Young people theose days… Out of control… No respect… Not like when I was a lad/lass… And here’s the evidence!
Your roving reporter met* a specially selected cross section of the population** who shared their own experience and opinions from the sharp end.
- “We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They hang around pubs and have no self control.”
- “When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of our elders, but young people today are disrespectful and out of control.”
- “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets… Their morals are decaying.”
- “The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress.”
I blame the parents – the great great great great great …etc… grandparents, that is.
So what’s with this sudden display of concern for society going to hell in a handcart? Just a pretext really, to show you these clever drawings by Hark, a vagrant – and her lovely, clever, zany blog and book. History as it really/never was.
Sources:
- Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb.
- Hesiod, 8th century BC.
- Plato, 4th Century BC.
- Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 1274.
* Or to be more precised lifted from the website Anxiety Culture.
** All long dead.
Blackwatertown 
Love the single and double asterisks!
I’ve always been a fan. Glad to meet a fellow afficionado.
(Perhaps we can set up our own Gaulish village together.)
HoooOOOOOOOWWWWWwwwwwwLLLLLLLLLLLL!! 😉 It’s really not good for the Wolfie digestive processes, having just hunted down a fine meal of Wolfie meatballs under the Full Moon 😉 to cause Wolfie to laugh and cackle like that!! Great pics further enhanced by way with words~a point which is proved by the fact I am HERE not where I should be catching up with several days worth of missed blogs 🙂 And of course you were nothing like young people today… 😉 Hmmm…..!!
Who me Sir? Not me Sir.
Butter wouldn’t melt…
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I knew the notion of a golden age when kids respected their elders was bull (I can remember similar moral panics when I was in middle and upper school – in the mid to late 90s), but Anxiety Culture has still proved an eye-opener, and an interesting read.
And thanks for reintroducing Hark, A Vagrant to me. I keep meaning to check that out.
But then to be fair – a moral panic follows wherever you go.
And they race their chariots around pedestrian areas without the least care for others and go though dinaris like water !
Seems the biggest difference from then and now, is the deviance, is thought of as moral.
Loyalty, steadfastness and love live on.
Quite right too; I read recently of an elderly gentleman being run down on a pavement and killed by an invalid scooter driven recklessly by a young guy ie young in the the 30s or 40s – note THE not HIS – so, obviously he carried forward his degeneracy for half a century to give it full rein now.
Plus ca change!
Great cartoons. Of course stereotypes about the young (and the old) are just that – stereotypes. For every out-of-control tearaway, there’s someone thoughtful and responsible. But it’s always the yobs who feature in the headlines so they’re the ones who create the stereotypes.
Yes – news does not have to be exclusively negative and knocking.
Actually, it is my firm belief that there is nothing to the generation gap. It is just a memory gap.
Now you’re talking.
Well said – whatever it was. It seems to have slipped my mind already.
It’s kind of been my experience that people who disrespect their children (it’s not a one way street) are most often the ones “blessed” with disrespectful children…
Your gimlet eye misses little.
I have no elders left to kow tow to. The top shelf is no fun, so this old stereotype would give up her button boots for a chance to ride on an a Penny Farthing.
It’s the disrespect of young supermarket staff that leave me on the run. Five years ago, ‘sorry to disturb you chatting, but are you working today? I’m trying to find…….’ would usually produce a vague embarassment and attempt at a polite response- these days I’m continually busy trying to leap out of the way as they career wildly along the aisles, wheeling potentially lethal weights of stock hither and yon, seemingly determined to dominate my own intended route.
It sounds as though you’re trapped inside a life-sized computer game – Super Market Death Race 2012.
Love the new/old lovely with the boom box. My father was a musician, used to rant about the “racket” of rock ‘n roll…
Blessings – Maxi
And then there’s the boys with long hair. And the girls that wear pants. It’s quite upsetting, how society’s become. Ducks aren’t much better. Just look at all the lady ducks, dunking their heads in the water, with their fannies in the air. So indecent!