But if you scapegoat a demographic minority for all of society’s problems, then your own greed and selfishness are definitionally not that bad. What an original approach!
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That doesn’t sound too good but did you hear about how some boomers wrecked my pension?
Don’t apologize that’s a very good post. I’ll call you when I figure out how to make money fixing climate change. There’s never been enough good salespeople ever.
And you know I totally understand about the feelings understanding how the supply chain actually works brings on. Particularly for something with the wastage of furniture which is pretty grim. Its why my greatest dream is running a business that does something like buy/lease land from farmers, reforest it, and sell carbon capture to the government.
Do you think the furniture industry could theoretically make a product that lasts nearly forever? I know it wouldn’t make sense with the current way we do things, but assume for a second that inputs were 10-20x higher than they are now and as a result the only way it penciled out was for people to buy for life… is that product possible?
People are going to need furniture in the future. The questions of good and evil come down to the supply chain choices IMO.
I had an itch last year to start my own e waste business.
The biggest obstacle is storage space for laptop plastics that can’t be recycled unless you have tons and even then you have to connect yourself to someone who can deal with it and their profit margin is super slim.
But if you had acreage to store it could be a future goldmine. They can make hurricane proof houses now out of plastic.
Would love Clovis to chime in on this. I’m nothing more than an armchair anthropoligist/evolutionary biologist/psychiatrist, but most non industrial societies seem to have very different ideas about about possessions. There are sacred/very important objects for sure, but keeping a nice credenza to yourself would be very unfriendly regardless of how you got it to most native societies, and I venture to say that’s a much closer match to human nature.
The alienation of modern society, the desire for the respect and status from/in your world at large which is now virtually unattainable, the lack of real connections beyond the nuclear family, the humiliation of dependence, the commodification of everything including people, all leave people with insatiable needs that they try to fill with consumption (more about status than stuff) and insecurity and fear that they allay with hoarding.
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Those things need to be split out into materialism (bad) and experiences (good) but you’ve summed up the problem well.
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It’s unlikely that you are unfamiliar with this or that it applies to your father but just in case I want to alert you to the existence of Lynparza.
It’s fun to see progressives using Trumpian debating tactics.
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The fucked up thing is that I’m not sure which side you’re on here.
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As long as you can view the world through simple generalizations it doesn’t really matter, does it?
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I think you’re making simple generalizations about my fairly complex generalizations. As a society we have to totally reject a set of ideas that are both widely and deeply held by boomers. If you have a better (and this means more transmissible) meme for doing that than shitting on boomers I’d be open to hearing it.
But if you don’t think we have to reject those ideas you’re part of the problem and I don’t give a shit what you think.
I honestly don’t understand this thread at all. It’s out of some other forum.
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Blame it on the boomers is a fundamental part of the herd mentality of fairly well off people unable to acknowledge the possibly irreversible part their materialism and greed has played in the climate change that will cost millions, possibly billions of lives and force extinction onto a vast number of species.
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If you have a better idea than using the Boomers as the example of what not to be I’d love to hear it. Everyone wringing their hands seems to think that being mean to Boomers is a bridge too far. People have compared it to racism and Trumpism. Yeah those comparisons show how little respect/knowledge of the level of suffering things like racism and Trumpism have inflicted on people those people have. Making your boomer parents cry when they say something Boomery is not a bridge too far. That’s your duty.
The Boomers had a great first 3 acts in terms of lived experience at our expense, and as a result their 4th act has to be the end of the morality play where they get shamed for being selfish, greedy, short sighted assholes… because that’s what they were for 60+ years and continue to be into the present. It is very obvious they will not wake up tomorrow and see how they were wrong.
Everyone is trying to attack this argument because it’s a generalization, but are totally missing the point. Gravity has to be restored in our public life, which means that shame has to return. We’re not going to shame people for having sex lives we’re going to shame them for being assholes. The first and largest group of assholes who have never experienced shame in our society are the Boomers. The lack of shame is a much bigger problem than Boomers artificially inflated sense of self worth.
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I don’t follow.
When have you ever seen a Boomer ashamed of being too greedy, too selfish, too short sighted, or too optimistic with absolutely no evidence to support it? Those are deeply held values they have. Many of them are also covert nihilists who don’t even believe in shame.
None of those things can be acceptable in society. They’ll be present because they’re core human traits, but people need to have the decency to conceal it better and do less of it as a % of their decisions.
If there’s one thing I’m certain of it’s that when things are working for people it’s pretty rare for them to have an epiphany and change them… so society must be the outside force that compels them to change.
I was overjoyed by both the ‘OK Boomer’ and ‘Karen’ memes for this reason. The Boomers need to be made uncomfortable for their own good, but also for the good of everyone else watching them.
Aren’t a lot of Boomers also Hippies? They don’t seem particularly materialistic or selfish, broadly speaking.
The fact that “OK Boomer” enrages all boomers provides all the support needed for Boredsocial’s arguments. They are the WOAT, luck boxed through life and again Boredsocial is spot on, have zero ability to introspect.
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Going Hippie to Gordon Gecko was the first of many sellouts.