be in a bookstore this evening and I’ll be looking for a copy.
FWIW – In 1983 I attended a social function at the Polish Home in Seattle where several people from the old country were guests of honor. I was about eight months pregnant at the time. At some point in the evening I ended up in a little cluster with the European visitors (for some reason I’m thinking they were Russian) and they kept marveling at the sight of a pregnant woman. They said they’d been in America for three weeks and I was the first one they’d seen.
As for the family, I think Triton’s post says it all. There was a time when men and women knew what to expect from one another in courtship and marriage because there was a set of social and cultural rules governing their behavior that both accepted and observed without rancor. A lot of things that seem like intractable problems between men and women today are matters of personal autonomy and control that probably never came up for people born before the 20th century because it was clearly understood from the outset who was responsible for what. But that world did not survive the two world wars of the twentieth century. For better or worse,(IMO some of both) our society has changed irrevocably over the course of the past hundred years. There is no such general understanding anymore and individual couples have to lay the foundation for their own contracts. Many people just end up lost and lonely
BTW Triton that’s a beautiful story about your daughter. She really shines through.
Eggplant – the Rambler American! Yes! It’s funny, just the other day downtown I saw a beautiful red and white one – obviously a show car. It’s great to know you’ve got one that’s still a family wagon.
@37Fabius
I would never expect anyone to give up his right to vote and you can be sure no-one’s getting mine without a fight. I simply do not understand the idea of giving up one’s vote for the good of the country. People who don’t trust their own judgment for whatever reason can just stay home. But many people died for the sake of universal suffrage. We should never forget that, or squander that gift.
It’s not just San Francisco. Seattle’s population has doubled since 1960, yet the number of school age children has remained the same.
People self-select. Seattle and San Francisco are great places to live … but would you want to raise a family there? By the same token, most family-friendly neighborhoods are awfully boring for single people.
I don’t buy that people need to wait to build up income before having children. As a matter of empirical fact they do this, but it is not necessary. This is another example of being snowed by the culture at large, much like getting a BA, whose status value far outweighs its actual educational value.
Quite honestly, I would never choose to raise a family in a city. I would rather make less money and live in the country or a suburb, raising kids there. Cities are too damn expensive to live in. Children need space to roam and play, and urban areas are fraught with hazards. I had it good growing up; had the run of fields and woods. There were no worries for my parents about crime or even perverts lurking to snatch kids and do ugly things to them.
I think the world is a worse place for kids today than it was when I was growing up. The schools and curriculum are worse. The surrounding culture can be a sewer. A lot of the “adults” I’ve seen make me shudder about them as parents. Unless and until this culture can be scrubbed and made at least semi-presentable, kids come into an environment far worse than what we had growing up.
Triton, I concur, that was a sweet post about your daughter. I have 4 kids, 3 of them young adults, one a teen. There have been struggles, disappointments,lots of penny pinching, but I wouldn’t trade a day of it for the sterility of selfish yuppie living. Bearing and raising children is to get up in the morning and shout that life is worth living and the future holds promise.
nihilistic sex
Ubi est?
marymcl said:
“Rambler American! Yes! It’s funny, just the other day downtown I saw a beautiful red and white one – obviously a show car. It’s great to know you’ve got one that’s still a family wagon.”
Rambler American station wagons were intended as family cars. People didn’t wear seat belts in the mid-1960s. The seats were set low enough so it was easy for kids to hop back and forth from the front seat back to the station wagon’s bed. Seat belt laws and commonsense don’t allow my kids the same pleasures that I enjoyed as a child.
trangbang68 wisely said:
“Bearing and raising children is to get up in the morning and shout that life is worth living and the future holds promise.”
My life would be so empty without my wife and children. There are “states of being” that one attains as one goes through life, i.e. non-being to infant to toddler to child to adolescent to adult to married adult to parent … I presume being a grandparent is next level (having gotten there yet).
At least no one this post is claiming to own an AMC Gremlim, so there may yet be reason to hope in the sanity of the republic.
re: 51
The post about taking away voting rights was a bit tongue in cheek, but I wouldn’t mind raising the voting age a few years, let younger people grow up a bit more.
@58 Mark, I had one many years ago (76-82), manual everything straight six 257,000 miles before it threw a rod and died. There was nothing on it I couldn’t fix with just two or three tools.
@58 Mark, The AMC Gremlin was arguably one of the worst cars ever made. However the AMC Gremlin had an interesting feature that its bell housing and engine compartment were compatible with the much larger AMC Matador V8 engine. With a supercharged Matador V8 under the hood, an AMC Gremlin could blow the doors off of a stock Chevy Corvette or Porsche. My brother once encountered a sleeper Gremlin. The Gremlin’s driver wanted my brother to race him (my brother was in a hot Chevy). Fortunately, my brother could feel the Gremlin’s engine vibration so he knew it was a sleeper. He waved it off and saved himself considerable embarrassment.
Not having children is biological suicide for the human race. However, non Europeans are not following the no children culture. So it only Europe that is suiciding. America is actually at replacement but Social Security has known that going to 1-2 workers to support a recipient is untenable and unsustaining. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that depends on children born to support the elderly.
The fallacy that childen are not being born in America and is because of the prevalence of reporting from the coasts and the cities. Familiy friendly locales have children and many are having 3+ or more.
Now the problem is Britain is many of these juveniles are children of the council or projects and have no fathers and little parental supervision. They are the classic childern of the Lord of the Flies and have degraded to being predators. Naturally the prey is the adults and elderly. British law charges the adults and elderly that defend themselves and there is no punishment to the young.
There are many tales like the elderly woamn charged who used a knitting needle or the father who after 3 hours assault of stones thrown through windows and doors finally took a piece of lumber and charged the gang of youth and was charged by the police.
So the only alternative is to use sound to get rid of youthful gangs who authorities have allowed to flourish without check.
Based on that reality thinking the youths as a danger is true and using a mosquito is the only allowable manner to defend themselves.
#58 Mark
As the former owner of a then-near-new ’72 Gremlin; might I note a few things. The ’72 and ’73 Gremlins had a high power to weight ratio that gave them great get up and go. They gripped the road like they had claws in the asphalt. In my younger days, there was a race from Glenwood Springs back to Denver. It involved my Gremlin and a Toyota of similar vintage. It also involved a Denver traffic hazard that no longer exists, “The Mousetrap” where I-70 met I-25 in a cloverleaf of ridiculously tight turns. Gremlin went through indicating 120 mph and it was like it was glued to the road. The Toyota started losing control and slowed down to avoid learning to fly.
It got fantastic mileage for its time. In 1972 18 mpg in the city and 27 on the highway was amazing.
And they were amazingly strong, strong enough to save my life. My Gremlin died in a collision. Picture a Semi stalled over the crest of a hill in the middle of I-25. Cars coming over the hill at highway speed, and having there be no unoccupied road there. I hit at 55 mph. Didn’t wear seat belts in those days [do religiously now]. The car not only held together, but the steering wheel did not snap off, so I did not take the steering column in the chest.
Mine had 2 faults. The ’72 only had one lift arm on the hatchback, which caused the opposite hinge to be overstressed and the hinge cracked. And it would eat the bendix gears off of a starter in about 6 months. New starters cost $29.00 and could be switched out in under 10 minutes. I’ve done it.
What killed the model was the anti-pollution gear required in the ’74 and ’75 models. Turned them into underpowered [even with the bigger 258 engine], low mileage pigs that could not get out of their own way.
As far as the looks, it is a matter of taste. Properly painted and accessorized, I thought they looked pretty good. YMMV.
This is not the usual geo-politics I comment about. But I have a soft spot for the old Gremlin, and if I could afford to have an ‘antique’ car just to play around with, I would not mind a ’72 or ’73 Gremlin. If only to remind me of some of the things it got me through. [Did you know that you can get 9 people from Denver to Kansas City in 12 hours in a Gremlin?]
Subotai Bahadur
” will have no problem whatsoever in holding every 20-something who comes within shooting distance personally responsible…”
Honestly, what’s wrong with simply yelling “get off my lawn” like every other old crank?
Believe me, those evil 20-somethings and no good for nothing GenXers had no monopoly on voting for the one. Just ask my boomer, 60 year old, “Hope is finally back in Washington,” mother in law. At least the young have the excuse of youth and inexperience. 60? That’s terminally stupid.
Nahncee takes misanthrope to new heights. Blasted kids in the supermarket, hate those Obama voters, nuke the ragheads. Life ain’t so bad, even with the O-dawg on the throne. Flowers bloom between the cracks in the dirty urban sidewalks.
Wretchard – “…the West has been profligate in the expending its youth. Millions and perhaps billions of people who would have been young today never got past the abortion dumpster”.
Some think that part of the nihilism of today’s young is from knowing they could have just as easily been one of those aborted. At some level, our young may know they narrowly escaped the death in the womb that robbed them of some of their brothers and sisters. They may be marked by it.
8. Mark – “But increasingly the privileging of parents, and of children, will become optional, just as marriage has become increasingly optional. And as one well-known commentator liked to say, “When the orthodox is made optional, it will eventually be proscribed.”
Agree.
36. Fabius – “The thesis is that we’ve all been sheltered by parents who try to protect us from risk and icky bad things, and so we think we’re special, and naively believe that most of the world’s problems really can be solved, and by government at that.”
That’s how they were raised themselves, you see. The Greatest Generation started that. See Ch. 7, “How Did We Get Here?” at http://www.upandout.us/2005/09/chapter_7_how_d.html
“That’s not good, but at the same time millenials have more of a communal sense and a willingness to work together to solve problems.”
That comes from their education in government schools, where my grandson (your age) sat in clusters of 4 desks, each cluster working cooperatively. In contrast, my own teachers emphasized the stupidity of belonging to gangs and indulging in “group think.” Made for stronger independence in thinking and working. The Greatest and Silent Generations were raised like that. Perhaps the collaborationist bent of your generation could prove better.
41. Fred. – “What is “pestilent” is not young people. Rather, it is the way the surrounding culture socializes them and malforms them.”
Yes!
45. Onetailtest – “Sorry, but those of you complaining about young people are just showing signs of getting old. It is nothing new for old people to be shocked by what the young think and do, or the music they listen to.”
True, that’s what most think, because it has been so for most of history. Not this time, though. The statistical difference between 1960 and 2009 is horrifying. Social goods have decreased and social evils – crime rates, suicides, teen suicides, drug use, psychological problems, illiteracy, rates of births outside wedlock, etc. have increased drastically and are still increasing. It really is bad news, not just age differences, this time around.
47. Blert – “Marriage is delayed because day to day capital pressure makes setting up a baby friendly household only possible for those 12 years out of college. Paying off killer student loans is the other capital accumulation pressure point.”
We didn’t used to have such high material standards for marriage. In my time, it was nothing to start with an empty house, sleeping on folded quilts and blankets on the floor, using wooden orange crates for storage, stools and a table, and slowly adding furniture as one could. It was not expected, as it became later, that one would start with a completely furnished house, etc. Living “poor” at first was ordinary and not remarkable. As for student loans, we often married before college, went to college together and worked our way through. Often having a baby or two in the process. (Not for sissies!) Student loans didn’t exist then.
I had my first three kids making blue collar wages and my fourth making topped out blue collar wages. We made due and they learned lots of lessons about what is really important in life and about delayed gratification.
Walt – “Soliloquy” is terrific stuff; I trust that installments or publication will be announced on this fine forum. I will remind the rest of BC again how to find it on Amazon early on a thread.
Discussed the point of this thread with my so far unattached 27 YO second son the other night (after viewing the awesome “Watchmen” GO. SEE. IT.). There was only a short period of American prosperity after WWII where it seemed most everybody could raise a family in some kind of style on one income. For the rest of the time it has been like my cohort OldNeocon and trangbang68 have it. Started our family with the wife in grad school, me working a good paying blue collar job, driving a ’62 Rambler American station wagon. (Later, while living in Seattle I had a ’69 Gremlin that truly lived up to it’s year! Regularly developed condensation in the carburetor there in humidity city and I’d have to spray the carb with drying stuff. American Motors cars do not hold fond memories here.)
There are some eerie commonalities here at the Belmont Club. I would much prefer to go to a BC convention than my high school reunion.
Me too.