The Depression made people tough, self-reliant, and helpful to each other to survive and we don't see any of those things coming out of the Millennial Malaise which had its emotional start in the wild fear of Y2K and it would be the death of us all, don'tcha know. That fear of the future has persisted through to the present in which people have been afraid of changing much of anything.
The ones most pants-pissing terrified are the far right Republicans since that lot won't even change the shoes they wear in their lives but it's necessary because their corporations wiped out all the cobblers. There's not much vision in that crowd.
Y2K was extremely close to the end of me since that was the time of an incompetent attempt at suicide. I had worked in IT to get up there with the Big Dawgs and I had learned how to build extremely large mainframe systems but then Y2K came along and my only reaction was the thinking, 'I spent twenty years busting my ass for fucking this? The be-all / end-all of my career is whether a three-byte packed decimal date field can be extended to four without Mount Etna exploding?'
The day before Y2K, I had decided and tried to complete a suicide since the pointlessness of everything I had done to get to that point was hard in my face. It was screaming, 'this was an absolute waste of time.' It's true, it was. I might as well have been a street corner hooker for the pride I could take in being part of it.
Note: the suicide attempt had more loading than the pointlessness of the job since a divorce had just finalized as well. It doesn't get any darker than that.
Amazingly enough, this is not about me and it seems my reaction was more pervasive than I realized since no-one has done much of anything since then and thus the Millennial Malaise. The same problems which existed in Y2K exist in exactly the same ways now; it's the same wars, the identical economic problems, the same poverty, etc, etc and nothing is ever done except to make all of that worse. It's no wonder people say, 'fuck it,' and throw up their hands to waste their lives in role-playing games and other futile amusements.
People rise to hard challenges and we live for them because it brings the very best out of us. The generation which grew up out of the Depression is the same one which won WWII so don't be thinking of telling them about tough. Comparing that to present is pointless since one of the favorite topics in the country now is fat shaming and that just radiates toughness in every dimension, doesn't it. How about trying to explain that topic to some Depression Era Okies?
My ol' Dad's Evolution was for fourth-year undergrads and it didn't even matter for acceptance to medical schools since the pre-meds were typically already accepted into their chosen schools, ideally, before that time. Note: some went to University of Guadalajara instead (seriously).
Note: the thinking on Guadalajara was to do a year there and then try again for acceptance into an American med school. Unknown if it ever worked for that.
The Evolution course was notoriously tough since there was a paper required of all students and it was wide open to 'explain your thoughts on evolution,' whatever they are. If your background is religion, that's fine ... justify your thinking. It made no difference to my ol' Dad what position you took so long as it was logical. He graded hard and the students knew it.
Even though it didn't matter at all to their academic pursuits, the pre-med students wouldn't just compete for an A grade in that course, they competed for the highest A. They did it because it was worth doing and the course was something of an intellectual landmark. Oh, you got an A from Fraser, did you? Well, well.
We always rise to challenges and we go to complete shit without them. Right now we're in complete shit with the Millennial Malaise and that name sounds like it blames things on the twenty-somethings but they don't have the worst of it. That prize goes to the Boomers and see above about pissing terrified about changing anything. The young 'uns need change because they're the ones who will build it. They're the ones who need challenges because they're the ones to grow from them.
That the hope for breaking out of the Malaise comes from the extinction of the Boomers is extremely grim and the hope is maybe we can do just a bit better. That's the same reason for writing about the Rock City since humans can do one hell of a lot better than that when we don't have a bunch of antiquated anal-retentive Boomers preventing it.
Give those Boomers some cobblers so they can keep the same pair of shoes for their entire live but just get them the hell out of the way of everyone else. Boomers don't understand it's not about them anymore but the greater understanding is still elusive to most: it was never about us. Even with all the theatrics of sixties rock, it meant nothing to the demons and they kept working in the background to ensure sameness. Instead of fighting the Silent Majority doing that, the Boomers joined it. Yahoo.
The Depression kids had no opportunity to fight the Silent Majority. It sent them all off to war. They and their parents may be the toughest bastards the world will ever produce.
Don't take any of this as doom and gloom since I fervently believe if there is a valid challenge facing humanity then we will rise to it but right now we're enduring the floundering as Washington slowly realizes its power has faded and the Empire is over. That Washington is over doesn't even remotely mean America has died and we're better off without those shallow grasping bastards anyway.
The world needs a leader with a good challenge. That one does not exist now doesn't mean we won't ever see one. We just didn't see this person yet.
(Ed: what if the person is an AI robot?)
OK, we can go with that but the Android President may need an article of its own.
The ones most pants-pissing terrified are the far right Republicans since that lot won't even change the shoes they wear in their lives but it's necessary because their corporations wiped out all the cobblers. There's not much vision in that crowd.
Y2K was extremely close to the end of me since that was the time of an incompetent attempt at suicide. I had worked in IT to get up there with the Big Dawgs and I had learned how to build extremely large mainframe systems but then Y2K came along and my only reaction was the thinking, 'I spent twenty years busting my ass for fucking this? The be-all / end-all of my career is whether a three-byte packed decimal date field can be extended to four without Mount Etna exploding?'
The day before Y2K, I had decided and tried to complete a suicide since the pointlessness of everything I had done to get to that point was hard in my face. It was screaming, 'this was an absolute waste of time.' It's true, it was. I might as well have been a street corner hooker for the pride I could take in being part of it.
Note: the suicide attempt had more loading than the pointlessness of the job since a divorce had just finalized as well. It doesn't get any darker than that.
Amazingly enough, this is not about me and it seems my reaction was more pervasive than I realized since no-one has done much of anything since then and thus the Millennial Malaise. The same problems which existed in Y2K exist in exactly the same ways now; it's the same wars, the identical economic problems, the same poverty, etc, etc and nothing is ever done except to make all of that worse. It's no wonder people say, 'fuck it,' and throw up their hands to waste their lives in role-playing games and other futile amusements.
People rise to hard challenges and we live for them because it brings the very best out of us. The generation which grew up out of the Depression is the same one which won WWII so don't be thinking of telling them about tough. Comparing that to present is pointless since one of the favorite topics in the country now is fat shaming and that just radiates toughness in every dimension, doesn't it. How about trying to explain that topic to some Depression Era Okies?
My ol' Dad's Evolution was for fourth-year undergrads and it didn't even matter for acceptance to medical schools since the pre-meds were typically already accepted into their chosen schools, ideally, before that time. Note: some went to University of Guadalajara instead (seriously).
Note: the thinking on Guadalajara was to do a year there and then try again for acceptance into an American med school. Unknown if it ever worked for that.
The Evolution course was notoriously tough since there was a paper required of all students and it was wide open to 'explain your thoughts on evolution,' whatever they are. If your background is religion, that's fine ... justify your thinking. It made no difference to my ol' Dad what position you took so long as it was logical. He graded hard and the students knew it.
Even though it didn't matter at all to their academic pursuits, the pre-med students wouldn't just compete for an A grade in that course, they competed for the highest A. They did it because it was worth doing and the course was something of an intellectual landmark. Oh, you got an A from Fraser, did you? Well, well.
We always rise to challenges and we go to complete shit without them. Right now we're in complete shit with the Millennial Malaise and that name sounds like it blames things on the twenty-somethings but they don't have the worst of it. That prize goes to the Boomers and see above about pissing terrified about changing anything. The young 'uns need change because they're the ones who will build it. They're the ones who need challenges because they're the ones to grow from them.
That the hope for breaking out of the Malaise comes from the extinction of the Boomers is extremely grim and the hope is maybe we can do just a bit better. That's the same reason for writing about the Rock City since humans can do one hell of a lot better than that when we don't have a bunch of antiquated anal-retentive Boomers preventing it.
Give those Boomers some cobblers so they can keep the same pair of shoes for their entire live but just get them the hell out of the way of everyone else. Boomers don't understand it's not about them anymore but the greater understanding is still elusive to most: it was never about us. Even with all the theatrics of sixties rock, it meant nothing to the demons and they kept working in the background to ensure sameness. Instead of fighting the Silent Majority doing that, the Boomers joined it. Yahoo.
The Depression kids had no opportunity to fight the Silent Majority. It sent them all off to war. They and their parents may be the toughest bastards the world will ever produce.
Don't take any of this as doom and gloom since I fervently believe if there is a valid challenge facing humanity then we will rise to it but right now we're enduring the floundering as Washington slowly realizes its power has faded and the Empire is over. That Washington is over doesn't even remotely mean America has died and we're better off without those shallow grasping bastards anyway.
The world needs a leader with a good challenge. That one does not exist now doesn't mean we won't ever see one. We just didn't see this person yet.
(Ed: what if the person is an AI robot?)
OK, we can go with that but the Android President may need an article of its own.
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