Talk:The future of office work: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 32: Line 32:
The younger generation, notably Gen Z, grapples with an evolving definition of work. Unlike previous generations, they face unprecedented challenges: climate change, an uncertain economy, ballooning student loans, and the struggles of identity and purpose in a digitized world.}}
The younger generation, notably Gen Z, grapples with an evolving definition of work. Unlike previous generations, they face unprecedented challenges: climate change, an uncertain economy, ballooning student loans, and the struggles of identity and purpose in a digitized world.}}


Scanlon says we mustn’t laugh at the kids, but when they things like this is it hard not to. Race Relations, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, 1970s Stagflation, AIDS the Oil Crisis, the Troubles, the Winter of Discontent, threat of nuclear winter, the global recession of 1983 and New Romantic Pop music. Things were ''really'' shit in the decades before you were born, kids.
Scanlon says we mustn’t laugh at the kids, but when they things like this is it hard not to. Here, kids, is what you missed:
{{quote|Civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights you’d recognise, until the boomers won them for you. No-one had even ''thought'' of trans rights. South Africa was apartheid, Berlin was partitioned, there were wars in Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel and an of course the big Cold one. There was widescale nuclear proliferation: People built fallout shelters and schoolkids planned how best to lose their virginity in the event of a four-minute warning. There were civil wars in Angola, Ethiopia and Uganda, and there were ''multiple'' military coups in Bolivia, Uganda, Sudan, Ghana, Afghanistan, Pakistan and plenty of other places, and of course revolution in Iran. There were genocides in Cambodia, the Balkans and Uganda, military juntas in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, and meanwhile across Europe, Marxist and Republican terrorists murdered athletes, assassinated politicians, blew up buildings and hijacked planes. The 1970s were also the worst decade of most industrialized countries’ economic performance since the Great Depression: there was the Oil Crisis, brutalist housing estates, a crime wave in America, New York went bankrupt and there was a catastrophic war on drugs, rolling strikes and economic malaise culminating in a series of severe financial recessions, crashes and then neoliberal monetarist experiments throughout the Eighties, while eastern Europe slowly failed under oppressive communist regimes. There were student loans back then, too. The prevailing pandemic, AIDS, killed anyone it infected, while the environment was was wrecked with industrial pollution, acid rain, a hole in the ozone layer, the threat of nuclear winter, Dutch elm disease peripheral fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima reactor meltdowns and anxiety from Three Mile Island. In the mean time we were supposed to enjoy wearing corduroy, polyester, , acid wash, flares, permanent waves and listen to disco and new romantic music — did I mention there was famine in Africa which only Bob Geldof could fix? —  and there was ''no internet''.}}
 
Things were ''really'' shit in the decades before you were born, kids. The boomers and generation X sucked it up. Now it’s your turn.


Why don’t we change, then? Scanlon attributes this to intransigence, and a little bit, to embittered generations who themselves went through the meatgrinder, and don’t see why the next generation shouldn’t too.
Why don’t we change, then? Scanlon attributes this to intransigence, and a little bit, to embittered generations who themselves went through the meatgrinder, and don’t see why the next generation shouldn’t too.
Retrieved from "https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Talk:The_future_of_office_work"