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lol at the idea that you need to go hunting to be "manly" (or "not wussy").
Yeah, it's so manly to hide in a tree and shoot a defenseless/unsuspecting animal. You're such a hero.
I'm grateful being a hunter doesn't make me manly. I'm a woman.
Defenseless? Unsuspecting? Your lack of knowledge is showing. Step out of your habitat and into the surroundings they know intimately, remain unseen, don't let them smell you, get ahead of their instinct. Learn to use a gun, bow or other weapon and stay proficient with it.
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Originally Posted by JoulesMSU
And? Why does working on a farm or driving a tractor matter in today's world?
It matters to those who know how food is produced and to the rest of you who don't seem to know but eat anyway.
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I spent a good bit of time playing around on computers while I was growing up in the 90s. I created my first website when I was in 6th grade and I spent plenty of time modding some of my favorite games like Quake and Civilization while I was in high school. Guess where that led me? To a computer science degree from a prestigious college and a high paying career that takes little to no physical toll on me.
Yet you don't understand the roll farms play in your life. There's no prestige in ignorance.
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But "oh no, I never went hunting or worked on a farm"... who cares?
Pay attention and you'd know the answer to your question.
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I think I am better off because of that. My cousins, who DID grow up on a farm and went hunting all the time, don't have nearly the kind of skills that I do.
Nor do you have their skills.
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Originally Posted by mainebrokerman
good post mainewriter- and she , walks the walk,,,has taught more hands on skills than most of us!
Thanks.
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Originally Posted by arctichomesteader
People who spend too much time in cities become too detached from the realities of life.
I read a comment on Facebook this week from a clueless woman. She said there's no reason to hunt now that we can buy meat in grocery stores. Obviously we hunt for the thrill of the kill according to the woman on her high horse. I compared my thrill of the kill (accomplishment yes, thrill to kill, not even close) to her thrill of causing animals to live horrible lives on factory farms. She had no idea how the meat she's buying is raised. Not a clue. Shameful.
And? Why does working on a farm or driving a tractor matter in today's world? You equate those things with "meaning" because that is what gave you skills to do work as an adult, probably also on a farm, or in a factory. But guess what kids are doing while they are seemingly "playing" on computers all the time; they are acquiring skills that are relevant to the modern world. They are not only "playing" games, they are learning to do things that companies are actually paying people to do as adults.
You might think your granddaughter is wasting all her time chatting with her friends on the computer, but when she is able to type over 100 words per minute and will be able to put on her resume that she is "an expert" with just about every kind of social media, she'll have a pretty good chance of getting a nice well paying job when she's older. Or when your grandson seems to be spending all day "playing" some computer game he might actually be working with friends to create a "mod" for it and, in the process, learning how to code, troubleshoot, and work with team members so that when he grows up he'll be a sought after computer programmer.
I spent a good bit of time playing around on computers while I was growing up in the 90s. I created my first website when I was in 6th grade and I spent plenty of time modding some of my favorite games like Quake and Civilization while I was in high school. Guess where that led me? To a computer science degree from a prestigious college and a high paying career that takes little to no physical toll on me.
But "oh no, I never went hunting or worked on a farm"... who cares? I think I am better off because of that. My cousins, who DID grow up on a farm and went hunting all the time, don't have nearly the kind of skills that I do. Heck, their parents wouldn't even let them have a computer in the house, they were expected to "play outside all the time". Now they are the ones struggling, with low paying, physically demanding jobs. Maybe if they had been exposed to more computer stuff when they were younger, they'd have better job prospects today. Actually, I know they would.
Well, more power to you, but I don't think things are as good as you think they are.
I too was once a code writer - in the 1980s. 'Worked for a major Massachusetts computer maker. Made good money too, but now I work with at risk kids at a residential school in MA while working to restore a farm house on 55 acres in Aroostook.
The world you live in - the one I used to live in too - that world is in much danger. Sure, it works for now in Boston, and Portland too I suppose, but when only a very few can do any practical art, grow food or provide shelter, when an entire metro area is full of hyper specialists that can do only one abstract activity to be turned into cash to be traded for life necessities, then eventually there will be problems as you are only as good as the dollars in your (electronic) bank account and only as long as the power stays on. I think we are facing really tough times as the continued shrinkage in this society's cheap energy and other resource supplies makes the continued smooth functioning of this economy very suspect. Space does not allow me to go into details here, as I am on just a phone tonight, but though it looks like the coders and their city metro areas have it very good relative to the rural, hands-on folks, I think there is reason to be very concerned.
For now, your world is functioning, despite its overall complexity and vulnerability, but complexity, excepting Nature's complexity, always eventually fails.
For that matter making good money doesn't prove the real value of a task either. I recall a few years ago when kids I knew tried to use 50 Cent's or Eminem's income to prove what those two were doing was better than what yours truly was doing. The only thing was, there I was helping those very kids get their life back on track after they barely survived their broken homes, while Marshall Mathers was shamelessly making millions making fun of his mother in front of the whole world.
<sarcasm>Yeah, dollars count for everything.</sarcasm>
Sitting in a cubicle at some mail stop in an office park on Rt. 128, day after day hour after hour, is physically demanding in its own way too. I now walk all day, lift things, make things, run with kids, fish with them, play athletics with them and I'm 51. I can even still outrun many of them. Your ideas of what is physically demanding, desirable and not, could stand some redefining.
Youth #1 has been told all his life that there is no opportunity, few jobs, no chance for advancement and he needs government to get by. He believes it. By age 22 he is living in an old trailer with his girlfriend who is on welfare.
Youth #2 arrives in our country from a refugee camp in Cambodia. His English skills are limited, but he works hard, takes night courses and by age 22 he has two jobs, owns a car and is buying his first home.
What's the difference? Youth #2 has been told all his life that America is the land of opportunity. If you work hard you will get ahead. It's true, but you have to DO IT. You have to work hard. Youth #1 won't do that. If he is fortunate enough to get an adult mentor who explains how the world actually works he can recover from 12 years of public education, but he needs to want to recover. It's like any 12 step program that helps people deal with alcohol, drugs, obesity or any other perversion. You can only recover if you make a decision to recover.
Or youth #1 has simply been taught who to use the system INSTEAD of trying. #2 well it depends on the land of opportunity speech he got. There are many "settlements" of of legal immigrants who come here to game the system. It has more to do with the acceptance or the non responsibility liberal way then anything else. We used to be a society that held responsibility in high regard. Now the youth is taught hey do whatever you want nothing is you're fault. Get knocked up at 16 not you're fault here is money for the rest of you're life. Say you are afraid of being in public not you're fault here is some SSDI. To fat here is some SSDI. and so on.
Sitting in a cubicle at some mail stop in an office park on Rt. 128, day after day hour after hour, is physically demanding in its own way too. I now walk all day, lift things, make things, run with kids, fish with them, play athletics with them and I'm 51. I can even still outrun many of them. Your ideas of what is physically demanding, desirable and not, could stand some redefining.
its all in the frame of reference...
i use to think any office job looked easy, certaiinly not physically demanding
i came from very humble beginnings, worked on a lobster boat, dug clams, worked on a farm, even worked in a slaughterhouse during and after high school, when working in a slaughterhouse, or on a farm, any office job looked easy.
my opinion has changed thru the years, thats why i respect most people in labor jobs-maybe they didnt have the opportunity to go to college,,,but at least they are working
That's what I'm finding. My guess is that many Baby Boomers are getting to an age where they are no longer "King of the Hill" and are becoming bitter that the world is no longer catering to their every whim and wish. Baby Boomers have enjoyed the most material wealth that any generation has and probably will enjoy in this country. While I absolutely agree that there are "issues' with the youngest adult generation........one cannot simply transfer their dated ideals as a solution for all of today's problems. Our society has changed over time......it didn't simply happen overnight. EVERYONE played a part in the world that exists today.
All that being said........it is troubling that many young people are losing touch with the outdoors and becoming couch potatoes. As far as finding work goes........the whole country is messed up in that regard. We shipped jobs overseas and it hurt Maine a lot. We don't have the type of economy or the trained /educated workers to simply replace those manufacturing jobs with high tech, medical, research, etc.
Probably true. I know that I have more material wealth than at any previous point in my life. How did I get it? Oh, I earned it. By the way, where can I get some of this "catering"? I think I've been missing out.
Not to mention they brought us such goodies as not one, not two, but THREE needless wars in the middle east, a near-economic collapse by allowing the banking industry to run with almost no oversight, as well as a stagnating economy by systematically shipping job overseas for the past 30 years. So while they continue suck us dry of what little social security and medicare solvency there is left in the system, we all get to listen to them complain that the generation that they raised are useless/shiftless/unmotivated.
Thanks for the mess boomers--the best thing you can do as a generation now is hurry up and die, and maybe the rest of us "young'uns" can work together to the mess you left behind.
As a boomer, I'm not quite ready to die yet, even though you want me to and I sure didn't leave any mess behind for youngsters to clean up.
However, I am offended that you have such a low opinion of older people. Not all of us caused these things to happen, actually only a very few boomers caused everything you are talking about.
I guess, since you want me to die, the best I can do is curl up in a little ball and wait for death to find me instead of living out the rest of my life in happiness and health. I am also appalled that the generation we gave birth to wants us to die.
As a boomer, I'm not quite ready to die yet, even though you want me to and I sure didn't leave any mess behind for youngsters to clean up.
However, I am offended that you have such a low opinion of older people. Not all of us caused these things to happen, actually only a very few boomers caused everything you are talking about.
I guess, since you want me to die, the best I can do is curl up in a little ball and wait for death to find me instead of living out the rest of my life in happiness and health. I am also appalled that the generation we gave birth to wants us to die.
and not all kids these days are worthless or "wussys", as defined by the out-of-touch geezers of this board.
But they are allowed to paint with a broad brush, why can't I? Because they are "old and therefore wise" [barf]
Here's a mind-blower for you...maybe age doesn't make you all as wise as society seems to assume it does.
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