The Worst Generation
I get annoyed when I hear, over and over, how rotten kids are today, and how society's never been worse. Don't these people realize the 70s, when I grew up, was the worst generation ever? At least that's all I remember hearing back then.
I actually thought my generation was unique. I didn't realize all adults forget what it was like when they grew up (or pretend to forget) so they can curse the latest generation.
That's why I enjoy stumbling across old passages condemning how rotten kids were during what we imagine now was a golden age. The following is from Agee On Film:
"The March Of Time's issue about teen-age girls is worth seeing in the sense that one might examine with interest a slide of cancer tissue. These girls may be no worse than the teen-age girls of any other country, class, or generation, but I would be sorry really to believe that, and am sorrier still to imagine their children."James Agee, August 11, 1945, discussing your grandma.
posted by LAGuy @ 2:14 AM
3 Comments:
This seems to be a recurrent theme on this blog. To state the theme: "people who say things are getting worse are wrong, because it is obvious that people have always said this and we do not see the doom they predicted." Either our society is getting coarser or this generation is getting dumber or whatever.
Now, I agree to a some extent. but I raise some objections as well. First of all most predictions of future are wrong. Is it really to easy to criticize all people who take a stab at saying we are better or not than before? There are many rosy optimists who are also very wrong. Take any optimistic prediction from the same period and one could easily critique at as being way off base.
Secondly there must be some degree of worsening and or bettering of our society over time, (probably both at once). Are we careful enough in our own commentary to avoid this same pitfall? Might we be similarly be laughed at by future generations no matter what we say?
I recently found a letter to the editor I had written ten years ago defending the generation just behind me from some nastily toned news story. I do not regret my defense but wonder whether my rosy outlook was overly so.
BTW I am starting to blog check imsoglad.blogspot.com
Good luck on your blog. I suggest you allow anonymous comments since it's hard enough to get any comments at all (on this Blogger system).
And maybe you could clear this up for me. Is the guy just glad, or is he glad he's glad, or is he actually glad he's glad he's glad?
uh, the latter. (and i have made anonymous posting an option. Apparently it was not a default feature.)
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