No one knows how to do stuff anymore
Not "no one" but I can say with a real sense of seriousness that people are getting dumber and less capable of troubleshooting or even sorting out what years ago might be considered common knowledge situations. I realize this is a "get off my lawn" moment but I honestly believe that knowledge, on how to do stuff, being passed down from generation to generation, is behind us... and this is not a good thing at all.
I am not getting on anyone's case; I am one of the biggest offenders of this. I think that my generation might actually be the first ones that made this happen and if you are younger than me perhaps you are just "following the same path" i took.
I had (and still have) a father who knows how to do literally anything. I grew up with him refinishing basements, performing repairs on cars, completing complicated plumbing projects, installing and repairing irrigation systems, literally building a bridge (a small one, but a bridge nonetheless,) and installing ceiling fans and cabinets et al.
I know how to do almost none of these things.
I believe we have primarily Atari and then Nintendo to blame for this. It was the 80's and well i was at the age where I would likely learn some stuff about life and how to fix things by a combined membership in the Boy Scouts and the fact that there wasn't much else to do. Video games changed all of that. I am quite certain that I would absolutely clean the floor with him if I was against my father in almost any video game at all. But if we were both given a basement and a blank check to refinish it using only what we already know mine would be the one on the left and his would be the one on the right.
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When I speak to him about this he would tell me about how his elders knew so much more. They didn't have a Lowes or a Home Depot or even anyone to help them. They would arrive on a plot of land and find timber because it was growing there and build stuff out of it like barns and even houses. This isn't going back 200 years either, this is just the start of the 1900's and you really have to admire that.
No support, very little tools, no electricity (in most situations) and no hardware store for the most part to provide you with pre-cut, treated timber, and you build a house. I built a tree-house once when i was about 10 years old. By the time it was abandoned it was a few planks of 2 by 4 in a tree that was not on my property and I was likely trespassing, and my eyes swelled shut because the tree in question was covered with poison oak.
if i encountered this today i would likely try to crush it up into a mojito
What I am trying to say is that my generation and all the ones after it are construction and mechanical failures, with rare exceptions. All I can say is that I certainly hope that everyone out there (like myself) that somehow managed to have a father that knew how to do EVERYTHING and yet you managed to take away almost none of that knowledge.... i certainly hope that this tech-oriented job works out for you (me), because we are seriously f**ked if it doesn't.
I think that a lot of Generation X kids like me were left to fend for ourselves. We ran the streets all day and night with no supervision. A lot of us got so pissed off at our lack of parenting that we got all angsty and declared "My kids will never have to go through this shit."
So what was our response? We created Millennials. I'm not talking about the ones who are perfectly normal functioning adults, but a particular subset that emerged from the jaded rage of a pissed off neglected Gen Xer constituency. The ones who seem to write all of the relationship story lines in DC Comics shows. They coddled a whole generation and turned them into anti-everything entitled assholes who can no see subtlety or grey area.
I totally saw it coming, though. The real scary thing is that there are very few people who really understand all of the technology that we take advantage of daily.
I remember a 55 year old guy that I met in college who worked on the the old ENIAC computer for the government. He was a genius, but was totally stressed out about this programming class that we were taking. I was a young kid, about 22 and I was confused as to why he was so stressed. I mean, this guy knew computers inside and out down to the logic gates. We were just learning to program the things.
Of course, he was fine by the end of the course - in fact, way more rounded than us. After all, he was retired and had just decided to come back and take some classes.
Fast forward to now. 9 out of 10 programmer that I meet have little to no understanding of how a computer works. But boy do they think that they are geniuses. I suppose that this is the natural progression of technology. In order to continue to advance, we have to build off of the old tech. It would be impossible to go back and learn the fundamentals at some point.
There will come a time in the near future that one person will not be able to understand even the most simple computing device. That's when the robots and machine learning devices will take over! :)
Everyone has their skill set. My grandfather was that guy who built his house from the ground up, though his cousin owned the lumberyard so at least he didn't have to do it from trees.
My dad, on the other hand, is the least handy person in the world, but he's great with humans. Want to build a community, he's your guy, but if you need a pipe fixed you'd better call somebody, or have my mom try to do it.
So I never learned to do anything on that front as a kid, but by the time I was 16 I could do anything you pleased with a computer. And I've been learning more mechanical things as an adult. I put hardwood floors into my studio, terribly, but learned some things from it. I can build furniture, weld steel, and set type. Still no good with cars, but I'm ok with that.
I'm half-tempted by the idea of buying a bit of land on the North Shore of Lake Superior and building a house on it. I know very little about how to do that now, but I could learn.
not being able to work on cars might be a product of how cars are made now. It is more computer than engine these days.
Why did you make me feel bad? Could it be because I had a grandmother who sewed and knitted and everything was perfect for her? Because my mom never needed recipes to make a delicious cake, nor a calculator to calculate math? I agree with you, somewhere in life we leave our backpack of skills knowing that there are devices that do things for us. Too bad, surely there will be a time we need to think and it will be difficult, and another will do it for us. Greetings
Bro I feel exactly the same, I am “fairly” handy, compared to most of my friends, but compared to my parents generation it’s not even close. My dad had built extensions onto or old house with his dad, renovated houses, fixed garages, fences, bathrooms, cars etcetc,.. it’s a skill that I never managed to grasp as well and it’s due to to many distractions! I am almost 30, but millennials I feel have wayyy less “hands on” skills than ever. Some crazy times are ahead!
Also, today (and that past 15-20 years) having a trade job isn’t encouraged. It’s basically, if you fail at school you go and learn a trade. It shouldn’t be like that! Imagine if it was just as recognised as a mechanical engineering role (my career) then we would have a massive range of tradies! I would have loved to use my hands, but was told silly things at school like “you can do maths so don’t become a builder” for example... strange times!
yeah and in the meantime the "losers" that I grew up with that went into trades made bank and are much happier with their lives than most of the people trapped in a cubicle 5 days a week!
Yep exactly! Some of the school “dropouts” who didn’t even pass their exams are making bank now, and if they had a bit of smarts to them they have their own business and are sitting back in their house making money!
Resteem. What you say is totally true, and there are many people who think that way.
In the past
Later
More later
lol, great photo montage :)
Same sentiments, bro. I always post something like this in FB to let the boys know who the real men are. All the boys in my FB newsfeed ever do is whine about their looks, post selfies, and wonder why the girls don't notice them.
I was born in 1970 into a military, artistic, and STEM-oriented family. Grandpa Joe was an Army infantryman in WW2 who became a mechanical engineer after the war. He was a big fan of MacGyver, and being such a person himself, he expected his sons and grandsons to be "MacGyvers" too.
Reading this made me feel like consolidating all those posts into one blog entry. And I'm sure it might ruffle a lot of feathers, if presented in their original flavors. I guess I'll have to put the kid gloves back on for it.
if you do post any of them on Steemit, be sure to tag me as I would love to read them.
Sure, no problem. I guess I'll just create an appropriate context for them in whatever I'm writing, that would warrant their inclusion in it.
This is all too true, but fortunately necessity is the mother of invention and also the mother of "figure it out or die trying". I've learned quite a bit this way and will go on doing so. Luckily the internet makes that a lot easier than before but I think people would generally get their barns built if they had to. Or at least someone in the village would and they would be really popular ;)
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We are spoiled by a modern and convenient life whereby money can solve practical problems! I found people in the countryside, especially the older generation,are very amazing handy men. They could build their own houses. I have seen a villager building a big duck pen in one day! These are people with about six years at school!
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Super duper post by @gooddream.....people just need to be talent, if there is talent then there is no need for anything else. Talent tells you everything, what do you have to do next ? whether you have support or a not, i believe this. the way that their generation runs, the upcoming generation will also run in the same way. and the skill is in everyone, just need to find out. just have to trust yourself.