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by gchamonlive 1989 days ago
I watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society.

It could also be a matter of language, and words can't convey the elders experiences as effectively as it could in simples times, where symbols did not need to account for vastly different experiences. So when someone says "I don't regret working hard" in the context of a village, where hard work is essencial, It could mean something else completely to someone who grew up with absent parents, who devoted their lives to work and didn't pay attention their children. And theses discrepancies permeates the entirety of the discourse.

To rescue the value of elderly advice I suggest more context is needed, at least more than a 4 minutes video could possibly convey.

2 comments

Yes, elders thoughts are valuable, but only if they come out in the interview. A more useful context than not being dead might come from questions with the potential to elevate, like these from David Brooks [1]:

What crossroads are you at? What commitments have you made that you no longer believe in? Who do you feel most grateful to have in your life? What problem did you use to have but now have licked? In what ways are you sliding backward? What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/opinion/nine-nonobvious-w...

Before asking those questions I think we still need more context, because you can't assume mutual understanding of what the symbols in the answers might mean from the elders and the listeners perspectives.

My central hypothesis here is that globalization and the high longevity we can achieve nowadays takes a toll on the quality of the understating of what's being told by the elders. Where once not too long ago we mainly heard from elders directly available, in the village, city or country, now we have access to more people but we don't share similar cultural backgrounds as before. And to overcome this, a little immersion in the cultural context of that elder is necessary even before posing these questions.

>I watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society.

I think we've combined "youth-centric" with "faux-young" (aka immaturity), where 40-year olds are "excited" about the latest superhero movie and 50 year olds act like teenagers...

If you're unable to muster excitement for things you love purely because of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you.
>If you're unable to muster excitement for things you love purely because of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you.

That's putting the cart before the horse.

Rather you should love things that fit your age and cognitive and culture development. I'd loved ice cream for breakfast and sunday morning cartoons too at 8. I'd have an infantilism problem if I still loved them at 40.

If you still watch teletubbies at 40 and are excited desipite of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you.

Slightly less so if you are genuinely excited about superheror movies, but still sorry.