Whither matrons?
A penny for your thoughts
I’m looking for your ideas and reflections, readers; please leave them in the comments below.
Our society needs matriarchs and patriarchs, or matrons and father figures, if you prefer. Young people are floundering, incompetent, badly educated, possessing few skills, and trained to see everyone born before them as stupid old boomers. What used to be a “generation gap” is now a yawning chasm.
Because of our non-parenting of the past two-three generations, the hierarchy has been inverted. We older people with experience are cast as the dummies, the stupid olds, who don’t know as much as a 20 year old. It’s pure inversion (remember, inversion is the basis of Cluster B/narcissistic/devil thinking).
This means that not only are young people ill-educated in politeness, decent dress, basic human communication skills, along with not knowing arithmetic and not achieving an adult reading level—they’re also hostile to the idea that they don’t know something, or that an older person can be a help to them.
The hostility, couched in insouciant ejaculations of LOL LMAO BOOMER, is a wall preventing any conversation or transmission of knowledge. Why, you’d almost think this was a planned Communist project strangely similar to how Mao convinced children to hate their parents and all the Olds.
Frustratingly, many older people play right along with it. They defer to their children, they express embarrassment at not knowing currently in vogue snotty slang, and they try to stuff themselves into outfits their 18-year-olds are wearing. Adult Americans are doing this to themselves, and they’ve ruined their children.
But the rest of us who want to mother and father our younger countrymen, who care about restoring our culture, what are we to do?
I posted this on Twitter, saying that we need the role of matron back. Young women are especially in need of guidance.
Many would-be matrons wrote back, pointing out that we can’t just re-insert the matron’s role into a generation that is taught to mock, hate, and silence their elder women. They’re right. Here are representative reponses—there were about ten times more of this kind of response:
Many, many women said almost the same thing. They’re called “Karens.” The young women act like total bitches to the older women.
I know they’re right, because I can see it happening.
So I turn this over to you. Given that we have at least two ruined generations (they have inverted values, they think old people are oppressive, and they think being incompetent and a slut is like a vibe and stuff), given that these young people were not parented with authority or confidence, what are we to do?
How, specifically, can we change this? What can we older people do? What would a matron’s or patriarch’s role look like today? How can we move toward this goal, even if we have to do things very differently than we would have 40 years ago?
Thank you for your comments.
To everyone: thank you for the discussion, and keep it coming.
I see that some people are getting short and snappy with each other. That happens online a lot. My approach is to be hands-off and let people argue it out unless someone gets to the point of being abusive. That hasn't happened, so I have nothing to say.
I do have a request, though, and it comes from someone (me) who often jumps too quickly and too harshly. It's one of my bad character traits, and it comes from fear. Fear of not being taken seriously, fear of being re-cancelled, and anger at being misunderstood. Maybe if you're a little quick to jump, those things might be going on for you, too.
The request, and it's to everyone: try a little bit harder to take other people's comments in good faith. Try not to assume that if they disagree with you, that they're saying you have no point, you don't make sense, and you're wrong. They may not be trying to communicate that at all.
This is my biggest failing in online communication. Sometimes I'm terrible at it. I'm going to keep trying.
Daily life in a very large retail environment has left me jaded in a way I am uncomfortable with. None of the basics of civil society exist any more. The traditional smile and greet gets you a look like someone just stepped in dog crap, no rules of the road in retail navigation, children completely out of control, trash thrown on the ground instead of a trash can. I found myself angry and resentful at the daily rudeness and withdrawing from interactions because who wants to subject themselves to the constant rudeness. I was miserable. I decided to do all of these things in defiance instead of obligation and am no longer bothered when people respond rudely. Viewing my politeness as defiance instead of an opportunity for abuse has saved my sanity and maybe done one tiny thing to restore a bit of civility.