Poll: Man, our generation is gonna do so much better than the last, am I right?

[lacktheknack]

No. We're going to screw up in different and previously unthought of ways. That's how it's ALWAYS been, and we aren't special.

Our big flaw right now is a horrendous lack of perspective.

 

[thylasos]

It depends entirely on one's definition of a better or worse generation, it must be said. Strife an divison seems a constant theme of human history. And our messianic ideal of ending this cycle within our generation is similarly constant.

Alack.

 

[Enigmers]

Your an idiot, this generation gets their news from John Stewart and is addicted to facebook and twitter. It may be the worst one since 1800. Rascism is all over the place. Some people shouldn't make threads your one of them.

Jon* Stewart may be one of the few news reporters out there that is still honest (or obviously sarcastic, which is still honest).
We are not "addicted to Facebook and Twitter." Humans are inherently social animals and we're simply able to check on our friends conveniently without actually bothering them with a phone call. Any individual people you meet with any sort of "internet addiction" is a specific case, not something you can say all-encompassingly about an entire generation of people.

Lastly, it's quite arrogant to assume you somehow have the right to tell another forum user that they shouldn't have the right to voice their opinion; In most countries in the west, we have the right to free speech (barring, of course, slander and libel). What the OP said was not slanderous in the slightest, and he/she is fully within their rights to speak their mind.

I think the problem with our generation is that the education system is outdated. (Take that with a bag of salt, considering I've spent my entire life in school and have had a good while to look for the glaring issues here if not elsewhere.) Most of my time in school has been spent regurgitating facts, formulae, and dates back at a piece of test paper in an unrealistic, closed environment, as though I was a guinea pig in a test environment rather than someone trying to learn how to live in "the real world." Nowhere in the "real world" is anyone going to ask me to fill out a piece of paper without being able to use a reference book or a smartphone. Knowledge today is much more easily accessible than knowledge was ten or twenty or thirty years ago; I feel that we'd be much better off if the children of our generation were taught A: how to find what you need to know (as opposed to memorizing as much as you can in advance and hope for the best, which is pretty much what school is like), and B: knowing how to put what you know together to form a solution to whatever problem you have.

I'm not saying the ability to retain knowledge is useless, I'm just saying that it's overrated and degrading in value as technology improves.

 

[Toriver]

With each passing year human civilization as a whole grows in what they can achieve and accomplish through the previous generations knowledge. The changes in acceptance of stuff like homosexuality and race have come from our parents our generation has not really contributed to that. But I believe the gen z's will bring about a remarkable change because they will grow up well versed in how a computer works and will be able to use it efficiently from a very young age. Being born in thee information age gives them a tool no other generation has had before us and that is the ability to access all the information they require to do something or to understand how it works with very little effort.

so our generation isn't really the best it just has the most advantages given to us by our ancestors and their hard work.

QFT. Welcome to the Escapist. I hope you enjoy the community here. These kinds of posts in particular are very welcome. Nice!

Anyway, yeah, there are many things that change with each generation, for better and worse, and many things that are things that are just human nature that do not change, and there is both good and bad in that. This generation will indeed be "better" than the rest in that we have the potential to take what was passed to us by our ancestors and do great things with it, but it is just that: potential. Potential is not always realized. So we CAN be "better" than previous generations, in some ways, but it's not certain that we WILL. And we will always be plagued with those bad parts of human nature that we cannot change, so I wouldn't proclaim any "perfect society" is in our future. That's just a pipe dream.

 

[Normalgamer]

I feel this is all a load a B/S to be honest. Every generation seems to become more corrupt, less in touch with themselves, and sporting ideals that would make a inbred hick's 12 year old pregnant wife look like she's got a hope in the world.

Wake up, our generation is more statisticly likely to kill off civilization than any other generation before it. We've lost our humanity, the connection between people, because all we do is use some sort of electronic interface to socialize these days. While actual physical connection seems to be looked down upon by society. Everything assumes you're a bad person. You act friendly (He's a creep) you are polite (don't open a door for me, that's sexist!) You refer to a person by the color of their skin (racist) You say hello to a child (Pedophile).

Not to mention our generation is full of lazy, surface viewing morons. Nothing goes beyond face value these days. We throw away more shit because something new comes along than any generation previous to us, yet you call us environmentally friendly?

Hell, I see kids these days whom work at my store, been working there for six months, and they still can't figure out how to read. What does the aisle sign about five say? It says poptarts...where do they think poptarts are when asked? THEY ASK ME BECAUSE THEY'RE TOO STUPID TO FIGURE IT OUT!!

None of them possess situational awareness(the ability to be aware of all your surroundings with a quick glance) and understand how to grade at a moments glance what is a priority and what is not. They constantly cross the lines of rules and proper conduct (chewing gum, ignoring customers, not being friendly.)

I'm quite sure, if the United States survives long enough for our generation to be in power, we will systematically wipe it off the face of the earth with our own idealistic view of "what's better."

I fear the future, because the future is us, and we are worthless.

"I'm gonna hate humanity because it's cool! Nyeh!" You know literacy rates are at their highest, and violence has statistically gone down? What's with all this "Man my generation blows." your stemming off about? There has always been bullshit, let's hope it gets a little less each generation.

 

[jackknife402]

"I'm gonna hate humanity because it's cool! Nyeh!" You know literacy rates are at their highest, and violence has statistically gone down? What's with all this "Man my generation blows." your stemming off about? There has always been bullshit, let's hope it gets a little less each generation.

Man, what are you going around and reading all my posts or what?

Also seriously, literacy rates are at their highest? I don't think teaching kids to go "LoL ROFL LMAO TTYL" with their finger tips does not mean they can read. To really improve literacy rates, you can't just teach a kid how to read basic sentence structures, but to understand a plethora of knowledge at their fingertips. To really understand what they are reading, and not just be able to skim the words and pronounce them, is the true goal of literacy.

Violence has indeed gone down, mostly because the crimes are getting bigger, and small time offenders are kept in a localized area where their proceeding crimes while incarcerated are generally not released to the public.

I do hate my generation, mostly because of how easy it is for them to take things for granted. The sudden ideal that there is no religion fit for them, but to go crying for "god" when shit hits the fan in their life (usually something stupid like "so and so dumped me" or "they threw my favorite singer off american idol! Why god Why?") It's stupid, I slap a fool whom renounces all beliefs in religion but goes crying towards a deity when their luck looks bad.

 

[tthor]

I doubt it.
No matter how much we try to not repeat the mistakes of the previous generation, we WILL.

an example of this, i have been doing a lot of research for a paper I was writing on the supreme court case of Schwarzenegger v. EMA, a good chunk of research specifically on something called 'Media Panic', or 'Techno Panic'. what it means is, whenever a new form of media or media technology appears, the people with go up in arms against it, usually claiming that it will harm our children somehow. this media panic is currently happening with video games, but it has before happened to EVERY form of media to ever arrive. the amazing thing about media panic is how incredibly well it repeats itself over and over and over; hell, over all of the arguments against specific forms of media in history i could find, over 2/3rd of them seem to almost always be the same exact argument: that this new media will mentally/neurologically harm our children, and possibly turn them into violent criminals or deviants (and in every example of this argument, they have at that time a reliable source, such as medical journals and professionals, who will back up their claim)

media panic has happened to EVERY form of media, including:
videogames. internet. rap music. music videos. television. rock and roll. movies. radio. comic books. telephone. newspapers. school education (when it first became popular in the 1880s). fiction novels. even Socrates warned that literacy would cause people to become forgetful, and argued that children couldn't tell the difference between reality and fairy tales
(if you wanted, i could probably find examples of quotes on almost all of these, tho i'm to tired now)

We all would like to say "I'm gonna be better than this," but deep down I know, everyone here will eventually give in to one of the future media panics, just like everyone before us had

 

[PeePantz]

Not seeing it.

Besides you are kinda attributing this progress you see in your little corner of the world to the rest. This "progress" isn't even uniform across the US, let alone the world.

Not to mention the fact that people with some real knowledge about this stuff have opposite opinion you have.

Absolutely, this. You (OP) bring up Georgia as an example, have you ever been to Atlanta? Ever travel down MLK Boulevard? You would see the results of racism and how it's going to take a lot longer than our generation or the next to stomp it out and recover.

Let's also take a look at a place called Palestine. Palestinian children are being raised with such hatred of Israel, jews, and the US. The hate is like nothing you can possibly imagine. Thoroughly ingrained into Palestinians since birth is that these previously mentioned groups are scum and evil. Children are raised to be martyrs and freedom fighters, and are the ones used as suicide bombers in Israel. Do you think their views will suddenly change with age, or will their values become deeper and cemented?

How do you think this won't be a concern to a perfect world? Mind you, this is just one example out of a billion I could use. Once our generation (or yours) gets control and becomes the power, they'll have to deal with these types of zealots all over the world. Sometimes this calls for unfavorable actions and the tough choices will continue to spread hate but in an exchange for safety.