ChuckS Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 People over 30 should be dead and here is why: According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived. Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.) As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No Cell Phones - Unthinkable! We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, videotape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them. We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents? We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. And you're one of them! Congratulations! <Author unknown> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigDave Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skywalker Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 IMHO, a true masterpiece... And I was kid in late '60es / early '70es Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead Buff Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 The baby boomers...good bunch... Me, I'm Gen X, but grew up like a baby boomer....wait and see what we do to the world... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 "...We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all." DOUBLE AMEN!!"...we were never overweight because we were always outside playing." Yep, this too!!Some of us like to call it The Leadership Generation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmittyFL Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 This thread reminded me of kids bringing their hunting rifles to show and tell in grade school. Amazingly, nobody was killed. Can you imagine even suggesting that today? In fact, I'm suprised I haven't been arrested in the last 30 seconds for typing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtypool40 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I was just starting to write something about that... In 7th grade, about 1982, I did a project about Viet Nam, and with permission brought two different AR's to class for "show and tell". My Dad brought me to school, the rifles were in a bag disassembled, and I put them together in the principles office. A friend and I, with no escort walked them to class. No one cowered. the teacher treated them like any other object (as opposed to them being a live snake today) and when we were done we walked them back to the principles office. It was such a non-issue I had forgotten about it until I read this thread. How did I ever survive? Shouldn't I be in therapy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Oh, and here's another one: Cheating in school...??!! Rare and severely punished. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 The beating at school for cheating was nothing compared to the beating you got at home....no one wanted that...so we toughed it out without cheating.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackdragon Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Reading this sure brings back memories! Ivan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 ChuckS's post should be typeset and made into a poster and put in schools. And anyone caught tearing it down or defacing it gets a public caning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I'm all for the sentiment, but there is one thing it misses. These very same folks raised the kids they are complaining about. I'll also point out that it isn'tthe kids born post 1975 that went out and replaced the the good old punch in the face and responsibility with the law suit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Di Vita Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I guess I'm really screwed then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 RAZ-O Don't lump all parents in with those that have screwed up kids... My kids were born in '65, 68, and 74....all are college educated, hard working, fiscally responsible adults who obey the law and cause no social or political problems...they are WORLD CLASS people and I can feel good about letting people like my children be the leaders of the world in the next few years as we Boomers reach old age... Of course my kids learned the lessons by my firm hand on the seat of their pants occasionally, and yes my boys had their share of black eyes and fights, but those were lessons well learned too.. My kids say what they mean and mean what they say...that is a good thing....they are not politically correct all the time but can be diplomatic when necessary...they pick and choose their friends carefully and believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights...my boys are gentle men but will whip your ass at the drop of a hat if you do or say anything untoward with their women, or children....my daughter is the proper lady except when the only thing you understand is a shot in the face with her tear gas and if you continue to push her, a shot in the A zone from her daily carry Glock 19...my kids love God, this country, their parents, each other, and the right to be their own people... so get off this rant about kids being worthless as crap and only wanting to whine and sue worthless sob's in the courts...it just isn't true... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 tightloop, you really missed my point and are more than a little over defensive. My point was that being born since 1979 (or wherever you want to put the arbitrary cutoff) does not necessarily make you part of the problem, or even a bearer of the symptoms. Also, being born prior to that year does not make you possesed of the virtues extolled in the original post. What is doubly ironic about suggesting such is that the nerf-padded culture with no sharp corners and bonus 90% more litigation was well established and in place well before most people born 1979 and later were old enough to be involved in creating that particular problem. Myself, I happen to be right on the border between the two "eras" presented, and I can tell you it is downright bizarre. Somehow, it went from being told to go outside and don't come back till sundown in no uncertain terms being pretty much the norm (weather permitting), to a world where people are so paranoid there kids are going to get snatched from their own fenced in back yard if not watched actively for for 2 minutes that they don't let them outside anymore (oddly enough can't be bothered to actually watch their little precious either). I'll also point out that all your kids fall on the pre-1980 half of the equation, and coincidentally, pretty much in the exact age group of me and my siblings. What we have in common is that the notion we likely share that one should largely stay out of other folks' business and take responsibility for our own actions is in the vast minority. Not one of us though was old enough to be responsible for the legislation and other actions of adults that happened while we were still under the age of majority, which covers the inception and fruition of a lot of the current insanity. The post 1980 and later kids may be good examples of the problem, and definitely are living in what is hopefully the peak era of the problem, but they certainly aren't the perpetrators, and if what is int he original post is true, the folks born in that era would step right up and take responsibility for doing what they did to get us here. I won't draw any absolute line about when it happened or who is on what side. But sometime when I was a kid, the balance tilted to the other side, and it definitely included a lot of folks born in the 40s and 50s, because they were the folks suing the crap out of people and passing idiotic laws while people my age and your kids ages were in middle school and high school. I can attest that at least in my tree house, we were not giving presentations with charts and graphs on how to acheive the wussification of america and the abdication of responsibility. not all kids born since 1979 are part of the problem, and not all people born 1979 and earlier deserve a "get out of jail free" card for being born when they were either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 While I think it is useless to draw a demographic line in the sand concerning responsibility or lack of it...children are a product of the things they are taught by their parents and those things they learn after they are on their own....Life is all about making the correct decisions without being swayed by money or power or perceived importance....what you see as lack of responsibility is actually lack of moral and ethical fiber by a minority of people who have made it their lifes work to try to manipulate the system for their own benefit...It is very hard to lay this travesty at the feet of any era of children or citiizens...the fact that with each generation we grow more removed from the principals which founded this country and settled it is more important than a few people using the courts to their benefit. we just need to get back to basics, where disputes were settled among men without mediation or arbitration, where everyone was responsible for their actions and accepted that fact without remorse or whining....when people strove to make the best of every day as it came their way, by the use of their own effort without preying on or manipulating anyone, thru hard work, dedication, belief in God and with the help of their fellow man... In 1956, my grandfather bought a 55 acre farm on a handshake and a promise to pay.....when I sold my home last year the contract was more than 100 pages of crap...People have grown soft and do not want to work....they want a position...they want someone to take care of them instead of working and taking care of themselves...and THAT is what I think the problem is, not some over achiever with a law degree and some hustle to find a sucker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 People over 30 should be dead We are, we just won't admit it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 Interestingly, Mr. Sunshine and Raz both agree and disagree at the same time. Like Raz, having recently turned 30, I also grew up through the transition between what the original post refers to and the current state of stupid. However the point that I think Raz was trying to make is that the very same generation which the original post tries to glorify is also the very same generation that changed the world away from those values with the help of the 60's and the entrenching of the nanny state. However what I think you are both missing is that it mattered greatly where you were raised. Myself, I grew up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain yet I can very much relate to original post. Raz grew up in the suburban sprawl of the East Coast Megapolis, when the area was still not one giant town. I suspect that if he grew up in a more urban area he might have been on the other side of the line in the sand, as those areas led the way towards the current state of afairs. And I suspect there are still many spots of the country where the "good life" as described above is still the norm, but I suspect that is directly realated to trhe distance from "civilization". Without getting all anthropologic, the higher the population density, the more laws society needs (or feels that it needs) to deal with all the complex interactions of many folks in way to small of a place. No one cares how many cars you have in your driveway or how late at night you choose to work in your garage with power tools if you live on 50 acres. But try living in the suburbia and those things become problems because they annoy your neighbors, reduces the value of their property and all that. This is not to say that those sort of things couldn't still be resolved the old fashioned way by reasonable folks, but every now and then you find a prick and good folks would good intentions would decide they need a law, as opposed to a good punch in a head. This grows upon itself and we end up with a world in which is almost illegal to walk down the street or make eye contact with your neighbors. My point is that Raz is right in that the same last couple of generations celebrated by the original post are the same generations that have harmed that way of life. And Tightloop is also right in that it wasnt the same individuals within those generations which were both raised with proper values and lessons AND destroyed that way of life. They just happened to live at the same time. Vlad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 To a great extent (I believe) over-population is responsible for many of our social ills. Too many rats in the cage all go nutz in some form or other sooner or later. I even find myself suffering from an nervous cabin-fever sort of thing now after a couple of decades of living in apartments. No space to create stuff, no workshop, no garden, no true silence from time to time, no extensive control over exactly who your neighbors are, no extensive control over sounds, smells, and your space, no back 40 to go walking in. It's just not entirely healthy. And I'm particularly concerned over what I call 'noise pollution'. The constant roar of traffic on local highways and interurbans and the it's-never-quiet-here syndrome. I'm going gradually whacky with it. Now, it's not exactly the projects here (far from it) but the overall effect can be similar if you feel trapped in a box with no options. I simply experience urban settings as places where social wounds just continue to fester with little hope of real 'healing'. Was this a thread drift...? Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AikiDale Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 Perspective: Furthermore, during the last thirty years customs have changed; now when young samurai get together, if there is not just talk about money matters, loss and gain, secrets, clothing styles or matters of sex, there is no reason to gather together at all. Customs are going to pieces. One can say that formerly when a man reached the age of twenty or thirty, he did not carry despicable things in his heart, and thus neither did such words appear. If an elder unwittingly said something of that sort, he thought of it as a sort of injury. This new custom probably appears because people attach importance to being beautiful before society and to household finances. What things a person should be able to accomplish if he had no haughtiness concerning his place in society! It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material possessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect. Hagakure published on September 10, 1716. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead Buff Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 To a great extent (I believe) over-population is responsible for many of our social ills. Too many rats in the cage all go nutz in some form or other sooner or later. ........ That I believe is cause for nearly all our problems. Take away half of humanity and I'll bet this place will become "good" again. No I do not want to pick which half...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 Well that line of thoughts is not new. Humanity needs culling events every now and then, and the plagues, famines, and the like used to do that, and efficienently too as they favored overpopulated area. However modern technology, medicine, and climate control have greatly elimintated the risks. We are still at risk from the trully sever stuff like hemoragic fevers (in fact maybe more so because of increased transportantion) but the old fashioned stuff is not mostly gone. I'm not saying that I want to return to the days of bubonic plague and cholera, but they sure served a funtion and we seemed to have not been able to deal all that well with their abscence. Vlad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckS Posted October 21, 2004 Author Share Posted October 21, 2004 People over 30 should be dead We are, we just won't admit it. this certainly explains my performance on long field courses... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sterling White Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 Slight thread drift.... and questions to ponder - Physical degradation of environmental and natural resource assets is not of importance in the accounting system unless the physical decline implies economic losses in the value of these assets. While the physical condition of a natural resource influences its value, other factors—particularly the anticipated value of future services generated by the asset—can also play a significant role (DENR 1994). Man-made assets—buildings and equipment, for example—are valued as productive capital, and are even written off against the value of production as they depreciate. This practice recognizes that a consumption level maintained by drawing down the stock of capital exceeds the sustainable level of income. Natural resource assets are not so valued, and their loss entails no debit charge against current income that would account for the decrease in potential future production. A country could exhaust its mineral resources, cut down its forests, erode its soils, pollute its aquifers, and hunt its wildlife and fisheries to extinction, but measured income would not be affected as these assets disappeared (Repetto et al. 1989). So, how does the US stack up....or balance the scales? Are we consumers or producers and what are the trade-offs? Do you believe this statement - "The world is consuming some 20 percent more natural resources a year than the planet can produce, conservationist group WWF warned on Thursday."? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Posted October 21, 2004 Share Posted October 21, 2004 Isn't it a zero sum game? Did you somehow manage to make matter disapear? No? Then we are not "destroying" natural resources, we are just changing their energy state, and it is quite possible that we may be able to bring them back to the same energy state by the use of other energy sources (and the Sun isn't supposed to pitter out for a while yet, and thats just an example). At least that would be an option when it comes to "consumables" When it comes living things, I think the US is doing pretty good. There is more wildlife around then almost ever before, though pershaps a bit different. Heck I can hardly walk to lunch without stepping on a squirrel, and just the other day a walked 10ft from a deer who was calmly standing in a bush munching away. And this is in the middle of one the most developed, highest population density, and most industrialized areas of the US. And don't get me started on farm animals and the evolutionary lottery they have managed to win. Strip mining the earth clean of its living things as a scare tactic is rather silly as if the demend for it a renewable resource exists, then someone will be making money renewing it. For example 50 years ago there where no wild turkeys where I live, now there are too many because hunter sponsored programs brought them backs. Same with forests and the like. If there is a 20% increase in demend then there will be an increase in supply, or the prices will rise and the demand wil diminish. Dimonds where expensive and now we can make them in a vat. Meat had to be hunted and now we raise it. Gold used to be currency, now it is used an industrial metal. Holly thread drift though! Vlad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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