To think that adults are much less resilient than they used to be

[louease]

First of all I'll admit that I'm on the older side of 60 so the weight of my belt onion could be effecting my judgement on this.

I see a lot on social media including here where people say they are upset at words they read on a screen, that they've been triggered, or that it should have a warning attached.

Are we making the world harder to live in by trying to make it too comfortable do you think?

I don't think my granny imagined her two sons going off from their quiet little village to fight a war, I would imagine she had a very hard few years as communication would have been much harder then.

Young men can be very idealistic and fighting for democracy will definitely appeal to some. Although people think young people are unfit or "snow flakes" I still think many would be just the same as their ancestors but of course it isn't what mothers would want although they might still be proud of them.

Young men in Ukraine seem to feel fighting for their country is worth it, are our young men really so different?

Of course we can't discount young women who can also be in the frontline now.

Households managed on one income!!
Not amongst the people I know. I am in my late fifties and no one I know could do this.

Absoltely!

There are many very fragile people out there now.

Its like a disease, spoiling society.

The moral culture of many left-spaces may play an important role in driving these patterns. Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have argued that in many liberal, affluent, highly-educated spaces one increasingly gains moral status through association with formerly stigmatized identities—for instance by identifying as a racial, ethnic, or religious minority, a sexual minority, or as a person with a mental or physical disability. Unwellness can even be a monetizable asset contemporary left-spaces. As one social media influencer recently put it, “There absolutely is a concerted effort to really capitalize on mental illness and particularly on young women’s mental illness. It’s a very marketable commodity right now.”

Sorry, meant to post this paragraph from one of the articles I posted which i think relates.

@HamBone

The irony of your comment!

"I’m think the term refers to people who get upset if someone declares an opposing opinion and tries to shut down free speech? I read about these student protests against a judge speaking at their campus-are these snowflakes?"

Arguably, a judge who has repeatedly voted against the right of two people from the same sex to get married (presumably because he is offended by the mere thought of it) is very the definition of a snowflake.

The people who are protesting against their university for paying him to speak on their campus about his views on their own sex lives and rights are surely just exercising their right to free speech and protest in this regard? After all, those student "snowflakes" have something to lose off the back of his views, because he actually has the power to prevent them getting married - being a judge. Who votes on same sex marriage. It is not simply a case of students shutting down free speech - those people are standing up for their human rights, to a man who is very happy to deny them.

@Justanotherlurker that's an interest article about happiness. I have noticed that (generalising here) this issue of lacking resilience isn't so prevalence in ethnic minorities that I'm aware of.
Maybe they've struggled more or, as the article suggests, they are more socially conservative.

I'm 70 and I only knew one SAHM, the rest of us were working, sometimes part time, sometimes working evening or weekends in very different jobs to our previous careers but with lack of childcare it was all they could do.

My mother always worked, one of my grandmothers always worked. I think there is some massive con trick that women didn't used to work "proven" by women working cash in hand as a cleaner or in a pub or the local fish and chip shops. I knew women who did those sort of jobs and officially they weren't working.

YANBU at all. And as a mom of a young child I think it’s only going to get worse. Children being pampered to every whim, (bad) feelings being validated all the time, sugar, screens, self-indulgence… If you’re a parent that so much put a few boundaries in place (I am not talking about physical punishment) you are called out as toxic or violent. I believe as parents we are our children “translators” of the world, if they are having a tantrum because of something silly we should give them perspective and help them mature, teach them to be resilient in the small things and not validate and make a big deal out of everything like changing the color of the bowl you’re serving their snack because it triggers them. I think this is the root of so many problems we are facing now as a society, so things like “don’t say breastmilk as it triggers me, we are now calling it chestmilk” are actually taken seriously… No good thing can come from accomodating every wish every human being has, we are slowly becoming weak hedonists incapable of basic tasks of adulthood like making a phone call. We take our feelings and our pleasure so seriously nowadays that even the tiniest effort to keep a relationship, a marriage or take care of our own children is a herculean task to be carried out.

😁

That's a shame. I was plotting clever ways to slip "belt onion" into my dinner party conversation as a bon mot....

Great post. I completely agree.

YANBU OP.

I think you’re being pretty judgemental too. No generation has it easy, it’s just that the challenges are different. If was all so easy there wouldn’t be two million pensioners living in poverty. The normality of single income, home buying households is a modern myth.

WTF I will kick off and call a waaaaahmbulance if "belt onion" is anything other than a genius Simpsons reference! I am in fact CRYING, SHAKING, THROWING UP at the very idea it's just a typo and not this:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/so-i-tied-an-onion-to-my-belt-which-was-the-style-at-the-time

YANBU
An example:
I think the pandemic really showed this. Older people were more affected than anyone else, ethnic minorities and poorer people were disproportionally affected. They were dying more, isolated, suffering from domestic abuse.

Yet the narrative is all around young middle class people and their parents missing school, and how terrible it was for them. Crazy!

@traytablestowed i don’t know anything about this judge or his opinions, I was asking a question-are these students what people/the media refer to as “snowflakes”?

The article says that “Stanford Law School is requiring all students to attend educational programming on free speech after protesters interrupted a speech by a conservative federal judge earlier this month.”

Why is the university educating the students on free speech?

@FigAndOlive

YANBU at all. And as a mom of a young child I think it’s only going to get worse. Children being pampered to every whim, (bad) feelings being validated all the time, sugar, screens, self-indulgence…

So there was no sugar or screens in the 1970s then?

My childhood spanned the 70s and early 80s and it was awash with sugar and screens. And framed with benign neglect, largely.

I think a lot of people have absurdly rose-tinted memories of this period.

I'm a product of the 80s. Shit loads of sugar and screens. And parents showing their resilience by hitting the kids rather than do any work on their self-control and de-escalation skills.

And plenty of people whinging about the yoof of today and how pampered and shit they were compared to, well, themselves.

I think that it's complex. It is absolutely right that people shouldn't just sweep big problems like mental health under the carpet but along with greater awareness ans acceptance of this has developed a sort of low level neediness and attention seeking from a lot of other people who really could just suck it up and get on with it a bit.

As a teacher I receive endless emails from parents about their childs anxiety. I know that anxiety can be totally crippling but for many children it's just nerves about a test and they need to learn to live with some mild discomfort to be able to move past it.

I mean who hasn't felt a few nerves walking into a room full of people? Who hasn't felt a bit flustered as deadline approaches. It's overcoming small things like that which builds confidence and resilience.

in society it used to be seen as a badge of honour to overcome some adversity. Now it seems to be the opposite. Far easier to declare all the reasons why you can't possibly be expected to do something and get loads of attention for that than to step out of your comfort zone and find a solution or push yourself.

Love it and total agree. When I liaten my step daughters in their early 20s. It is all about what's in it for me, how they have been upset, how hard done by they are. People shouldn't suffer in silence. However, there is a happy medium amd balance that can be found by the point you make here

@ToastMarmalade I think that reflects the media (mainstream, social, alt, etc, whichever) you're consuming about it, because I don't recognise that as the dominant narrative as I perceive it.

I think society is less resilient for 20 year olds than it was when i was 20. Whilst there was never some utopia and there lots of issues. i think that some specific things made it easier to be resilient. Council housing used to be more available with nice secure tenancies, i actually knew people getting council houses in okish timescales and housing was cheaper to buy for those that could. now people are more likely to be in insecure tenancies with private landlords.
I think GPs and other healthcare were easier to access with more GPs per head of population.
When i was 20 less jobs required a degree and interviews were simpler.
People felt like things were improving

So i think maybe some individuals are less resilient but i also think the actual social structure has less bounce bbackabilityand hope than it did when i left school. Others might have left school in recessions so will feel differently.

Ahh thanks, @Blossomtoes 😊

💤 💤 💤

Ya… you are so much more resilient. The generation that caused the worst of climate change…. The generation with cheap housing…. Yes yes yes. You are the stronger ones. Well done.

ok boomer

!00% agree.

I want a society where the genuine help people need is freely available; but just 'letting it all hang out' (to use a phrase we 'old people' might recognise) & expecting someone else to do something about it, is NOT what should be happening.

Ok boomer? Are you 14?

Trauma victims can have a visceral reaction to certain things, reliving their terrible experiences of experiences (think of shell shock victims, but could be an accident or abuse or attack) as if the trauma were happening again now. Their memories don't get "bleached" like other people's memory. This is not a personal failing or a personality defect. This is the brain doing what the brain sometimes does.

We just chose to ignore this in the past because we didn't really understand it. But ignoring it didn't cure them. Their suffering continued and often blighted their whole lives.

That we now sometimes make small modifications to our behaviour to spare trauma sufferers is a sign of progress and humanity to me, not a lack of resilience.