I remember in the 1980s when we had 3 million unemployed.You wouldn't have lasted 10 seconds Bruce.
OK, good input.
these generation slagging statements are bollocks (and that 100% includes mine)
I'm glad you recognise that statement about anyone who happened to be in their 20s across an 18 year period didn't have any right to talk about resilience, was indeed absolute nonsense
From the 1990 to 2008, the cold war had been 'won' which seemingly removed the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation. Thatcherism and Reganism had sold the family silver so people could enjoy the benefits at the expense of future generations (the generations who are now apparently 'not resilient' and 'overly anxious').
De-regulation meant that credit was easily available and an economic party ensued, the bill for which didn't arrive until much later and the overly-anxious generation of young people are still paying the price for.
In addition to that, the idea of a job-for-life might have been on the way out but you could at least assume, if you set your sights on a career path, some semblance would still be available in 20 years. These days kids have no idea what will be a viable career next year, nevermind in a couple of decades.
On top of all that, they know there is a good chance they are going to be around to experience the full effects of climate change. And, of course, war is coming back into fashion in a big way.
My generation (elder-millennial) had it incredibly easy compared to the current crop of youngsters. It doesn't mean my individual circumstances didn't require some resilience, but from a generational point of view there is simply no comparison.
And remember, this discussion was started by someone making a generational observation. And this is coming from a member of the single most privileged generation in history. Speaking purely in generational terms, this is a generation that has no understanding of resilience compared to those that came before them and those that came after them.
@BruceWee - Thankyou for providing this explanation and context for your comments, it's an interesting summary of 90's onwards socio-economical history which I will ponder upon and read into more.
However, this answer doesn't appear to answer the specific question which I was asking which is why the statement had been made that "anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008 has no right to talk about resilience." Perhaps I was unclear about this, if so I will accept that failing and ask a more precise question below.
Specifically, I am asking about the right of expression/free speech and why accident of birth (i.e. "anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008") is sufficient grounds for stating that a given individual has a reduced right to that freedom of expression (i.e. specifically in relation to resilience)?
(NOTE: I'd like to acknowledge that I'm no expert in the area of free speech etc. So, if this question is based on an incorrect understanding of freedom of expression please feel free to direct me to the relevant reference in order that I can adjust my thinking. Thankyou!)
I'm glad you recognise that statement about anyone who happened to be in their 20s across an 18 year period didn't have any right to talk about resilience, was indeed absolute nonsense
Well, perhaps it lacked nuance.
As boriselbrus pointed out, for many groups, growing up in this period required monumental levels of resilience. And of course, individuals may have to develop huge levels of resilience to survive their circumstances.
However, this is a thread about sweeping generational generlisations. And if you are going to say things like, 'Kids today lack resilience and need to learn to buck up their ideas' then people are going to point out to you that, in the very imperfect world of sweeping generalisations, you were part of the dessert generation and you have no right to say anything to kids today.
OK, boomer?
Specifically, I am asking about the right of expression/free speech and why accident of birth (i.e. "anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008") is sufficient grounds for stating that a given individual has a reduced right to that freedom of expression (i.e. specifically in relation to resilience)?
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that you're not allowed to say anything. It was more meant as in, if you say it then you might get ridiculed because it shows a lack of self-awareness.
I guess I meant 'no right to say' in the pre-cancelled sense of the expression.
I also remember the golden halcyon days of the late 80s. Riots , strikes , rampant inflation, clueless politicians, bombings in pubs in the home counties.
I remember people working 2 jobs just to try and pay the mortgage. Work 40hrs a week in a day job , then go and work another 5 of an evening behind the bar.
COVID screwed up a lot of kids who are teens now . Having been forced together through the normal school cycle and making friendship groups then being i put in solitary confinement for months , hearing the rising death toll on the news and on social media, all the lies and mistruth that also circulated at the time really didn't help.
Add in the fact , due to the way life plays out a fair few had a pre COVID growing up that was worlds apart from the born in the 60s gen .
Multiple foreign holidays a year , multiple cars , high tech gadgets as presents, all the nice high end quality kit you could ever want , now they are left without a hope in hell of buying a place south of say Manchester, sky high rent, no shiny things on the horizon, screwed economy , clueless politicians , underlying race hate everywhere it's no wonder some kids who were wrapped up in a loving affluent touchy feely hugging environment are worried sick that the world isn't a nice warm cuddly place and in reality it's very much a narcissistic shit show
Just an addendum.
1 parent I know persuaded his kid to get a part time job to ease him in to the world of work.
3 shifts a week at a TGI Fridays . After a few months he jacked it in , with no other job to go to. The reason , the job was having a negative effect on his social life.
Another friends son is now a housebound recleuse. Got a part time job in a gift card shop. The stress of working in the gift card shop basically caused anxiety and panic attacks and now he's now nocturnal , jobless , on ADs and having counselling. He was a great kid , really smart and funny and sociable.
Something changed a few years ago and he's a totally different person. His parents are trying to get him a work from home helpline contact centre job so he can work at night and stay indoors. I don't know why this happened but he's in no way alone
@BruceWee I don't know if you are aware, but your posts on here, come across as angry and confrontational. Which does make it a lot harder to have a discussion, not a slanging match.
Now that might be an internet comms thing and maybe if we were all in the same room, your tone or body language would alter that impression.
It may well be just me, misreading your intent or not picking up on cues that show that not to be the case. In which case, apologies.
I'm not having a pop, just mentioning it in case you were genuinely not aware of how you can come across. I've been picked up on here before, for giving off signals I never intended. Self awareness and all that 😉
Sure I could buy a house at 3.5 times my annual salary at the age of 25, but then outside of big cities and southern England you still can*.
.......
*min wage is 12.71. 40 hrs a week is £26.5K, 3.5x this is £92.5K, nice 2 bed flats in my home town in Scotland start at £90k.
Last time I checked a 2/3 bed terrace/semi isn't the same as a 2 bed flat.
If it helps, and I hope it doesn't, I think we're all *****.
I'm not having a pop, just mentioning it in case you were genuinely not aware of how you can come across. I've been picked up on here before, for giving off signals I never intended. Self awareness and all that 😉
I was going for weary sarcasm rather than anger, but like you said, nuance can often be lost in a purely text based medium 🙂
Saying that, I think if young people are struggling with motivation, anxiety, and general mental health issues it's a fairly understandable reaction to the World as it exists for them today. Public investment has been dwindling since the 80s, especially compared to the welfare state era of the post war years.
Funnily enough, the early 80s were right around the time boomers became the largest voting block...
Again, not talking about individuals, but boomers have been the largest voting block for almost 50 years and in that time they have voted for successive governments that have reduced public investment along with a lot of other neo-liberal policies that favour the few while making life tougher for the many. Not to mention favouring short term profits over long term societal health. Let's not even think about the climate change.
Young people simply don't have the same prospects or opportunities for social mobility that boomers did (or Gen X or elder millennials). And that is largely because of the governments that boomers voted for.
So when a boomer starts criticising young people, I don't exactly get angry, but the sheer lack of acknowledgement for their generation's responsibility for where the world is today means I am going to point out the hypocrisy quite forcefully.
So yeah, maybe I am a bit angry 🙂
Young people simply don't have the same prospects or opportunities for social mobility that boomers did (or Gen X or elder millennials). And that is largely because of the governments that boomers voted for.
Maybe theres some truth in that, but it doesn't really help, kids need to live in todays reality, however bad / different it is from when many of us grew up. The hard truth of things is develop some resilience or sink, you can blame boomers, governments and the state of the world but it's not going to make things better. I think back to the OP there is some responsibilty on the older generation to sympathetically help younger get to grips with their situation, this doesn't mean telling them them are failures all the time, but it does include an element of focusing inwards and making the most of you have.
a better solution would have been to meet me where I was rather than forcing me to adapt to a world that doesn't really suit me.
That would be lovely but the harsh reality is that's not going to happen.
My fear is we will see more and more people dropping out of society and they will just rot, governments and society don't have the will, resources or skills to address this so it's down to the individuals to help themselves. If Reform get in it will accelerate the decline.
you can blame boomers, governments and the state of the world but it's not going to make things better.
... because as long as our default reaction is "who can we blame?" nothing will improve.
"Illegal immigrants" is the latest boogyman du jour but it could be anyone. Millennials, Boomers, "kids of today," Tony Blair, Greta Thunberg... Until we all collectively grow the **** up and consider "hey, maybe it's us?" as an explanation rather than pointing fingers and jerking knees, we're dooming our future to our past.
If you could reasonably be considered a young person between the fall of the Berlin wall and the global financial crisis you had a leg up in a way that, to most young people today, must seem like science fiction.
And let's not even talk about the boomers...
Yeah? And what ‘leg up’ would that be, perchance? Asking for a friend…
I left school in 1977. I have no doubt that in most ways life was much worse then for most. High inflation. Mass unemployment. Racism and sexism. no hope and no future. Aids and the trainspotting generation
yes housing was relatively much cheaper but thats the only positive from then.
and i was one of the privileged one and it was still shit.
there is an awful lot of rose tinted glasses being looked thru
I also remember the golden halcyon days of the late 80s. Riots , strikes , rampant inflation, clueless politicians, bombings in pubs in the home counties.
And as far as I can make out the record for property repossessions was set in 1991 at 75.5k,
TICFINANCE.CO.UK
Public investment has been dwindling since the 80s, especially compared to the welfare state era of the post war years.
Can you define what you mean by "public investment" as I don't believe government spending overall as a % of GDP has declined since the 1980s. Or even the % spent on welfare. I'm guessing maybe you mean just that which is spent on young people and maybe through direct spending on things that help them get a good start in life?
I was born mid-80's so an "elder millennial".
It's interesting to see myself being described as privileged along with the boomers.
I was charged tuition fees to go to uni and entered the workforce just in time to be screwed by the financial crisis. There followed Tory austerity, Brexit, COVID and the cost of living crisis.
I still have nearly 30 years until state pension age (if such a thing even exists by then) so share concerns with younger people about longevity of jobs, except I have less opportunity to retrain, a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed. That said I find the idea that the good jobs of today won't be around in a year quite unlikely.
I've never had a job for life, nor any sort of defined benefit pension much less a final salary scheme. The most an employer has ever contributed to my pension is a measly 6%, and my prospects of being able to retire at all are wholly reliant on stock market returns which may or may not deliver.
Housing was/is the key issue for many people my age. Some of those around my age - usually those who had help - and many who were born a few years before were able to get on the ladder in the early 2000's before prices really took off, and they're now in a substantially better position than those of us who couldn't buy until later.
My wife and I spent almost a decade saving for our first house while privately renting and finally bought in 2016, by which point the house price to average salary ratio had already exploded and was as high as it is now. Our first house was literally the smallest freehold property we could find in commutable distance to work and our 2nd is not much bigger.
My whole adult life has played out against declining services, increasing tax and and above inflation increases in the cost of basic necessities.
It's obviously not all bad and some perspective is required, but I'd definitely say my experience has been more comparable to younger millennials and gen z, than it has to boomers and gen x.
I'd say anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008 has no right to talk about resilience.
Oh the glory days of being made redundant every 18months or so when your employer went bust whilst enjoying the 25% negative equity on your first house and a mortgage payment that went up almost monthly. Yup, I'm an absolute snowflake because of those soft and fluffy conditions between about 1988 and 1995 (21 to 28 for me) 😉
On the fence on this. It's complicated - like most things in life are. And people who try to simplify it are not helping.
Should be the first response on any thread.
The "world" increasingly tries to put things in simple "black or white/yes or no" boxes and people of all generations struggle to cope with the fact that the answer lies somewhere in the nuance of the grey area in between.
Redis ate my last reply. ****ing awesome forum.
I was born mid-80's so an "elder millennial".
It's interesting to see myself being described as privileged along with the boomers.
Something I don't think most older generations realise was just how much of an inflection point 2008 was.
I'm probably about 5 years older than you so I was established in a career a couple of years before 2008. The headstart that gave me over you (not just in terms of job advancement but also being able to buy a property, start a family, ec) is massive, and it only seems to get worse for every new crop of youngsters who enter adulthood.
Something I don't understand when people start talking about how tough things were in the 80s is that there is no acknowledgement that things are supposed to get better generation on generation. As it stands now, each new crop of youngsters has worse life prospects than the one that came before.
Life expectancy should be going up, Active Life Expectancy should be going up, improved productivity means we should be working less and producing just as much, etc.
Things are not getting tougher for young people because they are less resilient, they are getting tougher because the odds are constantly getting stacked against them.
Can you define what you mean by "public investment" as I don't believe government spending overall as a % of GDP has declined since the 1980s. Or even the % spent on welfare. I'm guessing maybe you mean just that which is spent on young people and maybe through direct spending on things that help them get a good start in life?
I was talking more about the reduction in public investment after Thatcher came to power, which then morphed into New Labours PFIs. imo the post war boom couldn't last forever. There was always going to be a slowdown. De-regulation and selling off assets kept the good times going until 2008.
Since 2008 it's been pretty much a steady decline.
The problems society is facing right now are structural and aren't going to be solved by young people learning to be more 'resilient', anymore than are going to be solved by deporting brown people or getting women back in the kitchen.
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restrain"
Hasiod - Works and Days 8thC BCE
"[They] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances... They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it"
Aristotle 4thC BCE
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt."
Horace 1stC BCE (or thereabouts) literally telling us all that it was indeed, better in his day...
My prof used to use a Sumerian cuneiform text about an old guy complaining about how the "yoof" go about swaggering up and down the main drag looking for girls to pick up, and all they're interested in is their hair, as a translation exercise. What Oldfart feels is normal, as is the reaction to how he feels by everyone younger than him.
imo the post war boom couldn't last forever.
Just so I'm clear on a point here. You're not viewing the post war boom as something that lingered into the 90s. I have that as ending in the 70s.
Tbh. The way you talk about the problems of today I see as fairly comparable in severity to the problems of the 1970s. 3 day week, record (to this day) inflation, IMF bailouts, cost of living crisis, sterling crisis, energy crisis, rolling blackouts, rising racial tensions.
I'm too young to know what that was like first hand admittedly.
Your generation had the easiest of easy rides and now you've decided to criticise the generation who are going to have to live with the hangover from the Dessert Generation's decades long party?
Here we go.
Boomers / Gen X are quick to wax lyrical about how great it was in the 1960s/70s/80s(*) and then in the next breath bitch about the future generation because they've got it too easy.
Another sweeping generalisation.
I can't help but notice many people seem to be fine with the OP making a sweeping generalisation about the younger generation's inferiority due to their lack of resilience but have a problem with having a sweeping generalisations made about them.
One man's sweeping generalisation...
Tbh. The way you talk about the problems of today I see as fairly comparable in severity to the problems of the 1970s. 3 day week, record (to this day) inflation, IMF bailouts, cost of living crisis, sterling crisis, energy crisis, rolling blackouts, rising racial tensions.
That's probably true. In fact, the problems we are dealing with today aren't just similar. I'd say it's the same problem, just deferred for a few decades.
The 'solution' of the 80s isn't really available today since the solution was to sell off the assets built up during the post war years, deregulation, and switch to relying on an economy based on moving imaginary money around.
Perpetual growth is impossible. Anyone who has played Universal Paperclips knows this. At some point there has to be a slowdown and the slowdown has to be mitigated be ensuring that wealth and power isn't concentrated in the hands of the few. Neo-liberalism chose the opposite path and went for asset price increases instead. Great if you own assets, not so great if you don't.
There's no sign of a reversal in this trend and no obvious solution, so I'd say young people have the right to feel pretty ****ing despondent about the future.
Once again babyboomers are being blamed for almost everything. Believe me, myself and my female babyboomer friends have not had it easy. We had poorly paid jobs, no pensions (I only started up a pension with my father's advice). We all earned considerably less than our male counterparts and didn't get the same job opportunities.
Yes I was lucky enough to afford a small one bed flat in the late 1980's however until I met hubby I was more or less broke (not helped by having a horse for a few years and a love of skiing), my hobbies were paid for because I had two jobs. I couldn't afford a mtbike for years and even then the one I eventually bought was second hand and basic.
Woman babyboomers really haven't had it easy unless they married well, then that is a different story.
OP I'm sure you are a lovely person in real life, but I really don't think it was the right thing to shout at children playing a sport.
He's swallowed the Koolaid bunnyhop.Dont bother yourself with the simplistic nonsense spouted by Bruce wee.
Instead of "old man shouts at clouds", on this thread it's "young(ish) man shouts at clouds boomers".
This thread is descending into the usual "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" so I'm not planning to contribute too much more.
so I'd say young people have the right to feel pretty ****ing despondent about the future.
What I would says though is that, depending on how young we are talking about, teens are more insulated from their future in terms of their preconceptions than maybe you are giving them credit for. It was always thus. Their world is relatively small and their concerns are far more about the here and now. We empathise with what they must be thinking with our old eyes. I've spent the last 30 years working with kids in the 14-18 years age range and I'm frequently caught short by their lack of concern about the future. Only the most perceptive seem to care massively about the environment for example.
Indeed, the world that is fed to them is full of success. Influencers and Youtube sensations who seemingly have risen from nothing with no experience or qualifications living incredible lives. It all looks very attainable. Again, only the most perceptive seem able to work out how much of that is all too often a facade, it's probably not as easy as it looks and its a vanishingly small number of people in the grand scheme of things.
I do wonder if some of the mental health woes many older teens and young adults face comes from having been fed a bright shiny and supposedly easily accessible future and coming to terms that life is not going to be like that for them.
To the OP - do you know if those kids even want to be participating? When I was at secondary school we were very much pressured, by the school, into playing rugby. I hated it - not helped by being relatively "clever" for my age and therefore playing with boys significantly larger than me. I know that parental pressure is also massive in some sports. No amount of coaching, intended or otherwise, was ever going to make me get better or enjoy it. Somebody shouting at me from the sidelines would just emphasise how miserable I was feeling.
@convert knocks it out of the park again. My mind had already wandered to the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, partly due to the irony of ex-public schoolboys having a go at the hardships of folk who had a much tougher upbringing than they could imagine.
Interesting thread, it has actually caused me to self reflect on my own (very fortunate) position in life, I'm in my early fifties, born mid 70's, I have a better pension than many a nice house, albeit with a big mortgage but we have a plan for that, and to be honest a quality of life that my kids (both in their early twenties now) will probably never have.
@BruceWee you make some very good points very well, I think too many on this thread are criticising you unfairly and are probably mistaking their generational trend with their own personal circumstances.
I think it is probably fair to say that every generation faces a set of unique challenges that they eventually adapt to in a unique way that is difficult for both previous and subsequent generations to understand, and perhaps just be nicer to each other and less critical.
He's swallowed the Koolaid bunnyhop.Dont bother yourself with the simplistic nonsense spouted by Bruce wee.
It is true, my views aren't entirely formed by memes I saw on Facebook that somehow involve minions.
Assuming that's what you mean by 'drank the koolaid'?
Do you happen to have any thoughts you can put into words that might give us some ideas of the pearls of wisdom that fill your head? Or perhaps a particularly clever minions meme?
Once again babyboomers are being blamed for almost everything. Believe me, myself and my female babyboomer friends have not had it easy. We had poorly paid jobs, no pensions (I only started up a pension with my father's advice). We all earned considerably less than our male counterparts and didn't get the same job opportunities.
To be fair, I did acknowledge that I was looking at things from a cis-gender white male heterosexual point of view. And I certainly acknowledge that there has been a lot of progress for women and minorities that happened over the last few decades, and certainly as a generation boomers can take some credit for that.
And even if we say that boomers were lucky, this is largely due to demographics and timing rather than boomers being somehow inherently greedy. That would be as stupid as saying young people are struggling because they lack resilience.
However, the OP was upset that they were called out for shouting at children during a U13 cricket game and chose to weave that into a narrative about why young people are struggling because there is too much touchy feely-ness.
Sorry, but that kind of arrogance and ignorance is going to get called out and if you say younger generations are soft then you should expect to have some people point out that your generation wasn't exactly Oliver Twist.
De-regulation and selling off assets kept the good times going until 2008.
That can only have been written by someone who did not live thru those times or who was isolated by wealth.
7os and 80s were shit. . Mass unemployment. high interest rates, massive inflation riots etc etc
Yep, I remember that too and I left school and couldn't get a job. Can't remember it bothering me though as got one a year later (just took first one I was offered) and had bought a 3 bed semi 4 years later as I had lucked into getting a pretty well paid job with lots of overtime available.
So from my perspective that time was indeed easy but that doesn't mean I am not resilient, who knows until I am truly tested (I suppose getting divorced with a one year old 2 years after buying the house could be a test?)
That can only have been written by someone who did not live thru those times or who was isolated by wealth.
7os and 80s were shit. . Mass unemployment. high interest rates, massive inflation riots etc etc
That's true, being born at the beginning of the 80s my direct experience is pretty limited. Saying that though, my earliest memory is going on the teacher's strike marches with my parents.
I can imagine things were pretty shit in the 70s. Like I said, the post-war growth period was ending and things were starting to slow down, which is never going to be fun.
I would question whether things were universally shit for everyone in the 80s though. After all, Thatcher got re-elected many times. Then Major. Then Blair. All relatively stable governments (relatively). That suggests there was at least a level of contentment with the neoliberal 'solution'.
Some people's lives were being destroyed, some live's were getting a bit worse, but for enough people they were doing very well, and that continued until 2008.
Compare that to today. How many PMs have there been in the last 10 years? I've lost count.
I've decided that things were better in the 70s and 80s because nobody ever used the words Neoliberal or Culture Wars. As a "young person" I mainly just tried to get along with life and not worry about such high-falutin concepts.
7os and 80s were shit. . Mass unemployment. high interest rates, massive inflation riots etc etc.
I left school in 86 into an unemployment rate of over 3 million. Everything around me had been absolutely decimated by Thatchers deindustrialisation. It was unremittingly grim in the north west of England and all the other places the Tory government couldn’t give a flying **** about.
Do I think that the recent government’s we’ve had cared any more for the opportunities available or not available to young people and to the gross inequality in life chances for them? Nope. Not one bit. Hopefully Alan Milburn is presently addressing this. I live in (probably naive) hope
Boomers / Gen X are quick to wax lyrical about how great it was in the 1960s/70s/80s(*) and then in the next breath bitch about the future generation because they've got it too easy.
Another sweeping generalisation.
a) I didn't say "all" and
b) am I wrong? It's demonstrably correct just from this very thread.
Stick "Some" at the start of that sentence if it helps. Honestly, having to spell out this stuff when it should be blindingly obvious what I meant is so tedious. 🙄 Did you have a point of your own that you wanted to make?
Once again babyboomers are being blamed for almost everything. Believe me, myself and my female babyboomer friends have not had it easy.
The thing is,
We can pick any generation/decade and with an overactive Nostalgia Gland meme on about how so much better it was. Equally, we can do the same and channel the Four Yorkshireman.
Fact is, there has always been Good Things and there has always been Bad Things. What we've got here both in this thread and (sorry SAM) generally is cherry-picking. My previously mentioned gran who avid readers will recall used to tell me I didn't know how lucky I was, would also tell me how they could leave their front door open and it was perfectly safe. Was it CZ who said in their long post on the other thread "we didn't have AIDS in the 1970s" - well, no, but you had almost certainly fatal cases of childhood lukemia, tetanus, smallpox, polio... and we haven't had AIDS in the Monolith Advert sense for many years today now either.
To those who would cry "WE HAD IT SO MUCH HARDER!" and in the next breath "LIFE WAS SO MUCH BETTER!!!1!" I say bullshit, pick one because you can't have it both ways. I could make a compelling case for how terrible it was to grow up in the 1980s but (trying to be as objective as I can) given the choice I'd be hard pressed to pick a different decade which I'd rather have had my formative years in. Does anyone here genuinely think differently? If instead your life could have been during a different generation would you swap?
I would question whether things were universally shit for everyone in the 80s though. After all, Thatcher got re-elected many times. Then Major. Then Blair.
All elected on less than 50% of the vote
Does anyone here genuinely think differently? If instead your life could have been during a different generation would you swap?
I think the maybe 55 onwards to 68 would have been a great time. Things were moving forward at a huge rate, living standards rising massively. there was a lot of hope around. materially of course folk were much worse off than now but the hope was there and you could see your life improving year on year
I'd say anyone who was in their 20s anytime between 1990 and 2008 has no right to talk about resilience.
I would argue that, although things are much harder for younger generations, that's been a known quantity for them.
For people broadly in your stated era (although that's a *massive* range, I'd suggest that it's largely been a generation of broken promises. Tuition fees, dot-com crash, Lehman bros, COVID - it's been one thing after another, broadly in line with expected major life milestones, with limited recovery time. It's weird to claim no right to talk about resilience.
It's weird to claim no right to talk about resilience.
OK, how about this. We all agree that no one has the right* to diagnose the perceived shortcomings of an entire generation and suggest solutions. There are too many variations and too much nuance. And ultimately, no one really knows what it was like to grow up in any era except their own.
If you do feel the need to explain why a particular generation is deficient and tell them how they should buck up their ideas, you don't get to complain when other people decide to point out the shortcomings of your own generation.
Deal?
*Just to be clear, because apparently these days you have to spell these things out, I mean 'right' as in the 'moral authority to comment' sense of the word, not the legal right. That would be a pretty crazy thing to claim.
I wasn't claiming any generation was deficient in any way. I just thought it was... silly... to claim that people who came to adulthood during the effective launch of the internet, possibly one of the most turbulent times in human history, were not resilient.
