I agree wholeheartedly with this message, but also don’t disregard advice from elders simply because they’re old. There are some real nuggets of wisdom you may miss.
My 70 something year old mother drinks chunky milk, because she says that expired milk is still good even after its expiration date, and then wonders why she keeps getting diarrhea. So, some elders have better advice than others. Especially better than my mom.
If its sealed (and pasturized) it is safe usually. Many cultures use such milk, eg Rebuplica Dominicana
“Always use a bathroom when you have the chance; you don’t know how long it’ll be before your next opportunity.”
- my grandma
The trick with elder advice is that you have to be intelligent and wise enough to understand what’s useful and what’s just wistful nostalgia. Like this meme says, some of it will just be longing for things that will not come back.
I even see the other side of this when I give advice to my 20 yo son. Some of the things I say just isn’t as important as it once was.
It depends a lot on the specific person. Many people are kinda dumbasses, and dumbasses don’t necessarily get wiser once they get old.
Yup, where do you think the term ‘casting pearls before swine’ came from? Some advice learned the hard way is really useful, but if no one listens…
Never before in history has our lives been so different than that of our parents. We live in a world that my grandparents wouldn’t recognize. We live in a world that my great grandparents couldn’t comprehend.
They cannot prepare us for what’s to come. I fear we may not be able to do any better for our children. Perhaps all we can do is support them as best we can and hope that they’ll figure it out.
I don’t necessarily disagree with OP, it makes a good point, but I also think it’s really dangerous to make blanket statements like yours.
Some of my grandparents may have struggled with some aspects of technology (a couple actually loved everything cutting edge) but they also survived the holocaust, and considering the state of the world, were they still around, I think they would have a lot of extremely relevant insight and advice to provide.
I think the same applies to all those who managed to survive the atrocities of the past, and there is good reason we say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Sure, ignore them telling you to walk through town handing out CV’s to businesses to get a job, or that you shouldn’t have a problem buying a house if only you worked full time, that’s all out of date, but the deadly cores of our society - capitalism and the bigotry and oppression it depends on, are just as dangerous as they were in the past, if not more due to both their now extended reach, as well as the growing desperation of the working class making us more easy to exploit.
There are also some universal truths about human nature that still haven’t changed in thousands of years.
Everyone should read Plato’s Republic. He predicted the end of liberal democracy in a way that applies to the Weimar Republic and the Pax Americana.
The world is not ready for AI powered dick sucking robots
But I sure am!
This comment made me change my mind and upvote this shallow post.
Your friends and even you yourself prepare constantly for the world that is not real - what you deem “real” it just your interpretation of what happened - which in most cases is not even correct (as you rarely know everything about other people, economy, or anything that’s happening). This image is nonsense. Elders’ advice can be good as well as advice of someone your age might be shitty.
Just think for yourself.
Yeah the statement suggests as if elder people don’t currently live in the same world as us today, while some of them may be out of touch, they have the same ability to understand the current climate as young people do. Some are stuck in the past but that’s for too broad of a generalization
The funny thing is that your elders said exactly the same thing to their elders. It was a member of the “silent generation” (pre-boomer) who coined the phrase, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Even when those elders told them that their elders (great elders?) told them the same thing your elders didn’t believe their elders either.
The flip side is that many of your elders, who realized that their elders didn’t have all the answers now think that they have all the answers.
Smart money says that your generation will do exactly what all the other generations did; Do a lot of youthful rebellion against the obviously stupid stuff from previous generations, mix in rebellion against a bunch of stuff that’s actually not stupid, discover nuance, strive for a system that combines the best elements of the past with the best ideas of the present, fail, get jaded, forget about nuance, assume that you have all the answers, get frustrated that your kids are making obvious mistakes that you’ve told them how to avoid.
This sentiment just seems so arrogant.
Literally every single moment is a moment no one in history has ever experienced before.
Time moves in a linear fashion. Wow. What a vapid observation.
The only thing we’ve got is to look into the past and understand our collective mistakes so we don’t make them again.
You do that by listening to people who were there and made those mistakes and learnt from them.
Old people have knowledge and wisdom, some of it is useful some of it is not. Just like every human.
You’re not on some wild frontier that’s never been tamed before though, there’s been over 100 billion humans who have existed.
Pretty sure their collective experiential knowledge could teach you something.
Things changed much less in the past.
I mean, no they didn’t. Most people today weren’t alive to see what World War II was like. It was literally an entire shift in many nations where kids were being sent to die daily as cannon fodder and people were being genocided by the millions.
Can you imagine what it was like to be alive during the expansion of the Roman Empire, or the Mongolian Empire? Having your nation disappear as soldiers murdered everyone in power and raped and pillaged countries left and right?
Or the collapse of those superpowers? The collapse of the Roman Empire was earth shattering, economies failed at incredible speed, and people just starved as there was little way to buy or sell goods or services as things stabilized.
We’re just now far more hyper aware of the changes in the world because we get them as constant updates on our screens. But that means we should be more prepared to counter historical mistakes. Instead we are repeating them, and those in power are playing dollhouse with the world, again.
Only this time the effects are more permanent, because they not only affect the rise and fall of social systems and power, but also the literal ecological balance of the planet, which before now has never been dictated by human action like it is today.
You shouldn’t smoke though. It’s not good for you
I’d say just to pay attention to the information anyone is giving you. Keep what’s relevant and make good use of it. Learn from what isn’t relevant anymore and have a discussion about why it’s not relevant.
Our elders have so much experience. Even if some of it isn’t directly helpful to you, there’s still so much of the human experience that hasn’t ever and will never change. Things like relationships, survival, hope, struggle, addiction, passion, and so much more.
Thing is, that assumes that your elders are actually dealing with any of the human experience in a remotely sensible manner. I suppose even then they probably aren’t wrong all the time, but is the effort of trying to tell counterproductive bullshit from sensible advice really worth the effort?
I’m in my 40s and a lot of “financial advice” from guys twenty years older than me is pretty BS, or was something that was important in their day but not important any more.
I don’t normally save more serious memes, but I might need this for my family. They like to give me lots of advice that would make eveything much more difficult than it already is.
The world might be different, but I don’t think necessarily that we are. And we are part of it.
If I could have disredgard all advice I’ve gotten up until now, I’d do it. That 1% of actually useful advice might have a big impact, but it would have saved me a lot of time and me a lot smarter to just never have heard the other 99%.
We live in a society where everyone is disposable over the age of 30 and I’m sure that’s just fine.
Some of the people born today will retire in the 22nd century. As parents, what life skills should we aspire to give them that will be useful in the job market we cannot begin to imagine?
As a parent of two young kids that’s easy for me. Adaptability, self reflection, and problem solving. Learning to check their sources and learning where to get the good info they need to do whatever. While also teaching the skills to solve for themselves and question themselves while still believing they can find the best solution. You give them this foundation they can sort it out.
Sensible answer. Trouble is, given the massive paradigm shift that is currently unfolding, and several subsequent others that may happen in their lifetimes that we cannot foresee, it sounds a bit like aiming to pass down solid horse training and husbandry skills sometime in the 1890s.
I see your point but don’t fully agree. They are also living now, and if they’re well prepred for the now they will have more tools in their belt for dealing with the changes to come in the future. We just shouldn’t present what we try to teach as some dogmatic truth, but as tools to be adapted or discarted as needed in the times to come.
