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Hunky Haggis's avatar

It makes sense (from a psychos viewpoint) why the government got rid of apprenticeships. It gives young men a feeling of agency in their life. British tradesmen were the best in the world at one point, and knowing this will have given young British men the feeling that the world was truly his oyster.

Now, these life-skills have been substituted for the quasi-skills collected in levelling up in computer games. The body gets the dopamine hits, so the brain is tricked into believing it's achieving something, but alas it's another trick being played on us.

I've also noticed that "urban youth" teens/young men have an arrogance that they've achieved something or have some valuable life skills, when they haven't. Compare this to the British kids who are being humiliated bit by bit, who should have confidence based on what their predecessors have achieved.

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Denzel Dominique's avatar

I'm Gen X and the only thing my parents effectively taught me was How to Tie a Tie. Many such cases, Iater found among my bitter peers.

Years ago, a Boomer Eng Lit professor made a cloth case for my fob watch after it fell out of my pocket & came a little apart; when I, amazed, asked how he knew how to do such things (he'd also rewired his entire house, and repaired a torn 19th C book for me) he said that he'd grown up helping his grandfather tinker in his workshop and so just knew how to work with his hands.

That chain of competence broke some time in the 60s, after that nothing was handed down and so you now get this slew of e.g. Clint Eastwood films, or the Cobra Kai series, about an older man handing down what were once obvious life lessons, to Zoomers raised on hip hop, vidya, and porn. So much has been lost, so quickly.

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