the "I'm Getting Old and I Can't Find My Teeth"

[Niko]

(being 26 years old myself... funny story, wanted to post this off topic on another thread recently but why not here... when i worked in that place for retired people one morning during breakfast (when my colleague just read a story about some young criminals from the newspaper) the woman i was just feeding said very thoughtfully "some day we will need someone like Hitler again, but this time he should go for the young people..." one of only two instances where i almost forgot that we were supposed not to take seriously what these people were saying)

[AllenLowe]

I think she was talking about Irving Hitler - he was a phone installer for Verizon -

[Niko]

I think she was talking about Irving Hitler - he was a phone installer for Verizon -

ah, that might explain much, talking of things that might explain much, thought of you when i stumbled across this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre

concerning business with young people, how much are the percy france and the dave schildkraut cds including shipping to overhere?

Edited March 31, 2008 by Niko

[WorldB3]

I work in a faculty of just over 20 Humanities teachers, 2/3rds of whom are under 35. The under-35s are committed, professional, exceptionally hard working, immensely creative, humble and a delight to work with (as are the over 35s!).

But oldies will insist on believing that young people cannot possibly be as good as they were when they were young.

'Twas ever so.

Bev,

I work with several under 35 years that are highly motivated and creative also. I was referring to a suburban privileged class of overly coddled and medicated youth that won't have the skill set to rebound from any type of failure. I am pretty sure its more of a specific american issue.

Maybe I am jealous because I can't bounce back from hangovers anymore but there seems to be a higher degree of loutishness with younger people than I remember. But again that could be age talking.

[papsrus]

I work in a faculty of just over 20 Humanities teachers, 2/3rds of whom are under 35. The under-35s are committed, professional, exceptionally hard working, immensely creative, humble and a delight to work with (as are the over 35s!).

But oldies will insist on believing that young people cannot possibly be as good as they were when they were young.

'Twas ever so.

Bev,

I work with several under 35 years that are highly motivated and creative also. I was referring to a suburban privileged class of overly coddled and medicated youth that won't have the skill set to rebound from any type of failure. I am pretty sure its more of a specific american issue.

Maybe I am jealous because I can't bounce back from hangovers anymore but there seems to be a higher degree of loutishness with younger people than I remember. But again that could be age talking.

Well, at my place of business it's the young folks who are the motivated go-getters, and the old cranks are the ones who are set in their ways and more or less playing out the string ... (think I got enough cliches in there to expose which camp I'm in?).

Edited March 31, 2008 by papsrus

[A Lark Ascending]

I think you're both right. And, of course, both wrong. Some people go one way, some the other.

I think you are right - I can point to examples of both self-centred and highly altruistic young people. I'm just not convinced balance has tipped towards the former in a major way.

We probably notice young people more - up to the 1950s in the UK they were being sucked into 'adult' life by 15; today they can stay 'young' and exist as a distinct subculture for much longer.

Maybe that makes them appear more threatening.

[A Lark Ascending]

Well, at my place of business it's the young folks who are the motivated go-getters, and the old cranks are the ones who are set in their ways and more or less playing out the string ... (think I got enough cliches in there to expose which camp I'm in?).

My experience too - I have a number of people under 30 working in my Faculty who would do my job better - more energy, on the ball with new developments etc. But, to protect my pension, I'll be sat in the post for a few years yet, doing my best but finding it harder and harder to adjust.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Well, at my place of business it's the young folks who are the motivated go-getters, and the old cranks are the ones who are set in their ways and more or less playing out the string ... (think I got enough cliches in there to expose which camp I'm in?).

My experience too - I have a number of people under 30 working in my Faculty who would do my job better - more energy, on the ball with new developments etc. But, to protect my pension, I'll be sat in the post for a few years yet, doing my best but finding it harder and harder to adjust.

Hm. I did my best - most creative - work between the ages of 46 and 60, when I retired. Most young people who worked for me or in association with me, couldn't keep up; but nor could a lot of the older ones But it wasn't for lack of motivation; they just didn't see things arse-backwards.

MG

[AllenLowe]

I feel like musically I'm on top of my game - and there is definitely a tendency in musicians post-50 to play it safe- still, most of the young freak-folk and indie rockers I encounter are so a-historic in their outlook as to contribute to the general sterility of their work -

[king ubu]

what the hell is this, an oldage home?

I am 13, but then I was 7 when I was born almost (hey, but not quite yet!) 30 years ago...

[sidewinder]

what the hell is this, an oldage home?

Yes

[king ubu]

what the hell is this, an oldage home?

Yes

[Niko]

ran into the most brilliant 19 year old i have ever known this morning; don't know much about mental things but at 25 he appears to be seriously in trouble (or has gone some place where i clearly cannot follow); i'd say the sparkle was gone as they say and he was talking what sounded like more or less cryptic nonsense... SAD!

Edited April 1, 2008 by Niko

[king ubu]

ah well, another reason to refuse getting older... I'll stay mentally 13, then, forever (young)!

[Jazzmoose]

Ah, people over 55 are decrepit old coots, and people under 45 are self-obsessed morons. That's the real problem with the world...

[papsrus]

LINK

The Great Forgetting

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: April 11, 2008

They say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks. It’s become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high.

In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.

This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.

A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.

You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”

You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grâce: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat. The only possible response is: “Of course, I know who you are. You’re the hooker who hangs around on 14th Street most Saturday nights.”

The dawning of the Bad Memory Century will have vast consequences for the social fabric and the international balance of power. International relations experts will notice that great powers can be defined by their national forgetting styles. Americans forget their sins. Russians forget their weaknesses. The French forget that they’ve forgotten God. And, in the Middle East, they forget everything but their resentments.

There will be new social movements and causes. The supermarket parking lots will be filled with cranky criminal gangs composed of middle-aged shoppers looking for their cars. As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall, people will be confronted with the modern Sophie’s choice — your BlackBerry or your mind.

Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry.

As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. First they lose the subjects they’ve only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.

Their affection for themselves will endure through this Bad Memory Century, but their failure to retrieve will produce one of the epoch’s most notable features: shorter memoirs.