VaughanJB
Scrappy VIP
Apologies of this seems a little esoteric, but I've been pondering this for a bit.
The question is - what is our role in society today?
I define "our" are oldsters, no longer working and contributing significant taxes to fund overpaid politicians and wars in places we didn't know the name of a year ago. I refer to outnumbered, and out worked, people who rely on their past achievements as a way to seem relevant to tomorrow.
So much is going on around us. Political thinking, the use of language, ideas and potential outcomes are evolving the whole time. But we don't participate at the same level of, say, twenty year olds. Isn't it inevitable that our opinions and views will be somewhat out of sync with them? Potential outcomes for them, are likely more acute and significant. For us, ten years, fifteen years, perhaps twenty, and it's all over. For them, they're middle aged and have to live with the consequences.
I know when I was twenty, life seemed to go on forever, and I knew I'd have a long time to live with the consequences of my actions. Be that something I physically did, or something I proselytized. Today I'm becoming aware that my time is limited, and I won't have to live a lifetime of consequences - only immediate ones.
I think back to the earlier years of my life. Back then there were Skinheads, extreme right-wing politics (in the UK from National Front, among others), and punk rock with threatened the establishment. Music was banned in some cities and bands were told they couldn't play there because they affronted morals. All these years later and much of that music seems quaint. Tattoo's, for most people, were a no-no. To have them was a mark of degeneration. Today? People with tattooed faces line up politely in supermarkets with people like..... well like me. Things that were supposed to threaten the fabric of society came, made a noise, and went. Nothing much happened.
Of course, people with families will point toward their grand children and such, saying that's the future, and those are the people they care about. But the question is, how distorted is your vision of the future? How relevant are our ideas of right and wrong in the modern age? We have outcries against trangenderism, pronouns, and political leanings, but how much of our opinions are based simply on what we "know" from our past, and don't include any elements of what could be? How often do we catastrophize based on old data and ideas? How do we work out what is important, and what is simply a bias based on past events that aren't truly relevant today? How can we know one from the other?
Be it language used, ideas expressed, and emotions invested, how much of it is just oldsters telling others how it was, and therefore to maintain equilibrium, how it should/must be? And how much of it truly has an eye to future? Doesn't getting old make a lack of balance inevitable?
Personally, I perceive people being consumed by minutia. Be it letters that were published 20+ years ago, that suddenly become super-relevant - despite is being out there the whole time but languishing in Google obscurity- or ideas of sexuality, trying to take these ideas and project what it means to the future is surely rooted in where we are now, and can we as oldsters truly know what the "now" of a teenager is?
So, where do we stand? What's our role? To warn against the bigger picture (most people here won't have been through a World War), or to dig into the details and pretend we know what it means to be a teenager (we do, but only in the context of the era we grew up in, which is grossly outdated).
What say you?
The question is - what is our role in society today?
I define "our" are oldsters, no longer working and contributing significant taxes to fund overpaid politicians and wars in places we didn't know the name of a year ago. I refer to outnumbered, and out worked, people who rely on their past achievements as a way to seem relevant to tomorrow.
So much is going on around us. Political thinking, the use of language, ideas and potential outcomes are evolving the whole time. But we don't participate at the same level of, say, twenty year olds. Isn't it inevitable that our opinions and views will be somewhat out of sync with them? Potential outcomes for them, are likely more acute and significant. For us, ten years, fifteen years, perhaps twenty, and it's all over. For them, they're middle aged and have to live with the consequences.
I know when I was twenty, life seemed to go on forever, and I knew I'd have a long time to live with the consequences of my actions. Be that something I physically did, or something I proselytized. Today I'm becoming aware that my time is limited, and I won't have to live a lifetime of consequences - only immediate ones.
I think back to the earlier years of my life. Back then there were Skinheads, extreme right-wing politics (in the UK from National Front, among others), and punk rock with threatened the establishment. Music was banned in some cities and bands were told they couldn't play there because they affronted morals. All these years later and much of that music seems quaint. Tattoo's, for most people, were a no-no. To have them was a mark of degeneration. Today? People with tattooed faces line up politely in supermarkets with people like..... well like me. Things that were supposed to threaten the fabric of society came, made a noise, and went. Nothing much happened.
Of course, people with families will point toward their grand children and such, saying that's the future, and those are the people they care about. But the question is, how distorted is your vision of the future? How relevant are our ideas of right and wrong in the modern age? We have outcries against trangenderism, pronouns, and political leanings, but how much of our opinions are based simply on what we "know" from our past, and don't include any elements of what could be? How often do we catastrophize based on old data and ideas? How do we work out what is important, and what is simply a bias based on past events that aren't truly relevant today? How can we know one from the other?
Be it language used, ideas expressed, and emotions invested, how much of it is just oldsters telling others how it was, and therefore to maintain equilibrium, how it should/must be? And how much of it truly has an eye to future? Doesn't getting old make a lack of balance inevitable?
Personally, I perceive people being consumed by minutia. Be it letters that were published 20+ years ago, that suddenly become super-relevant - despite is being out there the whole time but languishing in Google obscurity- or ideas of sexuality, trying to take these ideas and project what it means to the future is surely rooted in where we are now, and can we as oldsters truly know what the "now" of a teenager is?
So, where do we stand? What's our role? To warn against the bigger picture (most people here won't have been through a World War), or to dig into the details and pretend we know what it means to be a teenager (we do, but only in the context of the era we grew up in, which is grossly outdated).
What say you?
