Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

To @JohnBoy @48Packard and @RebelChick comments ill add some perspective. After 9 years of police work dealing with all kinds of people, 2 of those doing extensive background investigations and panel interview prep on police officer applicants, i think i can add a lil bit.

*note: these are generalizations based on my experiences.**

Parents of kids born in the late 80s onward did an excellent job of protecting their kids from difficulty and failure by making their lives easy, fixing their problems, meeting their every want and whim, making them feel 'special' and generally being their friend instead of their parent. Schools, the media, and modern technology have not helped this.

We have ended up with a group of people who dont know how to deal with a hard task, be self sufficient, make a decision, deal with 'losing', be a team player, and do things w/o technology.

They are also extremely entitled, impatient, and unable to take responsibilty for when things go wrong.

I was always amazed when i had domestics between adults and their children living at home (both teens and adults) No one ever liked my advice to evict the adult kid from the house and let tough love and real life teach some lessons, that was just to harsh. Or to just make life miserable.for the teen.

The future of America is a dark scary place, and im not just talking about the state of legislatures and heads of govt and politics in general.

 

Same. There's nobody I want to spend 24 hours a day with in a 6' x 6' box.

 

Ditto. The simple yet ugly truth. The scary part, if ever, it will take generations to turn around again.

 

Definitely seeing it in the rookies we get in the fire station as well. Seemed to be blind sided about what the job entails and the fact there are consequences to our mistakes.

 

When I was in HR at entry testing we played a 10 minute video showing the 'bootcamp' nature of our training. We would have the training staff talk about it. Detectives would talk about it all through the months long hiring process, and still people would leave claiming they didnt know what it was going to be like. Or people leaving after a few months after training was complete because they were homesick for upstate ny.

My favorite was when people would leave out important information on their background packet. Its not like i spent 30 minutes going over every line in the 40 page packet that was on the projector behind me.

 

460/580 has hit the nail on the head and I can say that I am guilty of some of those very things when it comes to my son. It took me some time to just let him do his thing. I have backed way off in the last 6 years and have told him that while I am always there for him, I will not "make it all ok." A lot of my overcompensating was due to my own issues as a kid, his dad not being there, and his educational issues. Once I realized that it wasn't helping him to rescue him from everything, our relationship actually got better and he finally grew up. Now if I could just get his dad to see that he's not 12 anymore...

 

Further down the rabbit hole we go....

Nothing happens in a vacuum and one event from the 80s had a huge impact in this area that was a huge change between generations that are in the work force today. That event is the adoption and use of the personal computer and all of the inovations that came about from computing power. Just like fire, the printing press, mechanical engines etc.

Looking at 'western civilization' If you go back 100s of years there were less total people, spending more time working to create all of the things society needs and wants. Which lead to less free time for boredom, leisure, and general mischief. As time went on there were more total people, spending less time to create all the things society needs and wants. Which lead to more free time for boredom, leisure, and general mischief.

Innovation, progress, automation, and the number of people vs useful productive work has also led to a lot of the issues we see today i think.

 

You cannot forget the eroding traditions and spirituality either.

 

It's not all doom and gloom for the younger generation. All the time I see people driving trucks that can't be more than 25 years old. I have no clue how well they are doing but the point is they are out here doing it. I know I wouldn't have had it in me to hit the open road in my early 20s and I was far from an entitled brat having grown up in essentially a 3rd world country in the 70s.

I can't help but be impressed by some of those youngsters.