Hacker News Reader

Comment by gverrilla | Hacker News Reader

"the world is hard so lemme hit you really hard so you learn fast what reality looks like and can fight back" this, is one or another form, goes around A LOT still.

View on HN

Boomer's as an entire generation are addicted to the idea that all problems are solved by just yelling at people or committing violence against them.

Not to say humanity has collectively improved, but the age group which tends to "wonder" if corporal punishment should be brought back has always been very specific when I encounter it.

I was born very late to parents who otherwise would have made me a boomer. I'm pretty sure what you say is correct and caused by the little accepted fact that people were traumatised by the war not anything like this fantasy idealism that they just had Gary Cooper laconic takes and stiff upper lips. My parents gen (born into the great depression) were messed up to silence.

My parents are boomers on the cusp of being silents, themselves, and there's definitely some difference between what they percieve and the younger generations. It's hard to say how far back it all goes, really - while the depression and war years were certainly influential in making the culture that overshadowed the rest of the 20th century, stories of harsh discipline are age-old. Perhaps what makes it defining is just the fact that it occurred as a near-universal in the same way that the current pandemic did, and the result was a postwar generation with very sharp differences in attitude.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com