Thoughts on Intra-Generational Relations and the Entitled Culture of Technology

I often hear members of my parents' generation talking negatively about younger folk. Most of it is true. We are self-centered, we're on cell phones and computers too much, and we don't really know how to use a rotary phone.

But I can imagine a similar conversation taking place during my grandparents' youthful years:

"These boys these days and their fancy razors. You'd think they'd just die if they didn't have a smooth face. Back in my day, you just grew a beard and didn't think twice about it."
"Ain't that the truth."

Although I make light of it, sometimes this way of talking really gets under my skin. My generation's narcissism wasn't created in a vacuum, it was the logical conclusion of our parents' and grandparents' reactions to a post-WWII world.

Did we choose to base American culture and childhood experiences on a suburban dream land, sponsored by Coca-Cola and Disney? Did we choose to be brought up in a society where people's self worth = ownership of the latest stuff?

Did we choose to be brought up in a time when it is PC to consider every child "special"? When cartoons and microwave dinners make getting through the day "easier"?

When a generation scolds their children's generation, shouldn't they be talking to their own cohort?


And 99% of people of any age seem to have lost all independence from technology anyway. Everyone acts so entitled to gadgets all the time and gadgets now. "I will murder someone if I can't check my e-mail" is probably spoken more often than "That was a quick 5 hour trip across an entire continent!" in these times.

And it's not just gadgets. It's food too. I don't know how often I have to listen to furious people who can't believe they can't some type of produce in the middle of winter. And they're always old! You should know about seasons! You grew up defecating in an outhouse for crying out loud!

But Times do funny things to people and societies. How quickly the collective consciousness has been disconnected from a reality based in Laws like gravity, inertia, distance, speed, climate, soil, and so on. We find ourselves feeling very superior to the past, yet cannot beat back temper tantrums that erupt when confronted with the fact that cell phones don't work everywhere, and asparagus can't be grown cheaply in the middle of February.

These complaints are really just a recognition of our fantastically powerful mastery of selective memory. My parent's generation has an amazing gift to remember how tough they had it as kids growing up, yet forget that they were the one's who gave their kids a very different experience.

Maybe one day when I'm old and grizzled, I'll pop open a cold one, turn to a fellow geezer....
"These littler twerps don't even know how to drive a car anymore. And back in our day, we couldn't play on computers all day in school."

Then I'll teleport to Jamaica and complain about the commute.