Grandparents  Arsk

I think, “Yes, they would”. People are people whatever the era. Different pile of shit, but shit nonetheless has been suffered throughout history. I’d love to think each generation could learn from history but i’ve outgrown those fairytales & turned cynical when it comes to mindless mass mentality. 😕
Btw, I do enjoy your succinct, thought-provoking writes. 😊

I think so too. Unfortunately the old canard "In our grandparent's day, people were tougher" is just that—a canard. Sometimes, and i don't think you are using it this way here, it's used derogatorily, as in, "Millennials [or GenYZ, take your pick] are so weak and cotton swaddled, just imagine if our Once Great Nation had had to fight WW-Numeral-Whichever-OfTheTwo with the *Children*" we have nowadays. My "fatherland," Uber Alles. 🤢🤮. Think Putin and Trump.  It's a great rallying call for people invested in violence. "Us Maga-bros are tough, and we're not gonna tolerate all these weak, gay-love loving liberal sissies changing the laws to mandate Wokeness anymore! It's OUR CULTURE and we're going to take it Back from them!"  
 
Other times it's just rose timbered glasses forgetting completely to mention that in our grandparents day life just a little bit nastier, more brutal, and shorter. And in our great, great, great (ad infinitum in the written record) grandparents' day life was a LOT more nasty, brutish and short, and the common man (let alone the common women in enforced, legally mandated subjugation to "man" since the very beginning of writing and law codes—A world of rape, n'est pas?) had almost no agency, standing or footing whatsoever to challenge any of the random atrocities and trepidations inflicted on them with the most casual regularity by their rulers.  
 
"Our" noble and great grand-antecedents  suffered the holocaust, trench warfare, the enslavement of "non-whites in the colonial era, kings, aristocracy, emperors, and despots.  
 
Right now we are suffering global mega-capitalism. We are just at the very beginning of "suffering" the environmental atrocity which global mega-capitalism is (currently) still inflicting. Cross your fingers and hope anticipation of fusion power breakthroughs. Beyond that, we are here together (the proud and noble "tough," and the babiefied and coddled "weak," going through it all.  
 
Change is slow and comes in increments. Sometimes it leaps forward all at once. And sometimes civilizations fall. Other times they evolve. Sometimes they will do both at once.

Er
How come we have
Things like
Labour laws
Invireomental laws
Martin lother King laws
And all those other Laws
That our grandparents
And their parents fought for
When they were Young
Watered-down now days
Not worth the paper it's printed on
SO no
The possibility that our grandparents
Would suffer the same issues
That we have today
And just bow their heads
Is very low

Thank you
For reading

Thank you
For reading

I appreciate this added context. I’m afraid my reply came from the context of having ancestry on the other side of the fight. They taught against feminism & labor unions, were teetotalers, adamant proponents of purity culture and voiced racist attitudes while claiming inclusion. So mine would be quite content feeling THIS is the fruit of their labors. 🤯😢

Why? Mostly because of sustained collective activism by a few which occurred for decades (oftentimes decades upon decades) before there was enough groundswell to turn into a mass movement. Mass movements are when you get the large scale protests, demonstrations, sit outs, and (often provoked by the authorities in order to paint the movement as rabble rousers and criminals) riots. Other times riots are provoked by the sheer unbearability of the living conditions—but in terms of what needs to change right now, it has nowhere near reached that point yet for the masses of us.  
 
For right now the effects of global environmental damage still are a lot more invisible to the masses than, say, ”I’m half starving and I have to work 17 hours a day, 6 day a week in a meatpacking factory where mangled limbs and employee deaths are a regular and common occurrence, and my children are working 10 hours a day in some other factory. It's time to fucking march, and throw bricks.”  
 
A lot more invisible than, “I'm a full grown educated human being and I deserve the right to vote every bit as much as my husband / father/ brother / employer / the man who delivers the milk. Let's march!”  
 
A lot more invisible than,” I'm African American, I have no civil rights, I'm denied voting rights in the south, and Emmit Till was just murdered. Oh look, in 13 years the CIA will be flooding the black neighborhoods and the youth counter-culture with heroin from the american war for capitalism in Vietnam (which followed directly from the french war for colonialism in “Indochine”), and in 25 years the CIA and the Regan White House will be flooding black neighborhoods with crack cocaine in order to fund Iran-Contra. How ‘bout all that? Let's march.”  
 
In terms of living conditions, the worst brunt of globalized mega-capitalism falls on the poorest citizens of the poorest countries. In the west it may be, “I'm working two jobs and I still have to sell my blood in order to meet my basic financial needs, and look at all the refugees / homeless people / drug addicts. That's scary, I'm glad I'm not them. On the other hand, my parents are okay, I'm eating mostly okay, I have an iphone, the internet and an xbox of games or some other salutary diversions, and if I have children they're clothed, fed, and attend school.  
 
It's not because people are weak that there's not mass social protests, marches, sit-outs and demonstrations going on—it's because social conditions have not reached that point yet. The angriest people right now are up in arms and aggrieved (in name) by all those same socially progressive advances which we (especially in the “west”) have made since the 1850s. A lot of that anger, even when it derives from economic slippage, is channeled out of and back into demographic perceptions of a weakening of social privileges. “My clan is, A. No longer on “top,” and B. We're expected to share space with and extend full social privileges to other groups we hate?  
 
Maga-bros (american, I don't know to name their equivalent in European countries) pride themselves, then anything, on being “tough.” But tough doesn't equal smart. Often it just equals, easily manipulated by self-serving politicians who Talk just as tough (and ugly) as I like to feel.  
 
I dunno. Maybe it's semantics. Inner strength and resolve are completely different things than being “tough.” People today, young and old, have every bit as much of that as people in days of yore. Sustained collective activism, and a lot of it, is occurring, and is building. The young are at the forefront of it. It's growing, but no way no how is it at the point of mass activism. That takes time. The socialist movement (including the plank of women’s sufferage) was in play in Europe and in the Americas since the late 1700s.  
 
The situation, truly, requires all new paradigms (save for one). And new paradigms take a LOT of time.  
 
The only way out of the dark pit of self in society is Love for Humanity. That's a paradigm which never changes.

That's the problem
How long are people willing
To sacrifice
Children
To stay within their comfort zone
To just bitch whine and moan
How many children
Lost
To the streets
To the jungle
We allow to grow
How many communities
Have lost children
To rapes murders
To all kinds of even doctors Drugs
And yet
There have been no mass demonstration
In any city
To Change any law
To stop this shit
Sadly
I agree
Its not there yet

A wise man said
It begins
In the home
I agree
But How can this begin
When Our Children
Are not Safe
To walk to their friends home
When Justice
Is only seen to be done
Not done
To stop the suffering