The Greatest Generation

What Hacker News says

1. hilbert42Jun 2023
   "I ponder"

   Probably not, or it would have been more difficult or taken longer. That generation is exemplified in Tom Brokaw's truly excellent book The Greatest Generation. He covers the lives of people of that generation and shows how they took life as it came and when adversity struck they managed the best they could and did so without complaint.

   I have an interest in the historical aspects of old photographs, those taken in the 19th Century and early 20th, Civil War photos etc. and there's an excellent collection on the Library of Congress web site and among them is a large collection of Lewis Hine's National Child Labor Committee Collection, and I found them very informative—one can learn things from these photos that never make it into the history books. One thing immediately obvious to me was the vast majority of the kids were happy and enjoying themselves. In the photos one sees kids poking fun at other at other ones, a kid in a row behind making fun of one in front of him without his knowledge and so on. They were acting naturally doing what kids do.

   The photos depict the harsh life these kids led and their work conditions are clearly unacceptable by today's standards but I'd suggest that for most of human history a kid's life wasn't a bed of roses—a century earlier it'd likely have been worse. One thing is clear from the photos is that these kids had developed an adaption and resilience to life's knocks at a very early age and because they were all in the same boat together they accepted their lives as the norm.

   I've mentioned on HN previously that today's kids are much more mollycoddled and protected than even I was as a kid, I was allowed to do things that kids today would never be allowed to do today and my parents weren't harsh, it was just how things were for all kids back then. That freedom meant we experienced more of life's knocks at an early age than today's kids and I reckon it put us in good stead. I worry about today's society where trivial matters are often blown up to seem as if they are life-threatening events.

   Incidentally, when browsing through Hine's photographs one thing was very noticeable, many of those kids were dressed in little more than rags but most wore excellent shoes and boots (that is if they wore them, many didn't). I couldn't help thinking I'd like a few pairs of them myself. I've never gotten to the bottom of this, why was the quality of the footwear seemingly so much better a century ago than it is today?

   LOC's Child Labor collection: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/nclc/

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2. hilbert42Mar 2023
   I'm often surprised I'm still in one piece when reminded of past events (although tragically one of my schoolfriends never made it to adulthood). As you say, in my case, dumb luck and happenstance definitely played a role in my survival. There's little doubt about that.

   I consider myself a rather timid person when it comes to puting my body in harm's way, in fact I consider myself to be considerably less adventurous than were some of my schoolmates. It's just that sometimes nasty things happened unexpectedly without any intention of me acting in a bravado way or being deliberately adventurous. Nearly electrocuting myself and being paralyzed and unable to move for nearly a half hour, and being trapped on top of a waterfall with a 300/400 foot drop below is simply terrifying to a 13-14 year-old—or at any rate it certainly was so for me. There are other similar instances but I'll not press the point.

   Back when I was a kid society wasn't anywhere near as risk averse as it is today. In the 1950s—'60s collective memory of WWII was still raw and vivid with the experience of millions killed—and almost every kid I knew had a father who'd been in the War. Thus when kids got into dangerous scrapes and actually survived there was little or no panic unlike the noise and kerfuffles one sees regularly these days. The attitude was 'you shouldn't have done something that stupid in the first place especially so since you were warned previously against doing it, now you should have learned from the experience'. End of story.

   Although the reasons for why weren't often overtly stated, the attitude was 'kid, you've been in a scrape so stop whining about it.' In hindsight, that harshish attitude was not to be unexpected, after all, the kid's troubles usually paled into insignificance when compared with the horrific events that many parents had recently experienced during the War, (such experiences however were rarely discussed with us kids, nevertheless we learned much about the horrors of them through some form of nonverbal osmosis).

   Essentially, the attitude was that kids must develop resilience to life's knocks or not survive—and I say that as one who had an overprotective but well-meaning mother who often tried to intervene in what I was doing (that's if she knew about it).

   I can't speak for others but I see nothing glorious about my younger days, nor was it anything to be especially proud of; the facts are that it was just the same plain ordinary existence as experienced by many other kids of my age. That said, it was nevertheless a very different and harder existence to that which most kids experience these days. Moreover, it's an experience I'm very glad to have lived through (I'd truly hate to be a kid nowadays).

   I am almost certain why people (as you say) reminisce so is because many of us of a certain vintage are horrified at what we see this overly risk averse society has done to lower average resilience of our kids. Frankly, it's been truly alarming to watch the downwards slide.

   Heaven help us if Western countries ever got involved in another war à la WWII, we'd be totally stuffed and unable to function let alone able to respond adequately. Given the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine that's not totally out of the bounds of possability. Of course, one hopes that such a horrible calamity never eventuates.

   It's clear to me that my parents' generation—that of the Great Depression and WWII—had substantially greater stamina and resilience than my babyboomer generation. As my generation has eventually awoken to and become aware of this fact through observing the same continuing slide downward in latter generations as in their own—and we boomers are in an excellent position to do just that—then it's become clear that as a society we've a problem that we ought to be worried about. To my mind, there's little doubt that those reminiscences are muffled cries for us to do something about the matter before it's too late. (When one sees instances of kids who are too frightened to leave their home then one doesn't have to be told that there's a problem.)

   Likely you think I'm overstating my case, perhaps so. But then, whilst my opinion comes from lived experience, it nevertheless counts for little in the wider scheme of things. If you want a greater authority who has carefully researched the matter then I'd refer you to Tom Brokaw and his excellent book on the subject titled The Greatest Generation:

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Generation_(boo...

   https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/128...

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3. hilbert42Oct 2020
   'Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.'

   '<…> Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.'

   'Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold.'

   I will not sign this declaration, as I'm not convinced that the net outcome of what they are proposing would be any better than the current lockdown/isolation arrangements. Where's the evidence, where are the longitudinal studies?

   For starters, given the many administrative stuff-ups worldwide with COVID-19 since its outset, much of what they are proposing would be impractical to implement and or it would end up ineffective—or even harmful. The third quote is outrageous given that it's come from medicos—the fact is we still just do not know or have sufficient information about herd immunity. (Looking past the emotion of this declaration to the practicalities of its implementation, one sees many shortfalls to worry about.)

   Right, the evidence for what they are proposing will be of overall benefit is, at best, shaky. COVID-19 has been devastating and unfortunately, some of its side/indirect effects are very troubling. However, if we increase the risk of COVID-19's direct effect by allowing more people to catch it by trading off its side/indirect effects then how do we actually measure the true net benefit? Moreover, how much trade-off would we consider acceptable? Despite what they say about knowing more about COVID-19, there is no proof that their proposals will be anything other than just hit and miss (like many other responses to COVID-19 over the last eight months or so).

   I'd suggest that it'd be very hard and likely unproductive measurement, as in a sense we're trading off apples for oranges—we're not measuring a straightforward comparison in the utilitarian sense where we normally compare positive utiles against negatives ones and end up with an overall result.

   Probably, the most serious question that none of these 'Great Barrington Declaration' people is asking is why do so many people in modern-day society have so little resilience when they are forced out of their comfort zones into unusual situations such having to be in lockdown.

   I see this as a big deal; because there's reasonable evidence that the 'softness' of modern-day living is making many people less resilient to life's knocks and tribulations than those of previous generations were. We see evidence everywhere, from people not coping with lockdown to increased numbers of those suffering from PTSD (for instance, nowadays we see an increased percentage of soldiers with PTSD than say compared with those who went through World War II).

   Detailing the evidence would take a whole essay so I'll just say this. From personal experience, I know that my parents who were of the Great Depression and WWII generation had much more resilience than I do and I reckon I've more than many people who are younger than me. Right, that's just me—a sample of one—and that's statistically insignificant. It seems to me that a better place to begin is with the American journalist Tom Brokaw's wonderfully researched book The Greatest Generation. It tells the stories 'of a generation of America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America' As Brokaw points out in the book, these people managed to overcome the trials and tribulations of a very hard life and just get on with it without whingeing or whining.'

   The book review: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/128...

   Wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation

   Brokaw's bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw

   To my mind, this intergenerational decrease in resilience was a big deal even before COVID-19 and I'm very surprised that it's not more prominently and openly discussed now since the virus has pushed the issue into the fore. We really do need some hard statistics on this.

   Furthermore, it seems to me that population resilience should be the subject of much research if for no other reason than it is important to know how the population would cope if it were to experience a much more extensive pandemic than COVID-19, one in which a much higher percentage of the population died. After all, it has happened before with the plague epidemics where it's estimated that at least one third of the population perished—that's at least 33% dead whereas COVID-19 is low single digits at its highest (also note the death rate from the 1918-19 Spanish Flu was higher than COVID-19 with over 50 million dead).

   There's also a more personal reason too: I would like to know why many of those who I know, like me, have found the lockdown actually somewhat enjoyable whereas others cannot stand the isolation and seem to be going mad. Personally, being in lockdown, I've found the time to do many things that I would otherwise not have had time for, and also I've been able to avoid a few 'tiresome' people without having to offer excuses.

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4. sachinagSep 2009
   Actually, that's what makes it better. The argument against Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation isn't that those WWII heroes were so special; it's that no one generation could be.

   I could have been more precise with a modifying phrase such as "by accident of birth", but that was too unwieldy. The upvoted comments are specific to the GG argument, which are suboptimal, because they don't work as good writing unless you've seen PG's original.

   (Yeah, I'm a part-time writer/editor to pay the beer bills, and I can get defensive about my writing. Sue me. You're better at design/coding/picking up chicks than I.)

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