Children are now tyrants.

“Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.” Socrates

Having now wasted watched thousands of hours watching all sorts of video during the last twenty years, much of it recently on YouTube, I have seen hundreds of young people doing all sorts of things to have fun and earn money. Their diligence and creativity is wonderful. I have seen youngsters, under fifty-five types, working in arts, marine work, truck driving, buying abandoned properties and turning them into resorts, just about everything there is to do, they are doing it.

I hear so much about how they are sponging off their parents, they do not want to work, everything is handed them. Yup, ol’ Socrates foresaw this happening.

The kids are all right (I think I heard this sometime ago). The transformation of the world started a little of fifty years ago. I was a pioneer in the computer age which essentially began with the creation of the solid state processor on a chip. Massive integration put the components into a chip that could fit on a board. It was late in this period that the next computer age started.

The computer and Internet age that is. That was a little over twenty years ago. Before that was the new pioneer generation. They are total computer life. It is funny watching some of the videos when they come across something very strange and exclaim weird words. They do not have the vocabulary for much of what my generation grew up with.

Movie projector. Rotary phone. Telegram. Punch time clock. Carbon paper. Onion skin. Air mail. Pocket watch pocket. Green stamps. Hi-test. You get the idea.

What I have seen is them working in the new computer age. It is not the computer as a wonder thing. It is them working in a world in which the computer, either tiny and embedded or massive in a cloud, is just another tool, like a #2 pencil or an egg beater. They are doing what needs to be done to enjoy life and eat.

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Author: Blue Bronc

Born in Detroit when Truman was president, survived the rest of them. Early on I learned that FDR was the greatest president, which has withstood all attempts to change that image. Democratic Party, flaming liberal, Progressive, equality for all and a believer in we are all human and deserve respect and understanding. College educated, a couple of degrees, a lot of world experience and tons of fun. US Air Force (pre-MRE days). Oil and gas fields, computer rooms and stuff beyond anything I can talk about. It has been quite a life so far. The future is making my retirement boat my home. Dogs, cats and other critters fill my life with happiness. Work pays the bills.

22 thoughts on “Children are now tyrants.”

  1. “they are sponging off their parents, they do not want to work”

    bbronc,  that kinda sounds more like the gen-Xers and gen-Yers who’re now unemployed or “finding themselves” & having to move in with aging mommy and daddy.

    what’s called the snowflake generation (aka gen z or gen alpha) are anything but snowflakes IMO. greta being the prime example.

  3. a tribute to the gen-Xers out there who may have been offended by my earlier comment

    Who had to collect call their Mom from the mall? (Sidenote: I was laughed out of several establishments trying to find a paper map.)

  5. I hope they ween us off of of fossil fuels and into a cleaner, and, a more united world.  Therefore, I must also hope that the power never goes out, the servers never go down, and, that there is always WiFi.

    Funniest thing I heard whilst watching an anti-vaxxer rally in NYC, was a millennial laughing at a protest sign which was written in cursive. “They are so stupid. Nobody can read that sign.”

    That right, they no longer learn to read or write in cursive in school. If my teenaged niece needs to convey something manually, she prints.

    She also can’t read a clock face. Then again, I’m not sure I could read a sundial unless it was around noon. Then again, I can tell approximate time by looking up, if it’s not cloudy.

    The scariest thing is her lack of a filter when it comes to the internet which, let’s face it, is 95% of her world. What’s real? Is this just marketing? Why? Who’s behind it? Is this newsworthy?

    “And a child shall lead them.” I just hope it’s someone more like Greta Thunberg and not a Tik -Tokker with 8 million followers.

  6. bId – the cursive writing issue is something I cannot comprehend.  Although if I bring up Gregg shorthand writing most young people have no clue what that is either.  I used to be able to read a little of it, write even less.  My mother though wrote in shorthand up until just recently when she lost her eyesight so writing was not necessary.  But not being able to write in long hand is something very sad.  I have had my experiences with kids forty or even fifty years younger than me tell me they could not read cursive and needed me to type out my notes.

  7. There is no question in my mind that today’s youth are overly influenced by unfounded information from third party sources on their source for “news”. I’ve seen it with LP making statements and asking whattabout questions that fly in the face of what I know to be researched answers to those questions. It’s a question of sourcing in my opinion. The easy information sources are aggressively pushed on internet consumers and are overwhelming credible information sources that are not pushed aggressively on those same internet consumers. The easy availability of fringe sources normalizes their disinformation and skews information away from fact bases and toward belief bases, polarizing thinking and lessening evaluation of the information received.
     
    I also see that phenomenon growing among all age groups up to and beyond mine, but among those groups as the median age increases the media consumed include cable and to a lesser extent, broadcast media, where like on the internet the disinformation sources are pushed on less critical consumers seeking to confirm their own beliefs than seeking information that is more solidly sourced but may not confirm those beliefs. 

  8. It’s really eat or be eaten, when it comes to the internet. Marketing, targeted ads, curated lives on social media. Having no other experience, many under a certain age, have zero filter.

  9. What amounts to “intelligence” is dependent upon the society in which it is located.  A computer whiz able to send rockets to the moon probably couldn’t survive on their own for 30 days in the Australian outback.

     

  11. Is everyone aware that the phrase “rock and roll” was at one time long ago merely an underground slang term for the sex act which had nothing to do with music?
    By the 1920s, “rocking and rolling” became a popular double entendre referring to either dancing or sex. Trixie Smith’s 1922 blues ballad, “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” may be the first use of the phrase in song.

  12. Sturgeone

    I blame my daughter’s existence on a gold shantung sheath, champagne and B B King playing on New Year’s Eve

     

  14. BlueB….  nice column.
    It’s great to read something positive about today’s youth.  After all…  they will be the ones wiping our chins when we hit the nursing homes.
     
    I actually see a lot of creative energy in our youngsters.

  15. speaking of creative energy, upbeat news and looking on the sunny side (bink, pun intended)

    the hill:

    The White House is set to create a new division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that will coordinate federal climate change policy.

    The Biden administration will appoint Sally Benson, a professor of energy engineering at Stanford University, to head the newly-created division, according to The Washington Post, which was the first to report the news. The Hill has confirmed the creation of the division.

    In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the OSTP Energy Division will be focused on planning the transition to renewable energy and ensuring the U.S. meets its target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The OSTP has also appointed Costa Samaras, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, to serve as Principal Assistant Director for Energy and Chief Advisor for Energy Policy at OSTP.

    In her role as deputy director for energy and chief strategist for the energy transition, Benson will work closely with other officials such as White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy and OSTP Deputy Director for Climate and Environment Jane Lubchenco.

    “We have a 120-year-old energy system that was built over a long time period, and we’re talking about very quickly changing that to a new system,” Benson told the Post. “And this is a huge opportunity for American industry, for American workers, to lead.”

    “Science and technology have done things once thought impossible: making solar energy the cheapest energy and dramatically lowering the cost of wind power and batteries,” OSTP Director Eric Lander said in a statement. “Now we need to do the same with smart grid technologies, clean hydrogen, fusion power, and more — to make carbon-neutral energy the cheapest energy, so it’s always the easy choice — by driving the virtuous cycle of invention and deployment that brings down costs.”

    [continues]

  16. “Congratulations to The Black Keys, Rhiannon Giddens, David Byrne, Caroline Shaw, the late composer Louis Andriessen, k.d. lang and Tracy Young, and Mike Elizondo, all of whom have been nominated for the 64th Grammy Awards. You can hear all of the nominated works below.”

    https://www.nonesuch.com/journal/several-nonesuch-recordings-nominated-grammy-awards-2021-11-23

    Here’s a complete list. I have to give Record of the Year to Jon Batiste’s Freedom.

    Sadly/oddly/funnily, I thought Beiber’s Peaches was a cobbler recipe the first few times I heard it…because he got his ‘wheat’ from California. Once I figured out he said “weed,” the rest of the song was much less confusing.

    https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/2022-grammys-complete-winners-nominees-nominations-list

    “7. Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
    For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new traditional pop recordings.“ Because 50% doesn’t cut it. Now, how does one draw the line at what’s pop? Tony Bennett & Gaga, Ledisi, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones…that’s quite a range to be considered pop.

    Since I rarely go to movies (even pre-pandemic), and, I don’t watch new TV except PBS anymore, this interests me more than other awards.

  18. Tony Benett won his first Grammy in 1963

    He has won a total 20 Grammy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award presented in 2001) and two Primetime Emmy Awards. He was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. Bennett has sold over 50 million records worldwide.

    I think the Tony Gaga album “Love For Sale” should finish it off with Album of the year for the songs of Cole Porter since this will be his last.

     

     

  19. Craig,

    I’m curious are we still keeping track of the readers hanging from the rafters who never drop in for a word or ten?

     

  21. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/24/us/prosecutors-ahmaud-arbery-verdict-jury-race/index.html

    “Nine White women, two White men and one Black man served on the jury…”

    “Race did play a large role in this trial, but prosecutors did not address it as much as the defense did. “

    Now, if we could just get white folks not to do horrible things to black folks in the first place. Will this, at least, serve as a deterrent to any aspiring lynchers? That remains to be seen.

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