Article: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation

[forty-two]

12 minutes ago, frogger said:

I don't blame the upcoming generation for being somewhat risk adverse!

 

I don't either.  But what I've seen and personally experienced goes beyond being "somewhat risk adverse".  I mean, the author of the piece described it as "risk management" parenting, but that's not what I've seen and felt.  I actually would have said the opposite: that the shift in parenting was from trying to *manage* the risks (as all parents have done, albeit with differing senses of what the risks were and which risks to avoid) to trying to *eliminate* the risks. 

Increasingly it seems like the safer things get, the more people believe they should be 100% *safe*.  "Risk management" implies trade-offs, implies getting risks below a certain threshold (that's low but not zero) - but increasingly, especially when it comes to kids, people argue that low risk just isn't good enough: it should be *zero* risk.  Not just that, in a perfect world, it should be that way, but that it is possible to make the real world that way.  And since it is both desirable and possible, it ought to be done.  It's like, we've made our world so (apparently) safe that danger really and truly feels like an aberration to large swaths of people - we genuinely, at a gut level, see safety and security as the norm.  Not just how things ought to be, but how things actually are, or at least how things genuinely can be. 

That assumption, that insecurity in life isn't a bedrock given but instead is a *solvable* problem - it changes how you approach risk.  It turns *managing* risk into *controlling* risk; it turns risk itself from something fundamentally outside human control to something within human control.  When risk is viewed as within humanity's control, risk management becomes the science of controlling and eliminating risk.  The assumption becomes that, with the right techniques, risk really *is* avoidable.  Then "risk adverse" doesn't just mean "playing it safe", but means "putting in the effort to *eliminate* the risk". 

But what if you *can't* eliminate the risk despite your best efforts?  Well, in my experience that's where anxiety comes into play.  The knowledge that despite all your precautions, *it still could happen anyway* - that fundamentally, unwanted pain and suffering could absolutely come your way and nothing you do can prevent it entirely - well, that's pretty darn anxiety-provoking.  The author describes millennials as the sort of people that deal with that realization by doubling-down on their efforts to prevent it - they simply refuse to (consciously) accept the prospect that there truly are bad things that are both unfixable and unavoidable.  I know from personal experience that the inability to handle the prospect of unfixable, unavoidable bad things happening makes a person really fragile in certain ways.  And I think that the increasingly widespread assumption that risk can be controlled means that an increasing number of people never learn to handle the prospect of unavoidable, unfixable bad things because fundamentally, they believe that *insecurity is a solvable problem*.  Why learn to live life despite the knowledge that unavoidable, unfixable bad things could happen at any moment, when instead you could just *avoid* or *fix* all the bad things?

I think the a large part of the article was dealing with the author's realization that, no, sometimes you *can't* just avoid or fix all the bad things - that for too many people, risk is just not controllable.  But the author still feels that risk *is* fundamentally controllable by humans, that risk is still fundamentally a solvable problem - but that many people are (unfairly) not reaping the benefits of this.  Whereas when I realized that my ability to control risk was a lie, I also rejected the whole idea that risk is controllable by people at all.  I pray so much more, now, because I truly realize that *I can't keep unfixable, unavoidable bad things from happening* - and neither can anyone else.  It's truly God's hands or no one's.

(I think some of the differences in this thread are due to whether people think that assumption, that the world really can be made safe and secure, is true or false.  Not whether the world *should* be safe and secure, not whether people can and should work to mitigate - though not eliminate - dangers, but whether people really and truly can eradicate enough problems to make the world safe and secure.  If you think it's *true*, that the world *can* be made safe and secure, then you are likely to sympathize with the writer's outrage and anger at having been disillusioned about the safety and security of their world, because you agree with the author that it's a legitimate assumption to hold - the world really *can* work that way. 
But if you think it's *false*, that insecurity and danger are fundamentally part of the world, that people can only mitigate, never eliminate, that fundamental insecurity and danger - then while you might feel sympathy for the author's outrage at being lied to, it's hard to feel sympathy for their continued assumption that the insecurity they are facing is somehow unique or novel, because that insecurity is just the normal state of being for all the world ever.  It's a question of whether the privileged state of feeling the world is fundamentally safe and secure is *true* - and thus is a privilege that should be extended to everyone - or whether that feeling is a *false* sense of safety and security, only possible for people privileged enough to insulate themselves from reality, and thus is a privilege no one should have.)

[frogger]

That makes sense 42. It also explains the craziness of victim blaming and attacking anyone that something bad happens to on the internet. That is such a foreign concept to me that I didn't get that at all from the blogger. To be fair, he desperately needs to read Strunk and White and try not to take every rabbit trail he sees.

[Bluegoat]

2 hours ago, forty-two said:

I don't either.  But what I've seen and personally experienced goes beyond being "somewhat risk adverse".  I mean, the author of the piece described it as "risk management" parenting, but that's not what I've seen and felt.  I actually would have said the opposite: that the shift in parenting was from trying to *manage* the risks (as all parents have done, albeit with differing senses of what the risks were and which risks to avoid) to trying to *eliminate* the risks. 

Increasingly it seems like the safer things get, the more people believe they should be 100% *safe*.  "Risk management" implies trade-offs, implies getting risks below a certain threshold (that's low but not zero) - but increasingly, especially when it comes to kids, people argue that low risk just isn't good enough: it should be *zero* risk.  Not just that, in a perfect world, it should be that way, but that it is possible to make the real world that way.  And since it is both desirable and possible, it ought to be done.  It's like, we've made our world so (apparently) safe that danger really and truly feels like an aberration to large swaths of people - we genuinely, at a gut level, see safety and security as the norm.  Not just how things ought to be, but how things actually are, or at least how things genuinely can be. 

That assumption, that insecurity in life isn't a bedrock given but instead is a *solvable* problem - it changes how you approach risk.  It turns *managing* risk into *controlling* risk; it turns risk itself from something fundamentally outside human control to something within human control.  When risk is viewed as within humanity's control, risk management becomes the science of controlling and eliminating risk.  The assumption becomes that, with the right techniques, risk really *is* avoidable.  Then "risk adverse" doesn't just mean "playing it safe", but means "putting in the effort to *eliminate* the risk". 

But what if you *can't* eliminate the risk despite your best efforts?  Well, in my experience that's where anxiety comes into play.  The knowledge that despite all your precautions, *it still could happen anyway* - that fundamentally, unwanted pain and suffering could absolutely come your way and nothing you do can prevent it entirely - well, that's pretty darn anxiety-provoking.  The author describes millennials as the sort of people that deal with that realization by doubling-down on their efforts to prevent it - they simply refuse to (consciously) accept the prospect that there truly are bad things that are both unfixable and unavoidable.  I know from personal experience that the inability to handle the prospect of unfixable, unavoidable bad things happening makes a person really fragile in certain ways.  And I think that the increasingly widespread assumption that risk can be controlled means that an increasing number of people never learn to handle the prospect of unavoidable, unfixable bad things because fundamentally, they believe that *insecurity is a solvable problem*.  Why learn to live life despite the knowledge that unavoidable, unfixable bad things could happen at any moment, when instead you could just *avoid* or *fix* all the bad things?

I think the a large part of the article was dealing with the author's realization that, no, sometimes you *can't* just avoid or fix all the bad things - that for too many people, risk is just not controllable.  But the author still feels that risk *is* fundamentally controllable by humans, that risk is still fundamentally a solvable problem - but that many people are (unfairly) not reaping the benefits of this.  Whereas when I realized that my ability to control risk was a lie, I also rejected the whole idea that risk is controllable by people at all.  I pray so much more, now, because I truly realize that *I can't keep unfixable, unavoidable bad things from happening* - and neither can anyone else.  It's truly God's hands or no one's.

(I think some of the differences in this thread are due to whether people think that assumption, that the world really can be made safe and secure, is true or false.  Not whether the world *should* be safe and secure, not whether people can and should work to mitigate - though not eliminate - dangers, but whether people really and truly can eradicate enough problems to make the world safe and secure.  If you think it's *true*, that the world *can* be made safe and secure, then you are likely to sympathize with the writer's outrage and anger at having been disillusioned about the safety and security of their world, because you agree with the author that it's a legitimate assumption to hold - the world really *can* work that way. 
But if you think it's *false*, that insecurity and danger are fundamentally part of the world, that people can only mitigate, never eliminate, that fundamental insecurity and danger - then while you might feel sympathy for the author's outrage at being lied to, it's hard to feel sympathy for their continued assumption that the insecurity they are facing is somehow unique or novel, because that insecurity is just the normal state of being for all the world ever.  It's a question of whether the privileged state of feeling the world is fundamentally safe and secure is *true* - and thus is a privilege that should be extended to everyone - or whether that feeling is a *false* sense of safety and security, only possible for people privileged enough to insulate themselves from reality, and thus is a privilege no one should have.)

 

I really feel like our culture has this weird idea that if we do all the right things, we won't get sick, get old, get ugly, and won't even die.  Of course no one says that, but we act as if it's true, and as if anything we need to do to make it more true is a good thing to do - if we don't actually encourage it we should at least not judge those who do it.  It's like everything is directed toward us forgetting about our fundamental mortality and fragility.

I think it is a huge part of the anxiety people feel.  Not just that they will fail, and it will be their fault, but also that now there are so many balls they have to keep in the air to avoid failure.

[Catwoman]

6 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

No, but we had "duck and cover" drills from nukes from the Soviets!

 

6 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

But some of us did “duck and cover” drills. And I bet none of us was clueless enough to believe ducking and covering was going to protect us from a nuclear bomb. 

 

Desks save lives, people! 😉

I think they just wanted us to feel like there was something we could do that would make us feel safe and protected. 

[Ausmumof3]

4 hours ago, forty-two said:

I don't either.  But what I've seen and personally experienced goes beyond being "somewhat risk adverse".  I mean, the author of the piece described it as "risk management" parenting, but that's not what I've seen and felt.  I actually would have said the opposite: that the shift in parenting was from trying to *manage* the risks (as all parents have done, albeit with differing senses of what the risks were and which risks to avoid) to trying to *eliminate* the risks. 

Increasingly it seems like the safer things get, the more people believe they should be 100% *safe*.  "Risk management" implies trade-offs, implies getting risks below a certain threshold (that's low but not zero) - but increasingly, especially when it comes to kids, people argue that low risk just isn't good enough: it should be *zero* risk.  Not just that, in a perfect world, it should be that way, but that it is possible to make the real world that way.  And since it is both desirable and possible, it ought to be done.  It's like, we've made our world so (apparently) safe that danger really and truly feels like an aberration to large swaths of people - we genuinely, at a gut level, see safety and security as the norm.  Not just how things ought to be, but how things actually are, or at least how things genuinely can be. 

That assumption, that insecurity in life isn't a bedrock given but instead is a *solvable* problem - it changes how you approach risk.  It turns *managing* risk into *controlling* risk; it turns risk itself from something fundamentally outside human control to something within human control.  When risk is viewed as within humanity's control, risk management becomes the science of controlling and eliminating risk.  The assumption becomes that, with the right techniques, risk really *is* avoidable.  Then "risk adverse" doesn't just mean "playing it safe", but means "putting in the effort to *eliminate* the risk". 

But what if you *can't* eliminate the risk despite your best efforts?  Well, in my experience that's where anxiety comes into play.  The knowledge that despite all your precautions, *it still could happen anyway* - that fundamentally, unwanted pain and suffering could absolutely come your way and nothing you do can prevent it entirely - well, that's pretty darn anxiety-provoking.  The author describes millennials as the sort of people that deal with that realization by doubling-down on their efforts to prevent it - they simply refuse to (consciously) accept the prospect that there truly are bad things that are both unfixable and unavoidable.  I know from personal experience that the inability to handle the prospect of unfixable, unavoidable bad things happening makes a person really fragile in certain ways.  And I think that the increasingly widespread assumption that risk can be controlled means that an increasing number of people never learn to handle the prospect of unavoidable, unfixable bad things because fundamentally, they believe that *insecurity is a solvable problem*.  Why learn to live life despite the knowledge that unavoidable, unfixable bad things could happen at any moment, when instead you could just *avoid* or *fix* all the bad things?

I think the a large part of the article was dealing with the author's realization that, no, sometimes you *can't* just avoid or fix all the bad things - that for too many people, risk is just not controllable.  But the author still feels that risk *is* fundamentally controllable by humans, that risk is still fundamentally a solvable problem - but that many people are (unfairly) not reaping the benefits of this.  Whereas when I realized that my ability to control risk was a lie, I also rejected the whole idea that risk is controllable by people at all.  I pray so much more, now, because I truly realize that *I can't keep unfixable, unavoidable bad things from happening* - and neither can anyone else.  It's truly God's hands or no one's.

(I think some of the differences in this thread are due to whether people think that assumption, that the world really can be made safe and secure, is true or false.  Not whether the world *should* be safe and secure, not whether people can and should work to mitigate - though not eliminate - dangers, but whether people really and truly can eradicate enough problems to make the world safe and secure.  If you think it's *true*, that the world *can* be made safe and secure, then you are likely to sympathize with the writer's outrage and anger at having been disillusioned about the safety and security of their world, because you agree with the author that it's a legitimate assumption to hold - the world really *can* work that way. 
But if you think it's *false*, that insecurity and danger are fundamentally part of the world, that people can only mitigate, never eliminate, that fundamental insecurity and danger - then while you might feel sympathy for the author's outrage at being lied to, it's hard to feel sympathy for their continued assumption that the insecurity they are facing is somehow unique or novel, because that insecurity is just the normal state of being for all the world ever.  It's a question of whether the privileged state of feeling the world is fundamentally safe and secure is *true* - and thus is a privilege that should be extended to everyone - or whether that feeling is a *false* sense of safety and security, only possible for people privileged enough to insulate themselves from reality, and thus is a privilege no one should have.)

Dh worked with an occ health safety guy who always used to say “there’s no such thing as an accident”.  In other words each and every incident had an underlying preventable cause.  To be honest though even if it’s not too I prefer they take that approach.  My dh works in a higher risk job and I’m awfully glad that they are legally obliged to do absolutely everything possible to make sure he comes home each night, safe, alive and well.  I certainly don’t want to go back to the “good old days” of very lax workplace safety.

[Meriwether]

10 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

No, but we had "duck and cover" drills from nukes from the Soviets!

As my dad tells it, during drills the kids would say, "Put you head between your knees and kiss your * good-bye."

[SKL]

Yeah, I don't agree with it either.  I procrastinated plenty as a young person (born in 1966) ... still do, it ebbs and flows.  What I don't do is get on the internet and write articles about it.

I feel like what has changed is this need to "name" everything that is happening, and find a reason for it, for whatever that's worth.

I didn't send out xyz on time because I dropped the ball.  Nobody cares.  Nobody ever will care.  It has nothing to do with how I was raised or what year I was born.

I guarantee my mom and the mom of the article writer procrastinated too ... swept things under the rug and didn't tell the whole world.  Didn't try to blame it on her parents, her diagnosis, the economy, the school system, or the president.

Here's the thing:  Just Do It.  Or don't.  Your choice.  And mine.

[EmseB]

DP

Edited January 9, 2019 by EmseB

[EmseB]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Dh worked with an occ health safety guy who always used to say “there’s no such thing as an accident”.  In other words each and every incident had an underlying preventable cause.  To be honest though even if it’s not too I prefer they take that approach.  My dh works in a higher risk job and I’m awfully glad that they are legally obliged to do absolutely everything possible to make sure he comes home each night, safe, alive and well.  I certainly don’t want to go back to the “good old days” of very lax workplace safety.

Maybe so, but some occupations are based on taking a certain amount of risk or being put in danger.

In the military we had to file a safety report for any incident that involved medical care. So my boss, who had to get three stitches because of a slip of a kitchen knife, had to fill out a form about how he could have been more careful and prevented the accident. And the military insisted, well, we spent all this time and money training the guy so we don't want him disabled from a cut in the kitchen. And I can kind of see their point, but it all *felt* very coddling and infantilizing for people who were supposed to go out go to war. But in a large organization I feel like it's either all (we always fill out safety forms and note how we could have been safer) or nothing (no one cares about safety).

So, yes, you want people being safe about packing parachutes and assembling weapons, etc. Or you want the guy climbing the utility pole to have a safe harness that he knows works. But also, in order for people to do a lot of those jobs they have to throw caution to the wind and go into very unsafe situations...knowing they could die and that's what they signed up to do. So I feel like there is some kind of...coddling, or something else that is detrimental to risk-taking and doing dangerous things that might be courageous or brave in the right context like firefighting or something of that nature.

I would agree that most accidents have a preventable cause, but living one's life as if you are trying to prevent all possible accidents, or could ever hope to do so, is going to be really, really debilitating, I think. And there's some kind of balance that has to be found in there somewhere

[SKL]

About nuclear war risk.  That has not actually gone away.  It is actually a much bigger risk now in terms of how much damage could be done if someone decided to push the button.  The difference is that we don't dwell on it.  I personally feel like if it's my time, it's my time, no point worrying about it.

Somewhere I read that encouraging children to dwell on bad things that happened (and could happen again) is bad for their mental health.  I am not sure what the right balance is between all the mementos of horrible things vs. the risk that people will forget and go into denial that humans could actually be that awful.  Maybe there is an appropriate age beyond which the knowledge doesn't mess us up.

I'm also not at all sure why people always talk about the boomers as if they had it right.  The word "burnout" seems to me to have been kinda big in the boomer years.  Of course it meant something a little different then, but still ....

[Ausmumof3]

50 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Maybe so, but some occupations are based on taking a certain amount of risk or being put in danger.

In the military we had to file a safety report for any incident that involved medical care. So my boss, who had to get three stitches because of a slip of a kitchen knife, had to fill out a form about how he could have been more careful and prevented the accident. And the military insisted, well, we spent all this time and money training the guy so we don't want him disabled from a cut in the kitchen. And I can kind of see their point, but it all *felt* very coddling and infantilizing for people who were supposed to go out go to war. But in a large organization I feel like it's either all (we always fill out safety forms and note how we could have been safer) or nothing (no one cares about safety).

So, yes, you want people being safe about packing parachutes and assembling weapons, etc. Or you want the guy climbing the utility pole to have a safe harness that he knows works. But also, in order for people to do a lot of those jobs they have to throw caution to the wind and go into very unsafe situations...knowing they could die and that's what they signed up to do. So I feel like there is some kind of...coddling, or something else that is detrimental to risk-taking and doing dangerous things that might be courageous or brave in the right context like firefighting or something of that nature.

I would agree that most accidents have a preventable cause, but living one's life as if you are trying to prevent all possible accidents, or could ever hope to do so, is going to be really, really debilitating, I think. And there's some kind of balance that has to be found in there somewhere

Well I’ll be frank - I don’t want that balance to be my husbands dead/ mangled body coming home to me and my kids.  I find that almost offensive.  I believe that taking whatever steps possible to minimise work place deaths, road trauma, and every thing else is pretty darn important.  Filling out a few forms, taking an extra minute to check you secured things correctly is a heck of a lot less debilitating than falling 30 stories because someone couldn’t be bothered or had some philosophical objection.  There is a difference between teaching steps to identify and manage risks and simply refusing to do something because it’s risky.  I teach my kids to use knives and teach them how to do it safely. Unhealthy is avoiding tasks altogether because they are risky or being complete cowboys who don’t care.  Making a reasonable assessment of the situation and doing what you can to manage it is the right balance.

[Momto6inIN]

14 hours ago, forty-two said:

I don't either.  But what I've seen and personally experienced goes beyond being "somewhat risk adverse".  I mean, the author of the piece described it as "risk management" parenting, but that's not what I've seen and felt.  I actually would have said the opposite: that the shift in parenting was from trying to *manage* the risks (as all parents have done, albeit with differing senses of what the risks were and which risks to avoid) to trying to *eliminate* the risks. 

Increasingly it seems like the safer things get, the more people believe they should be 100% *safe*.  "Risk management" implies trade-offs, implies getting risks below a certain threshold (that's low but not zero) - but increasingly, especially when it comes to kids, people argue that low risk just isn't good enough: it should be *zero* risk.  Not just that, in a perfect world, it should be that way, but that it is possible to make the real world that way.  And since it is both desirable and possible, it ought to be done.  It's like, we've made our world so (apparently) safe that danger really and truly feels like an aberration to large swaths of people - we genuinely, at a gut level, see safety and security as the norm.  Not just how things ought to be, but how things actually are, or at least how things genuinely can be. 

That assumption, that insecurity in life isn't a bedrock given but instead is a *solvable* problem - it changes how you approach risk.  It turns *managing* risk into *controlling* risk; it turns risk itself from something fundamentally outside human control to something within human control.  When risk is viewed as within humanity's control, risk management becomes the science of controlling and eliminating risk.  The assumption becomes that, with the right techniques, risk really *is* avoidable.  Then "risk adverse" doesn't just mean "playing it safe", but means "putting in the effort to *eliminate* the risk". 

But what if you *can't* eliminate the risk despite your best efforts?  Well, in my experience that's where anxiety comes into play.  The knowledge that despite all your precautions, *it still could happen anyway* - that fundamentally, unwanted pain and suffering could absolutely come your way and nothing you do can prevent it entirely - well, that's pretty darn anxiety-provoking.  The author describes millennials as the sort of people that deal with that realization by doubling-down on their efforts to prevent it - they simply refuse to (consciously) accept the prospect that there truly are bad things that are both unfixable and unavoidable.  I know from personal experience that the inability to handle the prospect of unfixable, unavoidable bad things happening makes a person really fragile in certain ways.  And I think that the increasingly widespread assumption that risk can be controlled means that an increasing number of people never learn to handle the prospect of unavoidable, unfixable bad things because fundamentally, they believe that *insecurity is a solvable problem*.  Why learn to live life despite the knowledge that unavoidable, unfixable bad things could happen at any moment, when instead you could just *avoid* or *fix* all the bad things?

I think the a large part of the article was dealing with the author's realization that, no, sometimes you *can't* just avoid or fix all the bad things - that for too many people, risk is just not controllable.  But the author still feels that risk *is* fundamentally controllable by humans, that risk is still fundamentally a solvable problem - but that many people are (unfairly) not reaping the benefits of this.  Whereas when I realized that my ability to control risk was a lie, I also rejected the whole idea that risk is controllable by people at all.  I pray so much more, now, because I truly realize that *I can't keep unfixable, unavoidable bad things from happening* - and neither can anyone else.  It's truly God's hands or no one's.

(I think some of the differences in this thread are due to whether people think that assumption, that the world really can be made safe and secure, is true or false.  Not whether the world *should* be safe and secure, not whether people can and should work to mitigate - though not eliminate - dangers, but whether people really and truly can eradicate enough problems to make the world safe and secure.  If you think it's *true*, that the world *can* be made safe and secure, then you are likely to sympathize with the writer's outrage and anger at having been disillusioned about the safety and security of their world, because you agree with the author that it's a legitimate assumption to hold - the world really *can* work that way. 
But if you think it's *false*, that insecurity and danger are fundamentally part of the world, that people can only mitigate, never eliminate, that fundamental insecurity and danger - then while you might feel sympathy for the author's outrage at being lied to, it's hard to feel sympathy for their continued assumption that the insecurity they are facing is somehow unique or novel, because that insecurity is just the normal state of being for all the world ever.  It's a question of whether the privileged state of feeling the world is fundamentally safe and secure is *true* - and thus is a privilege that should be extended to everyone - or whether that feeling is a *false* sense of safety and security, only possible for people privileged enough to insulate themselves from reality, and thus is a privilege no one should have.)

Yes! This!

I also don't think it necessarily means you're making fun of or discounting an entire generation when you notice what makes their perspective different from your own. In fact, doing so probably makes you more able to empathize, not less.

[shawthorne44]

Speaking of errands, I remember my mother loudly and frequently complaining about errands.  Mom and Dad both worked FT during the day.  This was in Texas in the 70's when they had the Blue Laws.   The Blue Laws meant that a bunch of stuff wasn't allowed to be sold on Sunday.   By product of this was that many stores that are open on Sundays now, weren't then.   So, mom had to do all the errands and grocery shopping on Saturday and she complained bitterly about it.  

[Hikin' Mama]

I read part of the article. My (obviously well-thought out 😆) conclusion: whatever. Every generation has had stress that can lead to burnout. In my observation, every generation has whiners and every generation has people who try to look at the positive and do the best they can with what they've got. I know many millenials, including my three kids, who don't fit the stereotype I keep hearing about. I'm sure they exist; I just haven't met them.

[EmseB]

8 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Well I’ll be frank - I don’t want that balance to be my husbands dead/ mangled body coming home to me and my kids.  I find that almost offensive.  I believe that taking whatever steps possible to minimise work place deaths, road trauma, and every thing else is pretty darn important.  Filling out a few forms, taking an extra minute to check you secured things correctly is a heck of a lot less debilitating than falling 30 stories because someone couldn’t be bothered or had some philosophical objection.  There is a difference between teaching steps to identify and manage risks and simply refusing to do something because it’s risky.  I teach my kids to use knives and teach them how to do it safely. Unhealthy is avoiding tasks altogether because they are risky or being complete cowboys who don’t care.  Making a reasonable assessment of the situation and doing what you can to manage it is the right balance.

Well, hopefully my reply didn't read like I was suggesting anything of the sort in your first line there. And of course the bolded is true, and I think I said as much in my post, or at least I tried to.

My suggestion was more that our perspective (at least in the US with liability being a huge driving factor into how people act, and sensationalism on the news) on "making a reasonable assessment" has been really, really skewed in the last couple of generations. Evaluating risk and putting it in perspective is really difficult for a lot of people. It's why, for example, there are news stories about a mom letting her young-ish kid ride the subway alone in NY as if she is the cowboy, but strapping your kids into the car for a 30 minute commute every day is seen as inconsequential. 

It is a hard thing to quantify because safety is good. So it's not as if I'm arguing against being safe. The issue comes with "every accident being preventable" as a philosophy, well, yes, but accidents are still going to happen even with our best and most diligent procedures in place. And if every accident is preventable, then someone is always to blame when something goes wrong. And sometimes someone is to blame. And that is where the anxiety comes in that the PP was talking about. But sometimes we are just humans and have accidents. And sometimes something that we think is going to work doesn't work. So, for example, in your post you say, "Take every step possible to minimise work place deaths, road trauma, and every thing else," but some people find that debilitating because every step possible means avoidance in their minds, which you're clearly saying here is unhealthy. So that creates the anxiety and decision paralysis and unwillingness to take risks. Making a reasonable assessment becomes really, really hard for a lot of folks. And when the workplace culture says that you need to think of a way to avoid having a slip of your knife in your own kitchen and you need to write that down and tell us what it is...I don't think it is helping everyone be more safe, to be honest. And that is what my previous post was trying to get at. Not that people shouldn't inspect their lines or gear.

[frogger]

12 hours ago, SKL said:

About nuclear war risk.  That has not actually gone away.  It is actually a much bigger risk now in terms of how much damage could be done if someone decided to push the button.  The difference is that we don't dwell on it.  I personally feel like if it's my time, it's my time, no point worrying about it.

Somewhere I read that encouraging children to dwell on bad things that happened (and could happen again) is bad for their mental health.  

 

Yes. This.

 

It is ok to explain good safety habits because they will actually make a difference but then let it go because it won't help to worry about it.

 

It did NO good telling children they might go today because of a nuke every single morning. How is that in any way helpful? What action could they take to prevent that? Oh yes, I forgot, get under their desk. Snort.

On the other hand telling your children the need to have a helmet or lights and reflectors on their bike actually makes a difference. It doesn't make it sure but it mitigates the risk. It has a purpose. Then they go out and ride their bike. You don't lock them in the basement and tell them they can't ride their bike because they could possibly be hurt because that has real costs. 

[Bluegoat]

12 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Well I’ll be frank - I don’t want that balance to be my husbands dead/ mangled body coming home to me and my kids.  I find that almost offensive.  I believe that taking whatever steps possible to minimise work place deaths, road trauma, and every thing else is pretty darn important.  Filling out a few forms, taking an extra minute to check you secured things correctly is a heck of a lot less debilitating than falling 30 stories because someone couldn’t be bothered or had some philosophical objection.  There is a difference between teaching steps to identify and manage risks and simply refusing to do something because it’s risky.  I teach my kids to use knives and teach them how to do it safely. Unhealthy is avoiding tasks altogether because they are risky or being complete cowboys who don’t care.  Making a reasonable assessment of the situation and doing what you can to manage it is the right balance.

 

What's reasonable though?

I had a similar experience in the military to Esme.  Sure, when you are talking about working on a range or something, it's probably worth it to be very careful and systematic about safety.

On the other hand, not being allowed to bbq hotdogs after a weekend exercise at the WOs house, because we didn't have a trained cook - that's a little silly and detrimental.  Preventing children from doing things outside, or making rules about sports activities, that mean people don't partake in them and negatively impact health on a much wider scale, seems worse than silly.  Conceiving of things in such a way that people feel a huge weight of anxiety and guilt should an accident occur, is cruel. But all of this kind of stuff follows on from the assumption that everything is preventable and worth acting upon.

[Bluegoat]

3 hours ago, EmseB said:

Well, hopefully my reply didn't read like I was suggesting anything of the sort in your first line there. And of course the bolded is true, and I think I said as much in my post, or at least I tried to.

My suggestion was more that our perspective (at least in the US with liability being a huge driving factor into how people act, and sensationalism on the news) on "making a reasonable assessment" has been really, really skewed in the last couple of generations. Evaluating risk and putting it in perspective is really difficult for a lot of people. It's why, for example, there are news stories about a mom letting her young-ish kid ride the subway alone in NY as if she is the cowboy, but strapping your kids into the car for a 30 minute commute every day is seen as inconsequential. 

It is a hard thing to quantify because safety is good. So it's not as if I'm arguing against being safe. The issue comes with "every accident being preventable" as a philosophy, well, yes, but accidents are still going to happen even with our best and most diligent procedures in place. And if every accident is preventable, then someone is always to blame when something goes wrong. And sometimes someone is to blame. And that is where the anxiety comes in that the PP was talking about. But sometimes we are just humans and have accidents. And sometimes something that we think is going to work doesn't work. So, for example, in your post you say, "Take every step possible to minimise work place deaths, road trauma, and every thing else," but some people find that debilitating because every step possible means avoidance in their minds, which you're clearly saying here is unhealthy. So that creates the anxiety and decision paralysis and unwillingness to take risks. Making a reasonable assessment becomes really, really hard for a lot of folks. And when the workplace culture says that you need to think of a way to avoid having a slip of your knife in your own kitchen and you need to write that down and tell us what it is...I don't think it is helping everyone be more safe, to be honest. And that is what my previous post was trying to get at. Not that people shouldn't inspect their lines or gear.

 

Exactly. Helmets are a good example.  Where I live, it is required for adults and children to wear helmets for almost anything.  Any public or private facility requires them for skiing, skating, etc.  And by law everyone has to use one when riding a bike.

In terms of individuals, this can reduce injury sometimes. But in terms of population, we know laws and rules like this don't result in fewer inuries, but they do possibly reduce participation which has its own consequences.

[Happy2BaMom]

2 hours ago, Bluegoat said:

 

Exactly. Helmets are a good example.  Where I live, it is required for adults and children to wear helmets for almost anything.  Any public or private facility requires them for skiing, skating, etc.  And by law everyone has to use one when riding a bike.

In terms of individuals, this can reduce injury sometimes. But in terms of population, we know laws and rules like this don't result in fewer inuries, but they do possibly reduce participation which has its own consequences.

 

Actually, it's very well documented that helmets reduce injuries and deaths in motorcycle accidents. And there are other studies (link 1, link 2 ) showing a greatly reduced injury rate with bicycle helmet use. I understand people may disagree with helmet laws (that's a whole other discussion), but I have not seen any evidence that they actually do reduce participation in a significant way (which isn't to say it doesn't exist, but I haven't been able to find it). 

And, for the record, re: the original topic, I find it really difficult to typecast the approximately 73 million people who make up the Millenial generation (that will soon outnumber the Boomers). In my experience, they are all over the map, even more so than the generations above them.

And I really rather hate putting MILLIONS of people into tiny defined boxes, especially the negative, judgmental ones usually used for Millenials. They're people, for goodness sakes, not a list of (pejorative) characteristics. 

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, Happy2BaMom said:

 

Actually, it's very well documented that helmets reduce injuries and deaths in motorcycle accidents. And there are other studies (link 1, link 2 ) showing a greatly reduced injury rate with bicycle helmet use. I understand people may disagree with helmet laws (that's a whole other discussion), but I have not seen any evidence that they actually do reduce participation in a significant way (which isn't to say it doesn't exist, but I haven't been able to find it). 

And, for the record, re: the original topic, I find it really difficult to typecast the approximately 73 million people who make up the Millenial generation (that will soon outnumber the Boomers). In my experience, they are all over the map, even more so than the generations above them.

And I really rather hate putting MILLIONS of people into tiny defined boxes, especially the negative, judgmental ones usually used for Millenials. They're people, for goodness sakes, not a list of (pejorative) characteristics. 

 

Motorcycles are certainly different than regular bikes, or skating and sledding.

However, if you look at what I said again, there is a difference between looking directly at individuals or head injuries, and looking at it from an epidemiological perspective.  The latter is not particularly positive about helmet use.  I think this is reflected in the difference between policy decision making, and making decisions about individual circumstances, which tend to be rather different kettles of fish.

As for boxes - can we make statements about populations at all?  I think we can, which isn't to say we can just make any statement.  I would hope everyone understands that any generalisation about a population, even if true, won't always follow for every individual.  The possibility of generalising is a requirement for any kind of scientific or statistical analysis.

It is easy, I think, to be too broad or extreme about generational trends.  And some things simply transcend generational issues.  But on the other hand I think we'd be foolish to say there are not changes in the way generations think about things, or that they have can have formative experiences that unite them in some way, or that demographic or environmental or technological changes do not affect their outlook compared to other generations.  

As far as the millennials, they were a group that was raised in a way that was different from the previous group, and there was a significant technological change too which affected their childhood experiences compared to their parents.  I suspect those are the kinds of things that will affect a generation.  I'm not convinced that economic issues, unless they are really extreme during childhood, are quite the same.

[mom2scouts]

Hmmm, one of my sons is at the tail end of the millenials. We tease him because he only takes really dangerous jobs where any mistake has the potential of causing death or injury. He says, "Mom, I hate boring desk jobs!", but maybe it's just a pushback to all the beyond common sense safety measures his generation has had imposed.