It’s usually kind of a U with the top sections being comprised of very young and very old people with the kind of limited intelligence and suicidal bravery to not believe that their actions have consequences, and then generally mellowed out, moderately reasonable, people in the middle. YMMV though.
Some get better, some get worse. You really can’t generalize this. A friend of mine used to say that “we have to ditch the wise elder, because some people accumulate stupidity with age instead of wisdom”
For years now I've responded to anybody saying we should "respect our elders" by saying "they just don't make elders like they used to."
It was easy to be old and wise when the world only changed on a scale of centuries. Now it's easy to see large cultural changes every decade or less; the wisdom of somebody who came of age in the 1950s is of no value today if they've learned nothing else since.
In my experience, old age only amplifies person’s traits - if you were nice, you are going to be extra nice because of all the stress leaving your day to day. If you were a cunt, you are going to be extra cunty because now you will be blaming people left and right for all the errors in your life. That’s my experience though.
Some great comments below, but i also wanted to add that i think it depends on how open and honest one is. For example, it happens quite frequently that i change my view on something, because someone (usually one of my adult kids) points out certain things that i didn’t know or thought about. And then i can just apologize and tell them they are right. It keeps me humble and open to other viewpoints or scientific facts that i didn’t know or consider. If someone just kindly points something out to me, that makes it easy to apologize. But if people are hostile and tell you you’re wrong in an aggressive way, then it would be pretty hard to admit you hadn’t thought of that.
But from what i see, there are a lot of people who just don’t want to seem dumb, or are extremely set in their ways, and they will never admit that they were wrong or that there are different ways to see or understand something. Rather, they become angry, or grumble, or change the subject.
Add to this, I don’t know how far back but the Boomers, Silent and Greatest Gen all were brought up on a strict “respect your elders” mindset which by the time it got to the boomers is “I am Older therefore always right by default and how DARE you try to correct me!!”
This is also why world governments especially USA is full of geriatrics because old people don’t vote for anyone younger than them (if there is a choice) because they don’t want a goddamn whippersnapper telling them what to do. The most stubborn kind of old person that is.
And man, they got pissed when the rest of us collectively learned that just being Old doesn’t mean shit. The boomers had to bend the knee HARD to their parents authority or they get insta slapped. So they expect, or demand their kids/young people in general treat them the same as it’s their Turn now.
But instead we learned they can be wrong and being Old doesn’t mean infallible. And they hates it… BIG MAD they are!. They cope and seethe and mald all over the internet and at the polls. We are literally living in a Baby Boomer tantrum cuz young people will not “respect” them as they were forced to do their parents. Yeah just growing old doesn’t mean shit you gotta back that with experience now. Like Nazis whom only thing to be proud of is being Pale.
I’m not that young myself anymore, and i definitely recognize my very strict upbringing you mentioned, but in my view respect needs to be earned. And not once, but over and over again because people change. Seeing most political leaders being very old white men makes me cringe. They often just don’t understand the modern world. Just an example; they make decisions about cybersecurity while i’m convinced they don’t know the first thing about it. They probably rely heavily on their advisors and just echo what they say would be best.
deeper than that. a lot of people's entire identity/value gets wrapped up in patently false beliefs. and being wrong about that means they are wrong as a person.
that is why so many yahoos have this 'or die' dedication to complete nonsensical beliefs and become violent when those beliefs are challenged.
Yes, definitely. Another thing that comes to mind, reading your reply, is that people surround themselves with like minded people. That can be a good thing, or very bad.
You always have a choice. Just stay informed, surround yourself with wholesome people, and be willing to change your views if needed. I don’t think you become a certain way just because you age.
I would sure hope so. If I look at myself (since that's where I have context) I'd say yes. I think a lot of the shittiness in people's personalities stems from trying to meet their needs (some of them unreasonable) and competing with everyone else to get them. That's a very me versus you mentality which leads to aggression and forms bad personality traits.
I'd like to say that everyone begins to understand wants versus needs after a few decades, and settles down into a pattern of contentment rather than resentment.
No person should be deprived of shelter food and health care. And people are rightfully angry when their governments don’t provide the bare necessities to people in need.
People are individuals, all going through their own journeys. You might grow and change for the better if you're able to figure out how to be the best you, or you might change for the worse if made bitter by a life where it feels like no one is on your side and you have to take your due since it will never be given.
The important thing is: (1) People are twats for a reason, and (2) You can't fix those reasons for other people and make them less twatty, so the only thing you can control is how you handle less than ideal interactions. (Tip: most well-adjusted people don't jump to "lose hope in humanity"; the fact that you have means there's work you can do here.)
Everyone has a bad day now and then. It sounds like a lot is eating at you. You might be dealing with more than your fair share people who haven't gotten the help they need to learn why they're twats and how it hurts them and everyone around them. I know I was a worse person until I figured out how I got the way I was a few years ago; it took me til the back half of the 30s to start to be better.
Not necessarily. The opposite might happen as people age but never deal with their real problems. Then the problems grow and they become even twatier than before. If anything, kids are the nicest until about 5th grade which is when they learn how to be assholes from adults around them.
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