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You Are Old, Father William

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Re: You Are Old, Father William

#11

Post by Jun8 »

galonk wrote: post #7

You don’t get to freely acknowledge counter-examples and then magically say they “prove the rule” as if they don’t contradict your argument. THAT’S NOT WHAT THAT MEANS. And it’s quite all right for me to respect the elderly in general while acknowledging the baby boomers didn’t heed environmental collapse, stole all they money from future generations, raised their cost of living/education while keeping their wages st…

I thought about the same thing when I read that part. The formula "exception proves the rule" is generally misused (people not knowing that it's based on the archaic usage of prove which was "to test") in daily usage but this author, who is listed as a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books, making this mistake seems less likely.

Interestingly, Wikipedia has an in-depth article on the usage of this phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule. It's stated that this phrase is derived from a legal principle of republican Rome: exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis ("the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted").

So, in this sense, the fact that books with old protagonists are rarely bestsellers proves the "rule" that the author stated.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#12

Post by lazyasciiart »

Jun8 wrote: post #11
galonk wrote: post #7

You don’t get to freely acknowledge counter-examples and then magically say they “prove the rule” as if they don’t contradict your argument. THAT’S NOT WHAT THAT MEANS. And it’s quite all right for me to respect the elderly in general while acknowledging the baby boomers didn’t heed environmental collapse, stole all they money from future generations, raised their cost of living/education while keeping their wages st…

I thought about the same thing when I read that part. The formula "exception proves the rule" is generally misused (people not knowing that it's based on the archaic usage of prove which was "to test") in daily usage but this author, who is listed as a contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books, making this mistake seems less likely. Interestingly, Wikipedia has an in-depth article on the usage of this phr…

It's not "generally misused", it has acquired another and now more common usage. Anyone with a strong command of the English language would know that usage and would know that the original usage now reads as incorrect to most people, so it's either an accident or a deliberate miscommunication to use it.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#13

Post by goodcanadian »

I'm trying to avoid the "middle brow dismissal," but I'm not sure the point of this article. OK, you are sick of your generation being painted with an overly broad and negative brush. Well, right back at you.

I think, perhaps, we could call a truce on the generational warfare.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#14

Post by brundolf »

It's true that our culture overvalues youth. There have been articles on HN about people over forty struggling to get a programming job. In central Austin it's rare to see anyone over fifty, even at the grocery store. It was jarring when I moved further out and realized how much diversity hadn't existed where I was before.

The politicians and business leaders of that generation may have caused lots of problems, but I don't think it's fair to blame the average "oldster" for those things. There's value to having a range of perspectives and it's very alien, and probably detrimental, the way our culture has seemingly just swept them out of sight like spectral reflections of our own mortality.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#15

Post by [deleted] »

nkurz wrote: post #2

It's odd that the article didn't just reproduce the (short) poem. Was he worried about being sued for copyright on an 1865 work? And why not at least link directly to the poem rather than giving an affiliate Amazon link? In any case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your h…

[deleted]

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#16

Post by uxp100 »

I feel like part of the problem is that “boomer” culture remains ubiquitous, but hasn’t aged along side the actual people.

So people are still excited about, say, the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead (not that the living members themselves are boomers, maybe a touch old for that description), but the promotional images might be from 1978, not even 1995, or today. So the echoes of this energetic youth culture remain youthful as the people themselves age.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#17

Post by exelius »

coldtea wrote: post #8
exelius wrote: post #4

I mean, excuse me for wanting to dismantle social security because I’ll never see a dime from it.

That's exactly why we can't have nice things... How about improving it instead of dismantling it?

This is exactly the kind of centrist bullshit that caused the mess we’re in.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#18

Post by ebiester »

My primary critique of this article is that it sets up a strawman in the first sentence to tear down.

> Everyone who writes about aging “Boomers”—how “they” have ruined “our” society, and so on, ad nauseum—should be required to memorize Lewis Carroll’s “You Are Old, Father William” (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and recite it aloud before an audience of men and women age seventy or older.

There are proper arguments to show how the Boomers were a significant part of dismantling many of the governmental programs and social structures that they themselves benefited from, and then blamed the subsequent generations (GenX, Millennial) for struggling. The key pieces are the comparative cost of housing and education compared to the aforementioned generations, the removal of pensions, and the devolution of health care. While these were set into motion by the generation before them (Reagan, Bush), they were unwilling to put political pressure to change its course.

None of this has to do with dismissing the life experience of the Boomer generation, but rather the simple acknowledgement that their political and social policies didn't work, and it's time to fix that.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#19

Post by Maken »

exelius wrote: post #10
astazangasta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that this is why you wont see a dime from it, right? Because you think you shoild dismantle it? There is no other problem with social security other than people who want to kill it. Its funded by a fucking payroll tax. It isn't going anywhere.

For better or worse, our economy is based on utter selfishness.

The you will surely understand that others take money away from you while they can.

Re: You Are Old, Father William

#20

Post by archgoon »

coldtea wrote: post #6
b_tterc_p wrote: post #3

> Where are the lists of “Hot New Writers Over 70”? Because most people who want to write will have done so before 70, and a large chunk of them just want to watch TV (or rather, have nothing better to do in their minds, which is sad). > Why do so few of the expensive, risible fashion ads in the New York Times Magazine and its equivalent at the Wall Street Journal feature oldsters? I don’t think this is true for many…

> Because most people who want to write will have done so before 70, and a large chunk of them just want to watch TV (or rather, have nothing better to do in their minds, which is sad). Still doesn't answer the question. Just means those that do want to write over 70 are fewer (and they could be writing for decades before too, it's not about writing only after 70, but about becoming a new published writer after 70, o…

If they've been writing for decades they aren't 'hot new writers' over 70.
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