YOU criticise our generation, SOMEHOW you forget who raised US?
 

I found a group like this on facebook and instantly agreed but I wanted to make a discussion so I created this thread.
I just find it irritating...and heres something else for you guys to discuss beside all this world cup stuff and all.

this is really just a nature vs. nurture argument.
I don't believe that how someone behaves reflects their parent's parenting.

It also ties in a general resistance to change that comes as one ages and settles into a particular world view. People don't like it when "the way we've always done it" is challenged.

People are ultimately responsible for their own actions. However, every generation believes the one after is hopeless, stupid, and ridiculous. It's been thought since people have had children.

I've found even young adults look down on the kids half a step of a generation down from them. I think partially it goes down to the fact that as you age you learn more, and as you find yourself being more mature you look down on people who are now the age you were once and realise that they don't really know anything at all.

I personally realise now that I didn't know anything at sixteen, even though I thought I did. I guess in five years I'll be looking back realising I didn't really know anything at eighteen, either. It's a constant learning curve.

Adults are just jealous. =D

Seriously though, I don't think older generations are really thoroughly examining issues when they're criticizing. It's mostly a combination of what Keyori said, the four word sentence above, and some good old-fashioned knee-jerk reacting.

That's not how it works. We are not all robots, programmed by our parents to do whatever they wish and be however they want us to be. We have minds. We have wills. We can think for ourselves. And it's not all their faults if we grow-up messed up.

If the world didn't work this way then people who had bad childhoods and abusive parents would have to be taken to a colony away from the rest of us as rejects of society. They were raised wrong, so they can not function properly. Yes, the way you are raised affects how you grow up, but it doesn't dictate it. People who grow-up from bad, abusive backgrounds still have a chance of being successful, healthy, normal adults.

Part of the problem isn't bad parenting, it's that EVERY generation grows up with something their parents didn't have, and that affects them strongly. For instance, I've been using computers since before I could walk; my mother still hasn't mastered the fine art of pressing the on/off button. Thus, part of the problem isn't really a problem at all - it's simply that the progression of society and technology makes it more difficult for one generation to communicate with the next.

Although, some of the problem, in some cases, most certainly is bad parenting - as things take over and make life more convenient for each generation, people get lazy. Many parents I see today are far lazier than those in previous generations, or even parents I saw 10 years ago - though that could easily just be where I live. People are growing more and more used to having gadgets do everything for them.
Me, I love my gadgets, but I realize I still have to work to achieve things and always will. It sickens me when I see parents who use the library where I work as a babysitting service because they're too lazy to watch their own kids. Unsurprisingly, the kids I unofficially babysit are walking nightmares.
Frighteningly, virtual reality is expected within the decade. I look forward to it - but I'm terrified of the effect it will have on people who are already lazy out of being too used to technological convenience.

There's also the fact that as you age, you learn more - and forget you were ever as naive as the generation below you. After all, it's a fairly normal teenager thing to screw yourself over royally; always has been, always will be, and yet most people survive it...though not everyone remembers every detail.

As others have identified, it is an oversimplification to assert that parents are directly responsible for the socialization of their off spring. While our realities are cultural constructions which result from the symbolic values and meanings which we socially acquire, there are many avenues through which these meanings are acquired. Indeed from this I would argue that our actions and thoughts are very heavily determined by our culture, as demonstrated by this quote from Boas.

However like it asserts, there is not a singular source which symbolic values and meanings come from. Indeed even if we take a largely isolated, or as close as we can get, homogeneous society we still find countless factors playing a role which unsurprisingly leads to a variety of personality types. When we take a multicultural society with numerous cultural and world views present, it only becomes that much more difficult. Furthermore a person does not become socialized then suddenly stop. As culture is NOT constant, but exists in a constant state of flux. Indeed Claude Levi-Strauss asserted that all thought is situational. That is it is relative to the environment it exists within.

I'm 36 must be a rare one because I don't feel that way about the generation after me at all. I feel if anything that they are more likely to succeed due to the increased tools they have such as the internet.

I disagree utterly, but okay. Do you think that parenting is not reflected at all by children?

@Tuomas I'm going to have to disagree, too. In a home where any kind of parental figure is present for a growing child, there's going to be an influence. This is because it is a known fact that children learn what's right and wrong by watching and listening to the people around them. Monkey see, monkey do. XD

I think maybe Tuomas was meaning that it is not necessarily a reflection (our parents' influence can sometimes be escaped) and not a complete one, as in, your behaviour as a whole cannot always be blamed on your parents. If that's the case, I would have to agree. My parents are/were very violent, both physically and verbally, my father is racist, and my mother was somewhat homophobic. They were both exceptionally conservative, and their morals supported that. My morality is completely different. My father still stops talking to me for days at a time over my opinions on certain things. So, while certainly some are unable to resist their parents' influence and I do still have a few lingering effects, I don't think we can necessarily blame how we are on our parents. Indeed, I think it's somewhat lazy to do so, as it pushes the responsibility for change and thus the blame when we fail to improve things to someone other than ourselves.

Of course, that's true too. There are other factors to be taken into account. I was speaking in a general sense, as my personal morality is also very different to my family's. Like, for example, they believe in standing up for themselves, whereas I believe in standing up for what's right.

It's not right to BLAME how you are on your parents, because ultimately a person is responsible for his or her own actions. However, in most cases they DO have a lingering influence on your morals and behaviour. That's just how it is, don't you think?

I was personally pushing the idea that nature vs. nurture is a silly argument since they both have a very strong influence on people. I disagreed utterly because he rejected parental influence which I think is a part of it all.

Indeed, I think it is the total rejection of parental influence we were both disagreeing with.

I think along the same terms you do, but don't state it as if it were a factual thing. State it as if everyone here wasn't going to agree with you because honestly psychologists have struggled with the whole nature versus nurture problem for a very long time, arguing over how much of an effect each one has on us and we haven't come to a definitive conclusion yet that all intellectuals agree with one another upon.

Although the problem with your approach here is that it neglects to address the vast library of anthropological field research and cross cultural studies which clearly demonstrates that reality itself is a cultural construction comprised of the symbolic meanings and values our culture assigns to ourselves and the world around us. After all the very way we understand and interact with the world around us is to a large extend determined by the symbolic meanings and values we have to work with. This is far from being up for debate, as the most basic of cross cultural studies verifies that this is the case. Although as I mentioned in an earlier post, the factors which contribute to these symbolic meanings and values are so complex and varied, it becomes extremely difficult to pinpoint them.

Soooo.... nature vs nurture who knows.

As I just argued that it is nurture, I am not sure what you are trying to establish. My only guess is you are either trying to annoy me, or you misunderstood my post. As I suspect it was a fault in my communication, I will quote Gerald Berreman at length. Hopefully this clarifies any misunderstandings.

In my opinion, all that was talking about was the way we communicate and people within a culture relate to one another. It talks nothing about parenting or why certain people turn out differently than others in the world. It's not that complicated. It's kind of like,"DUH!" actually. Our culture and the way we communicate all have meaning and that meaning was given to us by the people around us. We communicate with them and have certain manners because we find them meaningful and were taught to be that way. Yes, this is obvious and why we often can't relate to other cultures because we don't understand the meanings behind their words and mannerisms.

The nature versus nurture argument is not about anthropology or social structures as a whole. It's related to psychology, which focuses on the individual, not society as a whole.

Besides, let's say your right about the interpretation of this man's words. Does that mean all other intellectuals among psychology agree with him? They do not.

In fact, try googling "Nature versus Nurture", the first two suggestions google gives you to add onto it is "debate" and "controversy", which you are claiming there is no debate or controversy over it, so those shouldn't be there. You are claiming that because this one guy says this that obviously he is factually right and that no one would even think about arguing with him ever. That is untrue.

You did quote my post and that's why you quoted it, to claim that there was no possibly debate over this issue and that the solution was very obvious.

I feel like I have to step in here before Red has the chance to jump down your throat, because that is definitely NOT what he was implying at all. Just quoting Berreman doesn't imply that he believes his argument is the be-all and and-all of this debate. He originally presented an argument which was very much his own and very on the subject of the debate, if you read back a couple of posts. However, as it seems that people didn't get this he then went on to quote from a scholar, as it may have helped to clarify his point. The scholar's work may not have been directly related to this issue, but he was just using it to back up a point he originally made. In no way is he suggesting that this man is the ultimate authority, or even that it is hard to find flaws in his argument. He simply gave the man's opinion, and the opinion of an intellectual is inherently valuable to any debate.


From the content of the first half of your post, I think it's safe to say that that's actually why YOU'RE posting, not Red.

^ No, this is why I posted all these posts . . . . . I said it already:

I don't like it when people don't defend their opinions thoroughly in debates just because no one is actually arguing against them. I want to read opinions in debates that will educate me and help me understand better why certain beliefs are embraced. I was trying to encourage Hermes to go deeper into his opinion and the reasons why he believed it.

@ET As you can see...



...I was specifically referring to the content of the first half of your post previous to mine. I stated that it seemed the point of that part of your post seemed to be to give an inflexible view on this argument which rejects cultural influences (whilst simultaneously requiring the broad term of 'cultural influences' - nice contradiction)...



...and this was in fact exactly what you were criticising Red for. You gave an inflexible opinion with nothing to back it up, and seemed to suggest that people should just believe it outright. By your own standards, this isn't the "proper" way to debate.

Red, on the other hand, used the opinion of a certified intellectual to back up his own opinion. I see no such references anywhere in your posts, and yet you seem to consider yourself the superior debater. I would suggest that you refrain from directly criticising others, and instead concentrate on the issue at hand.