[ajkjk]

I guess this is kinda judgmental on my part, but I feel like a lot of the personal anecdotes you hear about from.. older Americans.. seem totally anachronistic and bizarre. Like:

> On the other hand, I have a cousin, a doctor, who feels humiliated if he’s shortchanged in a grocery store. His wife, too: if another woman is wearing the same dress at a party, she feels humiliated.

Like -- who are these people? They just _suck_. They need to get over themselves. I'm sure there are new people like this still coming of age, but probably not at the rate they used to... These sound like very 'boomer' problems, and I think a larger part of millennial culture is collectively rolling our eyes at this brand of arrogance. All over the country younger people grew up with parents and grandparents who were more concerned about pettily defending their pride than being good parents or doing good in the world, and understandably their children grow up with nothing but contempt for it.

[hairofadog]

Everyone grew up conditioned by a different context, and every generation has their idiosyncrasies. I'm sure millennials and gen-z folks have things that are humiliating to them which older folks would roll their eyes at (say, something that happens on Twitter or in a video game). I'm not meaning to criticize you; just saying it's good to remember that each person has their own story shaped by the environments they spent time in.

[elefanten]

I'm a millenial and as I read this, I got a strong visceral feeling like the one you're describing but about you. Not you personally, but the narrative you just posted.

Do you really feel confident that millenials don't have any culturally systematic pettiness and arrogance? The social media generation, the neurotic depressed generation, the generation that has originated no novel politics... they are categorically more serious and more humble than the previous couple generations?

The minute details you point to seem essentially irrelevant, exactly the kind of thing that varies generation to generation as culture changes -- anachronistic, as you say.

[ajkjk]

Oh, I'm sure millennials (as a generalization) have their own new varieties of petty pride. Just, the particular brand described the article feels like its age has passed and I'm glad for it.

[mcguire]

Petty prides are petty prides.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Some people are very self-conscious. As a doctor, he recognizes the amount of change is minuscule, the effort expended to point it out is barely worth it, the clerk may have done unintentionally, because schools suck and this is the best the market could get at the wage they are willing to offer.. all sorts of reasons not make a big deal.

But.. deep down, internal scales are off. Because it is not about the money. It is about balance. it is about principles. It is about getting what I am god damn paying for, which includes courtesy of getting the right change.

It is insignificant in the long run, but it isn't completely without merit.

[7402]

This does bring up the general question of who is sensitive or insensitive to humiliation.

I am reminded of something Michael O. Church wrote a few years ago [0] in connection with agile/scrum and the issue of intense observation of an employee's work process:

"Another topic coming to mind here is status sensitivity. Programmers love to make-believe that they’ve transcended a few million years of primate evolution related to social status, but the fact is: social status matters, and you’re not “political” if you acknowledge the fact. Older people, women, racial minorities, and people with disabilities tend to be status sensitive in the workplace, because it’s a matter of survival for them. Constant surveillance into one’s work indicates a lack of trust and low social status, and the most status-sensitive people (even if they’re the best workers) are the first ones to decline when surveillance ramps up. If they feel like they aren’t trusted (and what else is communicated by a culture that expects every item of work to be justified?) then they lose motivation quickly.

Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.

The violent transparency culture is designed for the most status-insensitive people: young, usually white or Asian, privileged, never-disabled males who haven’t been tested, challenged, or burned yet at work. It’s for people who think that HR and management are a waste of time and that people should just “suck it up” when demeaned or insulted."

[0] https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-an...

[Zababa]

> Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.

That's an interesting take on agile culture, thanks for sharing it.

[Applejinx]

What a truly invalidating and humiliating take! Clearly you need to be warred upon for a thousand years for this unforgivable slight :D

As it happens I agree with you here, at least personally, and here is why: humiliation is an EMOTIONAL feeling and you cannot assume it is justifiable. Narcissists can feel humilated over not being treated like they are God almighty. Bigots can feel humiliated over having to engage with subhumans as if they are people. I've got a brother who is humilated if he has to bag his own groceries at the grocery store, and goes into rather well-disciplined and civilized rage over it. Likewise if he's served food and something is wrong with it or with the service: he, in a dignified way, punishes everyone as hard as he can and goes to war.

We cannot go by feelings like this: it can't be personal. There has to be a contextualization where you say 'no, you cannot beat that passing lady to death because she rolled her eyes at you and sneered'.

That's why humiliation is so dangerous: both for individuals and for societies. It spurs these extreme, vengeful reactions, but there seems to be NO requirement that it is over some justifiable slight. We're far too subjective to trust this reaction in anyone or anything. Being able to take a broader view is indispensable.

Some of the most capable, powerful people in the world are walking wounded, forever acting out revenge on past, unreachable humiliations. It's tragic, but also dangerous. It's why we have laws and police and such: we've never not had this problem.

[lagadu]

People can't help how they feel, they don't suck: they're just normal human beings whose feelings exist. Each generation will feel humiliated at something someone else considers or will consider to be stupid.

[elihu]

People vary, and some people are offended by things that others aren't.

I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned regarding climate change specifically. I'm thinking of my parents, but there are a lot of boomers who would never think of tossing a pop can or candy bar wrapper out their car window, and who regard that sort of thing as absolutely inexcusable. And yet they're now being told that burning gasoline is far worse than lowly littering. And it's a thing they've been doing most of their lives, thinking it's normal and doesn't cost anything beyond what it costs at the pump and maybe (if they're reasonably self-aware) the geopolitical issues around being dependent on a few major oil producers in the middle-east.

Accepting that climate change is a serious issue implies acknowledging their role in creating it, which is a kind of humiliation. Just saying "fine, get over it" may be satisfying, but in order to get them on board maybe we need a kind of messaging that isn't moralistic and doesn't assign blame. How would that even work, though? I don't know.

I think most younger people have grown up in a world where climate change is an acknowledged fact and that burning gasoline is known to be problematic even if there isn't a practical alternative if you need to get to work or whatever. So there's no mental transformation that has to happen.