Israel (now broader Mid East discussion)

Madmarsha said
Yeah, I feel stupid for feeling stupid. lol No, it just occurs to me that as I'm trying to gain more understanding and try to listen to people debating the various issues, nobody ever accomplishes the first rule of debate and defines terms and instead expects everybody to be up -- or, perhaps, down -- to their level. It's how we all talk to each other these days. Again back to the "Well, if YOU don't know ..."

I know I'm not the smartest but, dammit, I'm also not the dumbest and a lot of the screaming is being done by people who have only been alive a couple decades and let's just say I'm left wondering how much history they know. And, hey, maybe they are able to grasp the entire perspective of the history better than I am. I'm fully capable of understanding that many people much younger than me have amazing intellects. But I also remember how "black and white" things used to be in my idealistic 20s.

Yeah, today's "black and white" idealism is much different from the "black and white" of 30 and 40 years ago. Which is fine. Things change. I do think today's kids, mine for example, have more knowledge than I did at their age, but they care about different things than I did also. We didn't have history at our fingertips back in the day, so more of our learning was traditional classroom learning.

Kids learn from their social media sources as much as school, so their views are shaped differently and that's for better and worse. All that knowledge can go to their heads, or their sources can be unreliable and their views shaped by those unreliable sources.

All that said, it's a mixed bag like a lot of things. In some ways they're way ahead of where I was, but their lives far more stressful than I remember mine being at that age.