Oh. (When ya talk about Dylan, he thinks you're talkin' about Dylan Thomas... whoeveh he was. The man ain't got no culchuh.)
Hmm. It's no worries; I've read Thomas's Do not go gentle, which made an impression on me. But I also tried listening to some Dylan too, like the heavy "Chimes of Freedom" and "Hurricane", which were contrasted pleasantly by "I Shall Be Free No. 10". And yep, Weird Al does a lot of original songs. Some of them are "style parodies", i.e. music that he writes 'in the style of' someone else. For instance, he wrote a song called "Craigslist" (all about Craigslist, natch) in the style of The Doors. There's also a humorous song called "Ringtone" (about a guy who gets a ringtone that everybody hates), but done in the style of Queen. He also wrote a song called "Mission Statement", a wickedly funny piece that takes aim at mumbo-jumbo business jargon, but done in the style of Crosby, Stills and Nash. As he explained: "I wanted to do a song about all the ridiculous double-speak and meaningless buzzwords that I’ve been hearing in office environments my entire life... and I thought it would be ironic to juxtapose that with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America.” ... and the song is hilarious.
I'm brushing up on my Welsh, and we went out to the pub after class last evening. And apparently I left my phone on the table. 30 miles and a lot of traffic away. To make it even more charming, I discovered it missing when I was only about 8 miles away, but did I go back and retrieve it then? Oh, no. I figured I'd just let it slip off the car seat or something and I was gonna drive home and use my landline to locate it. I am so clever!
Yes, I did, Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, my carrier requires 72 hours to reactivate, from the time you inform them you've recovered the phone. I mean, what's up with that?
I suppose it's so they have time to figure out that it's actually you (and not someone else?) who has access to your phone. I guess? I mean, they don't know your voice, and if your mobile ended up with someone who isn't you (and they okayed it without checking), I'm sure you wouldn't be happy. At least you have your phone back, so all's well that ends well. (Sorry for the cliche, but this time, it fits)
America was listed in the top 10 happiest places to live. right after this news segment came a segment about Mississippi's "Goon Squad" .... "Happiest place to live".... for whom? who was voting?? Edited for misinformation: USA is #23
From where did you get that? According to the World Happiness Report (2023), the top ten (in order from first) are: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, New Zealand. Canada is ranked 13th, the US 15th, and the UK 19th. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
Yikes!!! I've never even heard about these people. That all kinds of messed up. I'm so sorry to hear about this. There are no "winners" in stories like this. People who visited Disneyland, perhaps?
My bad! I had the news on in the background while I was getting ready for work. 2024's list ranks US as 23 "The United States (No. 23) and Germany (No. 24) dropped out of the top 20 in part because of a rise in happiness among other countries" "In the United States and Canada, happiness scores from people under 30 were dramatically lower than those from people age 60 and older." CNN
This is an alarming trend. It's tough to be a young person in this day and age. I think social media contributes to it, and anxiety is sure on the rise, but it's also a lot harder to make your way in the world today. When my husband and I were starting out in the early 1980s, it was a matter of course that newly-weds could buy their own house. That's become just an unattainable dream to many.
that and we are so much more attuned to the social issues happening around us... (making a generalization here) many 60+ have a different mentality regarding social changes and live in a 'if its not happening to me, then it doesn't exist" bubble. there are some outliers. but that my guess as to trend in numbers from above
Tell me about it. I know many people my age (including myself) that are deeply worried about their futures and where the world is heading. Like you said, the housing market sucks, the economy is terrible, the climate is in serious danger, the age for retirement keeps rising and the prospects of peace aren't exactly great right now. And as if all of that wasn't enough, AI also came along to revolutionize the job market. I'm studying computer science right now with the hopes of doing software development as a job in the future. A few days ago, they released a completely autonomous AI model called Devin that can do the entire development process all by itself. The older generations shouldn't be surprised that so many of us are depressed.
I thought better of you, JT, than to make such sweeping generalizations. Delve a little further into social history of the mid to late 20th century United States, then ask yourself if the vast majority of people who came of age during that period could've completely lost their social consciousness between then and now.
"There are some outliers" "but that [is] my guess as to [the] trend in numbers from above" the above: If Louanne can speculate, so can i?
Rather than speculate... I decided to download and read the full report. Chapter 2 begins analyzing the data by age. (I'm also focusing on North America) Happiness has fallen in North America and data points to more inclination for the younger generation to help others: From Chapters 1 and 2 ("Happiness and Age: Summary" and "Happiness of the Younger, the Older, and Those In Between"): "The COVID crisis led to a worldwide increase in the proportion of people who have helped others in need. This increase in benevolence has been large for all generations, but especially so for those born since 1980, who are even more likely than earlier generations to help others in need." (p 6) "Research has shown that inequality of well-being has a bigger effect on overall happiness than does inequality of income... Inequality in the distribution of happiness reflects inequalities of access to any of the direct and indirect supports for well-being, including income, education, health care, social acceptance, trust, and the presence of supportive social environments at the family, community and national levels. People are happier living in countries where the equality of happiness is greater" (43) "In the North America plus ANZ group, inequality has increased for the young but not for the old." (pg 44) Pre- Pandemic: "The helping of strangers was most common among the younger cohorts, and lowest for those born before 1965" (45) Post- Pandemic: data suggests "that Millennials are even more likely than their predecessors to increase their benevolent acts when a new need like COVID arises" (45) The report is too large for me to share.... but it is free to download here for anyone who wants to read the full report and to check out where your countries are in the data charts
Yeah the conditions of late capitalist modernity or whatever…mental health is all very structural. Lots of reasons to be nihilistic; absolute breakdown of coherent narratives, etc. Less community, no sense of origins. Lots of people are pretty alienated. The relations between the sexes seems more unsettled now. Modernity has reached the point now where Man wakes up, asks himself where he is, and can find no answer but an echo. He stares in the mirror and recognizes nothing.
It used to be news programs were only on at certain times of the day, and they were only an hour long. They'd feature mostly local news and the really big events from elesewhere. That's a much more natural way to live than 24-hour news coverage from all around the world. That could make anybody anxious and cause issues. Plus today the media has a tendency to do a lot more fearmongering and guilt-tripping.
Plus the way kids today live under constant house arrest. They can't go anywhere without being supervised by adults. That would tend tomake them grow up nervous and paranoid, rather than being allowed to walk where they want and do what they want unsupervised. These are contributing factors to the far higher prevalence of mental/emotional issues today as opposed to earlier. If you train kids that the world is dangerous, and never let them discover otherwise, they're going to believe it, and be afraid of everything.
To contextualize that, what you will find as you age is that the same social problems have existed in one form or another forever, and the longer you live with the them, the less acute they appear to be. It's not so much that you get used to them... more like you come to understand that every person who ever lived believed they were living in the worst period of history and that humanity is five minutes from the brink of collapse. But it keeps spinning.
Regarding kids and mental illness, that is an impossible data set to compare between generations. It was under-diagnosed and/or undefined in the past, so any comparison is useless. Now it's a pharmacological go-to diagnosis that probably skews a little higher than it should. Believe me, I've been hosting pharmaceutical meetings and conventions my whole lives, and they talk about how they can sell drugs to kids in the same fashion that Nike talks about selling sneakers. Only difference is, the medical community has a marketing budget 10 times that of an athletic community. Regarding young people: every young person who ever lived thought the world was a paragon of persecution and whatever hot-topic was circling the media outlets (or social media now) was certainly the end of the world as they know it. Regarding old people: every old person who ever lived thought that kids these days are spoiled rotten, that nothing is as good as it used to be, and that they would surely be the last generation before the world ended. Regarding people in the middle like me: we survived our youth and all the horrible social problems that didn't end the world. We aren't quite old enough to rag on the kids yet because we still want to be associated with youth, but we're not young enough to totally dismiss the generational shift that is leading us on a one-way street toward lameness. Regarding social media as a facsimile of reality: it's a bunch of garbage. People are people. And the ones I see with my own eyes and interact with everyday don't think, believe, or behave any differently now than they did 30 years ago. I keep waiting for the social media portrayal of gloom, doom, famine, riot, and chaos to actualize in something I can see with my own eyes, but that hasn't happened either. And, no, I am not sheltered at all. I deal with hundreds of people a day from all generations, all races, all sexual orientations, all political orientations, all social persuasions, and... they're just people.
I don’t think this is true; there is consistent longitudinal psychiatric data that goes back decades regarding key disorders.
Sure, but how many people voluntarily reported a mental illness or sought therapy 40 years ago as opposed to today?
