Perspective
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Just saw this. It goes a bit overboard on today's generations, but there is a point to be made about what we consider hardship. The school district my daughter taught in had two high school suicides in the last week.
Perspective...
Imagine you were born in 1900.
When you're 14
World War I begins
and ends at 18 years old
with 22 million dead.
Shortly after, a global pandemic
Flu called 'Spanish' ",
kills 50 million people.
You come out alive and free
You are 20 years old.
Then, at 29, you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, causing Inflation, Unemployment, and Hunger.
At 33, the nazis come to power.
You turn 39 when World War II starts and ends at 45 During the Holocaust (Holocaust), 6 million Jews die.
There will be over 60 million deaths in total.
When you're 52, the Korean War begins.
At age 64, the Vietnam War begins and ends at age 75
A boy born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is, but they have survived several wars and disasters.
A boy born in 1995 and now 25 years old thinks it's the end of the world when his Amazon package takes over three days to arrive or when he doesn't get more than 15 likes for their photo posted on Facebook or Instagram. ....
In 2020, many of us live comfortably, have access to different sources of home entertainment, and often have more than we need.
None of this existed before.
But we survived far more disastrous circumstances and never lost the joy of living.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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There is a lot of truth in your perspective. Until you have lived something, it is difficult to understand just how hard it is/was.
You can tell a young kid today about the horrors or war, or growing up poor, etc. and they may answer, "yeah, yeah, I get it. That makes sense." But in reality, without the experience, they really dont.
But, in one way, that is a good thing I suppose that they have not had to experience those things.
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@mik said in Perspective:
The school district my daughter taught in had two high school suicides in the last week.
The kind of argument they laid out is fine if you're not suffering from depression, but telling somebody who is really struggling with their mental health how hard people in the olden days had it isn't very likely to get good results, and would demonstrate a horrendous lack of empathy.
It's not really about physical hardship, IMHO. I think there are different challenges today. And the idea that mental illness is some kind of snowflakey weakness of character is very damaging.
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@mik said in Perspective:
Imagine you were born in 1900.
My family had a matriarch who was born in 1901. She's no longer with us, but I interacted with her will into my teenage years. So I actually had a real-life reference for such a person. Not to say that the events listed in the opening post did not impact the course of her life, just that most likely she did not think of those events as major influences to her life's course.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in Perspective:
@axtremus said in Perspective:
she did not think of those events as major influences to her life's course
I had close, very close, relatives who would certainly disagree with that assessment.
Yes
My grandfather was born in 1894, died in 1992. He saw all that. We used to play with his rifle that he got in WW I in France. As kids, WW I was closer to us than Reagan's election is to us now.
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@george-k said in Perspective:
@axtremus said in Perspective:
she did not think of those events as major influences to her life's course
I had close, very close, relatives who would certainly disagree with that assessment.
Me too. Our family on my dad’s side was devastated by WW1. Yours probably had it worse.
My grandfather still had nightmares about the trenches in his 80’s. Seven brothers all volunteered in 1914, embarking on a great adventure. We found photos of it all when my mum died. They look so terribly young - about my son’s age.
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Perspective is the right title.
Just earlier today I had a flashback to when I was 10 and I found an awesome pocket calculator (i.e., remember the Seinfeld episode about the "tip calculator"?), which I thought was the coolest tech gadget ever.
Now I'll upgrade from an iPhone 8 to and iPhone 11 and think "Hey, cool."
