Or should I lose hope in humanity completely now?
Some get better, some get worse. You really can’t generalize this. A friend of mine used to say that “we have to ditch the wise elder, because some people accumulate stupidity with age instead of wisdom”
For years now I’ve responded to anybody saying we should “respect our elders” by saying “they just don’t make elders like they used to.”
It was easy to be old and wise when the world only changed on a scale of centuries. Now it’s easy to see large cultural changes every decade or less; the wisdom of somebody who came of age in the 1950s is of no value today if they’ve learned nothing else since.
There are aspects of the world that don’t change.
Stupid people didn’t live to be that old back in the day lol
I’ve become MUCH more of a twat as I get older/ now that I’m over 40…
I just don’t have patience for the sillyness anymore. You wanna be a unicorn furry? Sure, whatever, I dgaf just gtfo my way so I can go about my life without your bullshit interrupting me. You wanna spend all your time talking about immigrants or your culture, i’m going to walk away…if you follow and annoy me as that type tends to do, i’m going to take the gloves off and bury your stupid ass with facts based in the reality you insist on avoiding.
It’s usually kind of a U with the top sections being comprised of very young and very old people with the kind of limited intelligence and suicidal bravery to not believe that their actions have consequences, and then generally mellowed out, moderately reasonable, people in the middle. YMMV though.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Some great comments below, but i also wanted to add that i think it depends on how open and honest one is. For example, it happens quite frequently that i change my view on something, because someone (usually one of my adult kids) points out certain things that i didn’t know or thought about. And then i can just apologize and tell them they are right. It keeps me humble and open to other viewpoints or scientific facts that i didn’t know or consider. If someone just kindly points something out to me, that makes it easy to apologize. But if people are hostile and tell you you’re wrong in an aggressive way, then it would be pretty hard to admit you hadn’t thought of that.
But from what i see, there are a lot of people who just don’t want to seem dumb, or are extremely set in their ways, and they will never admit that they were wrong or that there are different ways to see or understand something. Rather, they become angry, or grumble, or change the subject.
Add to this, I don’t know how far back but the Boomers, Silent and Greatest Gen all were brought up on a strict “respect your elders” mindset which by the time it got to the boomers is “I am Older therefore always right by default and how DARE you try to correct me!!”
This is also why world governments especially USA is full of geriatrics because old people don’t vote for anyone younger than them (if there is a choice) because they don’t want a goddamn whippersnapper telling them what to do. The most stubborn kind of old person that is.
And man, they got pissed when the rest of us collectively learned that just being Old doesn’t mean shit. The boomers had to bend the knee HARD to their parents authority or they get insta slapped. So they expect, or demand their kids/young people in general treat them the same as it’s their Turn now.
But instead we learned they can be wrong and being Old doesn’t mean infallible. And they hates it… BIG MAD they are!. They cope and seethe and mald all over the internet and at the polls. We are literally living in a Baby Boomer tantrum cuz young people will not “respect” them as they were forced to do their parents. Yeah just growing old doesn’t mean shit you gotta back that with experience now. Like Nazis whom only thing to be proud of is being Pale.
I’m not that young myself anymore, and i definitely recognize my very strict upbringing you mentioned, but in my view respect needs to be earned. And not once, but over and over again because people change. Seeing most political leaders being very old white men makes me cringe. They often just don’t understand the modern world. Just an example; they make decisions about cybersecurity while i’m convinced they don’t know the first thing about it. They probably rely heavily on their advisors and just echo what they say would be best.
Thanks, I hope to not be this way as I age
You always have a choice. Just stay informed, surround yourself with wholesome people, and be willing to change your views if needed. I don’t think you become a certain way just because you age.
No. Yes.
Find the non-twatty people in your life and ride out the rest of it.
In my experience, the majority is great. The problem is that the loudest and most intrusive ones monopolize all the nearby attention.
My recommendation would be to find some quiet third places in which to seek out people you enjoy being around.
Yes until 70ish then some go full on shit head.
Less flexible, but with a better understanding that most people are, so not as loud with opinions. Thats sort of less twaty.
cut the twats out of your life, be unbothered and moisturized in your own lane
Yes they do.
Not necessarily. The opposite might happen as people age but never deal with their real problems. Then the problems grow and they become even twatier than before. If anything, kids are the nicest until about 5th grade which is when they learn how to be assholes from adults around them.
The existence of both “Boomers” and the “Me Generation” is enough evidence to prove that it’s a solid “sometimes”
It really just depends on the person, and how introspective they are throughout their lifetime. Some people get worse, some people get better. Events can happen that shapes a person’s trajectory in one way or another.
In my experience, old age only amplifies person’s traits - if you were nice, you are going to be extra nice because of all the stress leaving your day to day. If you were a cunt, you are going to be extra cunty because now you will be blaming people left and right for all the errors in your life. That’s my experience though.
