Stubborn Boomers Say, "You Have It Easy" While Ignoring the CONVENIENCE COST

It's time for another Throwback Thursdays post. It's often how irritation can sometimes give me inspiration. I want to think about the problem with boomers. I was thinking about how, as a millennial, I can navigate life with some boomers who are open-minded (even if they still use boomer talk, such as "When I was your age," which can be irritating but can be bearable once they admit they achieved it via open-mindedness) vs. those who are plain stubborn. In fact, I often read some stories on Facebook where some boomers, or better called the stubborn boomers, often try to operate in a world that no longer exists. This is the difference when the stubborn boomers start opening their mouths because blah blah blah, they were honor students, successful businessmen, etc., and try to make their children (and grandchildren) "extensions of themselves", rather than succeeding as individuals.

It made me think about how boomers tend to marry in their 20s. Some can brag about how they married at 25 and had a child by 26. However, they often ignore the shifts of the sands of time. What worked in 1985 (when I was born) doesn't necessarily work in 2026 (today). Parental respect and parental nurturing still work, but these traits often require evolution. Older generation Chinoys believed in "toughening up" their children by thinking using controlled insults as discipline work. However, newer Chinoys may not appreciate that and choose the more modern attack the action, not the person approach, to divert a child away from the wrong path. There will always be communication conflict when it comes to both generations. 

Has the digital age truly made everything "easier" or is it just a coping mechanism in a difficult world?

There was this Facebook story where I read that the father tried to raise his son in a world that no longer exists. He married in his 20s and had his son in his 20s. Sadly, I couldn't find the story anymore and it's too long to post here. Now, to think about the errors of the father, he called his son lazy without understanding the digital world. He thought that if his son didn't do deliveries on foot or was waiting for contact for a restaurant that there's a delivery, his son was "lazy". He even said, "You young people have the Internet and online deliveries. What's preventing you from having a kid when I had you at your age?" 

Sadly, the father probably ignored the convenience tax. Now, based on this story, one can think of the good old days. Let's think about the 1980s (which was under the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.), where prices were supposedly lower, such as gasoline. Based on that logic, Marcos Sr. must've been the "best president ever" if his  One can think of the good old days when the siopao "cost less" such as it cost PHP 15.00 to PHP 25.00. It was back when the USD to PHP exchange rate was still lower. It was a different time. However, times changed, and you know what happened.

Supply and demand in the digital world

Economics Online

Right now, we need to go back to supply and demand. It's a waste, really, that economics was taught back then in a bubble. I had a good teacher who was as stern as the late Miriam Defensor-Santiago. However, the real constraint was that she was forced to teach economics as a requirement to pass, rather than a skill to learn. I must admit I'm still thankful she made getting a high grade difficult. Now, one can think that the digital age basically affects supply and demand. If we're going to just think about it, the digital age would affect supply and demand, one way or another. 

Let's think about the time of the boomers. Let's talk about the good old days when siopao from that Chinese restaurant just cost that much. Some people started out only peddling their basic wares. An example is how Doming's Ngohiong started out with peddling. Of course, prices would be lower. However, Doming the peddler built two stores. One in Pacific Tourist Inn and the other in Guadaupe. Sure, they're not exactly fancy, but prices had to rise. In another story, Jollibee's story started with an ice cream parlor before it became a worldwide franchise. 

To say that the next generation "had it easy" due to some conveniences born out of difficulty. For instance, the typewriter may have been made because writing everything by hand became messy. The desktop/laptop and printer model arrived because office work got more difficult. The typewriter became more of a tool to fill out blank forms and blank checks than to produce office documents. The overwhelming amount of work required to replace typewriters with PCs. Not so many use the typewriter except as a necessary step, such as I mentioned, filling in checks and blank forms. If the demand for written work goes up, remember the printing press, the typewriter, and now the PC and the printer are all tools that were born out of that need.

That means these are already happening. The cost of raising a child increased over time because the cost of living rose over time. There's always a convenience cost for every convenience we have. We want our food delivered, or we want more food produced? We have to be willing to pay higher so the restaurant can get better ingredients, better equipment (and they can be costly like the use of stainless steel knives), get better sanitation, pest control, and the like. That means everything has gotten expensive as a result of increasing demand and decreasing supply. Of course, the demand nor supply don't increase or decrease all the time either. But we need to stop living in a world that no longer exists.  

That irritating thought of boomers refusing to learn new technology?

The Cheapism website has this article about 18 bad habits that boomers have. Here's one of the biggest things that I can hate about dealing with stubborn boomers that would irritate even my mother, who's a boomer:

While new technology can be hard to learn, there are some seniors who refuse to even try simple things that might make their lives better, like texting, using the internet, or learning how to take photos with their phone. That can really limit the way they interact with their friends and family just because they might be stubborn about technology.

This might be because their "performative suffering" might be over. It would be funny if they started to refuse to use this and that because "Back in my days, we didn't have a PC and our business succeeded." That's often the problem of businesses that die because they get blinded by past success. Stubborn boomers can brag about how great they are, and how they started knowing business below 20. However, times have changed. Plus, did they even notice that stuff like the abacus and the typewriter were used because they were advanced during the time they first came out? But as said, perhaps the more stubborn people back then would've called those who used an abacus and later, a typewriter, as unproductive because of a lack of performative suffering.

There's one truth that never changes. There's a difference between working hard and making your work hard. Previously, you could say, "You can work hard without working smart, but not the other way around." It made me think of, "Look how I work hard. Look at all the dirt and sweat." However, we can look at the picture. One can say the person using the forklift is being lazy, and those pushing the cube are being lazy. However, the reality is that the person using the forklift is working hard and smart. It's because those pushing the cube are just performing. They might feel that if the work was too easy, then it's not work. However, if you look at the person with the forklift, he's bringing the two cubes and he will bring more cubes. Definitely, I would select the person who's using the forklift to bring the cubes even if I have to pay the convenience fee. It's because I want the cubes, and if those cubes are used for my business, I would go for a fast and effective service. Those who are just "suffering for the sake of suffering" aren't productive. Their suffering is performative. The person driving the forklift still has a certain degree of suffering, like gasoline, maintenance, and these things are what convenience brings. But wouldn't it be better to have a degree of suffering, enduring maintenance costs, and gasoline for the forklift, but you were able to bring in more cubes?

The same can be true for using a PC. The reason why I hated using the typewriter is that one mistake means crumpling the paper and starting work all over. I had an English teacher who, while computer illiterate because she was born in the 1920s, said, "Why don't you proofread before you print?" As I was typing this blog entry, I thought about how you can never eliminate hard work. You can only make hard work manageable and productive. For example, if I'm required to write a proposal, I could send the email to my boss over and over. I could start thinking hard about how to input. I spend more time editing than crumpling papers. If the document had a lot of typographical errors, it's the fault of one's input and failure to use the capabilities of editing and proofreading before printing. Sure, the drafting phase never goes away, but as said, even when there are printed drafts, the amount of paper used is still significantly reduced.  

The academic system can't stay "on status quo" just to appease stubborn boomers who complain that their children's lessons are "getting harder" than they just say "children are getting more spoiled these days"

The lessons used back when the boomers were growing up aren't the same as the lessons today. In fact, I remember an interesting anecdote from 2002, which was this. I remember being told, "Did our school exist during the time of your parents?" I was even told that academic books back then were thinner and simpler. However, the reality is that today's news becomes tomorrow's history. That's why Civics and Culture classes should never rely on the textbook alone. Sure, the textbooks are authoritative, but we follow the model that "What's authoritative isn't infallible." The teacher may spot a mistake in the textbook if she has a better source. The teacher may say the wrong thing out of mistake, and the student points them back to their notes. Now think, the teacher's authority isn't challenged but refined in the process. The teacher who fact-checks a textbook with a better source isn't challenging the book's authority but refining it. The book may have been 95% right and 5% wrong. If a teacher refuses to see the 5% as an error to correct, they are. However, some boomers don't think correction is a give-and-take cycle or a two-way street.

This reminds me of what the late Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his book From Third World to First. Deng Xiaoping showed the lack of updates the school had. In fact, this was what LKY wrote on pages 618-619 of his book From Third World to First:

Our visit to the university in Wuhan, one of China's major industrial cities along the Yangtze River, was a saddening experience. Some of the professors we met were American-educated. Although advanced in age and their English rusty, they were obviously men of erudition and quality. In the library, Ling, then a medical student, spoke to a young man who was recording an English-language biology textbook. She asked to see it and found out it was printed in the 1950s. She was incredulous. How could they be reading a biology textbook 30 years out of date? But they have been shut off for more than 30 years; having just opened up to the West, they had no foreign exchange to buy textbooks and journals. And they had no photocopying machine. It would take a long time closing the knowledge gap that had widened between them and the developed world. The Cultural Revolution had set them back by a whole generation. The present students, recovering from the Cultural Revolution, were taught with outdated textbooks by teachers using outmoded teaching methods and without audiovisual aids. This would be another semilost generation. True, the most brilliant of them would make it regardless of the disadvantages. But an industrial society requires a well-educated total population, not just a brilliant few.

Is that what the boomers wanted? Please, new information is generated daily, and the textbook boomers used back then are also the result of information accumulation. For example, mathematics and science have new discoveries. Let's talk about calculus as a disciplinary field. Calculus can be linked to Ancient Greece with Archimedes, and centuries later,  Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz both contributed to calculus. Of course, calculus would get more difficult because of the new information that was generated. However, the difficulty of the new nformation sucha s new information in mathematics and science, gave us a lot of improvements to overcome the difficulties of the day, like:

1. Alexander Graham Bell started the evolution of the telephone industry. Today, we have mobile phones too. 
2. The Internet started with the dial-up connection and the use of the Digital Subscriber Line. DSL today allows me to use the Internet while I'm talking to a client. Before, I had to switch between them, and the dial-up was more annoying than you think. 
3. Vaccination was once a crude process. Did you know that Edward Jenner used cowpox postules to fight off smallpox? Thankfully, Louis Pasteur's discoveries featured better vaccination methods, and he also gave us the best way to disinfect milk without otherwise killing the taste and nutrients. 
4. The demand for written work increased over time. The printing press is an evolving thing. Also, offices that realized then can't write on hand all the time bought typewriters. Eventually, the PCs became more useful than the typewriters for producing written work. I still believe in using typewriters to fill out blank forms. However, the PC is the one that creates the blank forms.
5. Delivery services have developed from landline calls to delivery applications.  
6. Restaurants that started out as a "humble stall" and do well often decide to evolve. Move out of the first area and find a better area. Are there too many customers? Sign up for Grab and Food Panda delivery services. Sell at a higher price because of certain conveniences such as bigger, better equipment like new ovens, supply chain management, making sure they can serv clean service water, getting fresh ingredients at a more optimal rate, buying more bulk ingredients, and keeping the place healthy. Some may not open an air conditioner (to sell cheaper), but they will still put in an electric fan, delivery services, and the like. 
7. Right now, it seems gaming may go digital soon, removing the need for physical copies. However, I reserve the right to be iffy unless I see that the technology is restrained from exploitation of its customer base.

What allowed all of these? It's because of more information. Just imagine if school remained with the "sacred" textbooks of the boomers rather than updating them. I remember back in the day when parents complained, "Can't we make the lessons easier back in our day?" That's a ridiculous thought because we need new information daily. However, I'm still concerned because the academic system of the Philippines still needs to fix the problem of caring more about grades than learning. That's why I've still advocated for more FDI in the education system, to make our countries adopt new learning techniques rather than to keep getting left behind. 

Besides, schools aren't exempt from supply and demand. Boomers can whine about the increase. However, the reality is that the population means the demand for education will increase. If there are too few schools, not even public schools will be able to continue offering lower rates because public schools still need maintenance. Sadly, because of a lack of funding, the Philippine education system has been compromised throughout the years. Teachers are even quitting if they are too smart to be left in a toxic educational environment. We need to stop automating and start educating! 

Let's just face it, milestoning or generational cognitive bias is more toxic than we want to admit

When parents say, "When I was your age..." no matter the intention, there could be the bigger chance that it's a toxic trigger. I couldn't imagine how parents may have reacted back in the day with their parents. For example, I thought about how times can change. I look at the timetable and why milestoning can be more toxic than one can handle. For example, I thought about this. To fire back on milestones, one needs to look at the setting as to why they were happening.

Let's just say that my paternal grandparents married at 18-19 years of age. My late father married when he was 25. However, I'm single at this point. If we're using the milestoning fallacy, it we need ot think. If people can say that my father was married at 25 and I was single at 25, therefore I'm still childish and a failure, let's apply that logic if my paternal grandfather were to use it against my father. Let's say that my father was still in college at 18. That means by the milestone fallacy, my father is essentially a failure because he married seven years later than his father. If my grandfather started a business at 16, my father must therefore be a failure if he was 19-20 years old when he started doing business. This is really trying to live in a world that no longer exists.

What could be ignored is that life expectancy during my grandparents' day or my great-grandparents' day was volatile. People married so early because life expectancy during the 1900s-1950s was usually up to 32-46 years. Maybe I can say that my paternal grandfather was lucky to have reached his 60s and my late paternal grandmother died at 91. But I also think that my paternal grandmother probably felt alone in the world, thinking of her friends who died too young. I even remember stories of one of my father's first cousins who died in childhood, before he was even born. Some superstitious folks often blamed the aswang. However, the reality was that she probably died of leukemia or anemia in childhood. Given it was before the war, I can guess it was some fatal disease. My father's maternal grandfather died of tuberculosis on Christmas Day of 1945, in his 60s, which meant that he exceeded the lifespan of his day. 

Whether we want to admit it or not, the world moves forward. The boomers are also dying as much as the Second World War generation. People need to measure success with the present, not with the ancestral lineage.