More isolation tactics – or am I imagining it?

[Righthandcider]

This might not seem like a subject for FWR but bear with.

Yesterday my 12-year-old said, “I’m really interested in fighting climate change.” So I asked her about it. The first thing out of her mouth was, “Well, your generation has completely ruined the planet and my generation’s future.”
This kicked off a long conversation about over-simplification, the appeal of feeling like you’re part of a group with a common enemy, etc.

(I also pointed out how often we ask her not to leave lights on all over the house, or say no, we’re not putting the heating on in the whole house just so that you can have a warm towel, etc.)

The way she phrased it has really stayed with me. It’s so obviously a message she’s been fed via friends / SM – and it’s clearly intended to turn kids against their parents. It doesn’t seem like a stretch that this messaging isn’t really coming from groups interested in addressing climate change, so much as groups interested in driving a wedge between parents and children.

Am I paranoid?

When I was a teenager back in the 80s, I remember me and my schoolmates taking about how old people shouldn't get a vote too.

I was a student in the 80s and was always going on marches for many right on causes. Naturally I was highly critical of my super kind parents who'd grown up during the war and conformed all their lives and never campaigned on anything. That's just the natural idea if things isn't it? And to be fair environmentally they were far less wasteful than my generation.

I remember saying the exact same thing to my mum in the 80s or 90s! Literally word for word.

(Back then we had acid rain, the ozone layer hole, leaded petrol etc.)

I'm an old Millennial and I cringe every time I hear 'okay, boomer' or blanket criticisms of the boomer generation.

Also, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z certainly came out with some hideously ageist nonsense during the Brexit referendum.

I think pitting generations against each other is happening a lot at the moment. It is representative of how siloed society has become.

I was a student in the 80s and was always going on marches for many right on causes.

So did I. And guess what? I still stand by all of them today.

Yes it is a message I’ve seen too- spouted on SM by a ton of children/teens. 🤷🏼‍♀️Never seen a post myself only quotes.

I think my earlier suggestion of accelerationism was wrong. Now I'm wondering about a family abolitionist agenda...

I think it's opportunistic piggybacking of her message by groups who stand to benefit from fostering divisions between kids and parents.

I don't think Greta tells children that climate change is entirely and specifically the fault of their parents' generation, which is certainly what my daughter has been led to believe.

I agree, OP, I think this is a message given out by SM, and it is designed to create division.

LOL at you telling DC they need to turn a light off from time to time!

I wonder where this significant energy is coming from.

I was born in the late 50’s and I do think our generation should take some of the blame.

The damage to the planet started with the Industrial Revolution, but it’s only my generation who were adults while science was telling us that our profligate consumerism was damaging the planet and the climate.

I spent my thirties striving for the nice house, furniture and just loads of things and I never felt any guilt because it just wasn’t known about. But as I’ve got older and say the last 20 years, it’s been an alarm sounding stronger and stronger.

As other posters have said things were more frugal in our childhoods, and that was better for the planet. The majority of people can afford to have so many more ‘things’ than we ever used to do.

Yes, we had the ozone layer, the Cold War, smoking causes cancer and too many people to feed.

I have changed my ways considerably and now have a make do and mend attitude. My ex has carried on and sees his accumulated wealth as the means to do anything he wants. He spends on endless things.

I feel guilty that my adult children will have to make decisions and have curtailed choices as they reach their thirties and forties.

You'll find this Jonathan Heidt article useful, OP.

jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Liberal girls like your daughter are being encouraged by social media and in some cases the education system to think in certain (and not helpful for their MH) ways. One of the ways of thinking prevalent among many young people is the black-and-white take on things. So, the world is made up of good people and bad people. Old people (like you!) are bad because they own their own homes and have pensions and ruined the world for young people. Young people are good because they are the helpless victims of uncaring generations. I over-simplify massively, of course, but the article really pins down what's going on in many young peoples' heads and ways of thinking.

Your response to your daughter was excellent. The Heidt article will help you spot and intervene when you notice her using other dangerous thinking assumptions — such as that people with views different to hers are dangerous and must be silenced.

Thank you @purplevipersgrass , that's so helpful. Frightening that so many adults are seemingly happy to think what they're told they should think and disseminate the "right" messages to young people. No suspicion, no questioning, no critical thought.

My thoughts exactly.

I think you are right that we should be concerned that this messaging is being pushed very strongly. I also think it’s pretty common to blame the previous generation.

I’d ask the question: what’s so special about your generation to make you think that if our generations switched places we wouldn’t be facing the same climate issues, i.e same circumstance, different outcome? They can only blame us if they can show why they would have done it all differently.

Saying that, I’m glad they want to make change happen. The test is, as mentioned upthread, how far back to frugality are they willing to go?

Yes, and another point I asked my daughter to think about is exactly what is a generation? Yes, they exist within the family but in social terms they are just an invention, a generalisation and an over simplification - there is no hard line between them. There's no system whereby the whole of humanity reproduces simultaneously every 25 years producing disparate cohorts ffs.

As for the 'boomer' thing, it often seems to be levelled at anyone too old to be a millenial.

This reminds me of the thread here recently trying to credit "young people" with starting trans ideology and mixing things up. Conveniently ignoring that the person widely considered to have started it all, John Money, was pre boomer. Let alone all the distinctly gen X and older male transitioners, political supporters, and financial benefitters.

And the Tory Party.

I think I know what you are getting at, but for me this is just another manufactured division of the sort that has come about as a result of the blunt use of ' Intersectionalism' as a way of understanding society. Oppressors and victims; powerful and powerless...the politics of group identity.

the tory party has been held hostage just like any other party. the fact is that the tories have been in government during the last 10 years or so as transgender fanaticism has taken off and taken hold. At least they have now started to put the brakes on; unlike the Labour Party, Lib -Dems or Greens - and the Scottish Nationalists ( although that may well be in full unravel now)

The Tory party have not been held hostage. They deliberately launched the policy of De-medicalisation, debated it and put Genderwoo into government policies. They have repeatedly put TWAW believers in charge of Education.

That's 6 years of teaching our girls to doubt what they are, budge up for the boys and challenge those trying to protect their rights.

TooBig, you've been banging this drum for a while. This really is not the thread, although it's fair to discuss the point elsewhere.

I do think that the Tory Party, for its many, many, many faults, did not 'start' transgender ideology.

Anyway, I have no wish to derail this thread, so that's all I'll say.

That's because some of their MPs were captured, just like MPs in many other parties at the time. That was before the public, or anyone, had really woken up to what was really going on. Let's be thankful, at least, that they are putting the brakes on now.

There's a thing that bothers me with regards to some young people. There seems to be an assumption that they know better because old people are out of touch. The thing is every old person was a young person once. I remember what I was like when I was younger, and I have the experience of my youth as well as the experience from being older. No old person is born old, every old person was young once.
I have been alive every minute of a younger person's life and quite a few minutes extra on top of that.
Kids leave the lights on, and I go around the house turning them off, and they tell me about climate change? I pay the bills, I know to turn stuff not being used off. To close the dorrs and windows when it's cold.
I may not know or even care how tiktok works but assuming I know less than them because they are younger is very shakey ground.

I’d say fine, you won’t be needing a mobile phone / ipad or lifts anywhere then and you have to wear clothes at least 3 times before washing plus you can only wash your hair once a week, all while smiling brightly.
It’s not the older generations driving the need for rare earth minerals.

The smug teens and 20 somethings drinking their almond milk lattes and water in plastic bottles drive me insane, both those things are irrevocably damaging the enviroment.