I see this in various guises, like:
When people say children are living in cold homes:
“I used to wake up with ice on the windows and had to put an extra jumper on if I was cold!”
Or about the industrial action happening atm:
“I’ve not had a pay rise this year so why should they?”
Why is some people’s instinct that nobody should have anything, rather than joining in the fight for better things?
35 comments
I like it when they say this. It instantly reveals them as massive cunts and narcissists and you do not have to pay any attention to anything else they say.
Because they are selfish cunts.
That’s literally all there is to it.
Because thick people who are incapable of improving their own situation are quite happy for it to be a race to the bottom.
I think it’s down to people just being selfish. If it doesn’t make their lives better then they don’t want to hear about it and will complain about it.
The same can be said about people who tell people to just put on an extra jumper when it’s cold. They completely miss the point that just because the uk is like this, doesn’t mean that it should be.
because they’re miserable cunts
I think it’s more about “quit whinging, it used to be way worse than this”
The media whip up a storm about everything these days. Those old folks know it used to be shitter and it got better and will do again.
I don’t think they’re saying “I didn’t have X so you shouldn’t”. They’re saying “I didn’t have X so I don’t care about the fact that you don’t have X.” They’re two very different things.
Stockholm Syndrome to some extent, probably swayed by the voices of those able to influence, who make compelling arguments against change due to them benefitting from the current situation.
If you’re busy bickering amongst yourselves for meagre scraps, you probably aren’t noticing the full plates that they fell from.
The older generation who scream “it was better in my day and we didn’t have central heating” honestly do my nut in.
If it was so good – why has the world changed so much, eh!?
I think most people judge their position compared to others rather than absolutes. If everyone got a pay rise but then then they’d feel worse off not neutral.
some people don’t realize they prefer moaning than having an open mind or helping others.
Neo liberalism and hyper individualism.
And the “false consensus effect”
I used to wake up with ice on the inside of windows and I bloody hated it- no one should have to get dressed under the covers.
A lot of people these days just simply don’t want to see other people happier or doing better than them, and harbour resentment to those that have what they didn’t/don’t. “*If I have to be miserable, then so does everyone else*” mentality.
Because the media works with the government to divide us and keep us oppressed. There no such thing as working class or middle class, just elite vs the rest of us. The infighting helps the elites retain control.
We brits are very against other people doing well or even looking like it/showing it. We, on the whole, don’t like people with flash cars, people who earn a tonne of money, even if they’ve worked hard and been very successful in getting there, we don’t have sympathy for celebrities/sports stars when they fail. It’s one of the worst aspects of our culture, I think. Reverse snobbery/competitive humility.
You’ll find it with everything. People just love to one up people, brag about their bad lives as if it’s some badge of honour. I didn’t have it great growing up and when I have kids I’ll be sure to try and give them better, because I know what it WAS like! I would never throw it in peoples faces.
Each generation feels the younger generation is getting soft or too used to pampering. It’s sort of “Oh come on, we had it worse and now you’re complaining that it’s a bit cold”.
For industrial action, one feels solidarity with one’s own group (be that age, class, industry) and not with others. For example, they could say, “why are you not out campaigning to support old people who can’t afford their heating bills?”. But old people are not part of your group, so either you don’t really care or it’s not on your radar.
Misery loves company…
Makes me think of [this clip from The West Wing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4h0_bz2Qew), where Martin Sheen says “surely the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that says we shall give our children better than we ourselves received”.
Yes, your childhood might have had its problems, but shouldn’t you want children now to have better lives than you did?
I didn’t get to eat regularly so why should you. Do you think your something special ?
I’ve seen a few comments on here and social media from people who genuinely seem to believe that having a healthy work/life balance, time to spend with family and friends, or time to invest in interests, pastimes and hobbies that help them learn, develop and grow as human beings is lazy, worthless, unproductive and “not how the world works”.
There seems to be this belief that having people struggle, work until they drop, burn out, be unhealthy, hungry and cold is somehow “character building” and actually beneficial to them.
“it never did me any harm”, etc.
It’s borderline psychotic in my opinion, but it does exist sadly.
Because unfortunately people are cunts
-‘Kids today have it easier than us’
– ‘That’s great news, I don’t want my children to have a harder life’
Annoying Boomers are the worse for this and frankly they’re the generation who’ve had it easier than Gen X , Millennials and Gen Z. £3000 for an average house in 1971. Disposable income, foreign holidays. Good standard of living. Yes there was the three day week, the oil crisis, the 1976 heatwave and the winter of discontent. But what we’ve all gone through in the last 12 years is considerably worse, and they fucking know if too the twats!
Rant over.
I think the answer is
“I begged and begged for that and I was ignored, made do without and people made me feel silly and stupid for asking as if I didn’t know how the world worked, so I stopped”
to
“what? Is it allowed now? Oh, it’s allowed for them, not for me. They’re ‘special’, I’m not apparently. Why should they get that?”
I’m not saying I think that’s a good attitude, I am just putting myself in that situation and imagining where it comes from (it’s almost never thoughtless cruelty)
Re: “joining in the fight for better things” – people are old and cold and tired. It’s alright to think there’s a fight worth having when you’re 21, but when you’ve really, really lost a few battles over time that you didn’t deserve to lose it’s less appealing.
Because people are cunts. I’m sure you’re looking for more nuance than that, but that’s what it boils down to 🤷🏻♀️
“There’s no such thing as society”
Thatcher will be looking up at us and smiling at how we’ve become so divided.
Industrial action is tough because to fight inflation, not everyone can get raises that keep pace with inflation. If nurses get the 18% pay rise they are asking for, the rest of us will have to pay for that via higher taxes and higher inflation. So things become more of a zero sum game in inflationary conditions.
Because if you’ve got no one else to look down on, that means you’re at the bottom of the pile.
Rather than thinking if we all lift each other up and fight for better lives for everyone, everyone will be better off. They’d rather be slightly more better off than others. Its like they think equality waters it down for everyone.
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Don’t know if I explained myself well
I do think there is a sense of entitlement in a lot of the narrative we hear today. The current cost of living crisis is a good example. This is driven by lack of oil, and people are outraged that they would have to pay high prices for energy. Oil is not a right, it is a finite resource with huge social and environmental costs. But people can’t fathom that they might have to turn the heating down or otherwise change their behaviours in any way to try and use less oil, despite the fact that previous generations managed for many years.
That’s not to say I think people should suffer and that I don’t agree that lower income people aren’t disproportionately affected versus highly paid executives, but the only way these problems will be resolved is for everyone to take some short term pain. And peoples attitude to this is awful.
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who want you to go through what they went through and those who don’t want you to go through what they went through.
As someone who DID actually waken up with ice inside the windows in the 60’s, I don’t think it’s said to infer that people shouldn’t *have* heating now – just rather that you can get by with less heating and more clothing and live quite well. The windows were metal frames and single glazed so, yes, winters were pretty damn cold. Beautiful feathery patterns inside the windows in the morning from the frost freezing on them and little chunks of ice you could knock off the frame. Everyone was in the same boat so no one particularly thought of it as being especially bad. My kids used to drive me nuts sometimes in the winter tho – their rooms could never be hot enough and they wore T shirts all the time. I have to say tho, when they grew up and moved out, it was amazing how quickly they discovered warm clothing when the power bills came in.
It’s even worse when they want to deny to others what they themselves have benefited from.
As a motorcyclists:
“How come he can filter through traffic and I have to sit here!”
I’m actively helping alleviate the traffic by not adding to it you stupid cunt. Would it be better if you were 10ft further back behind me?