Oblique ranting

[caddyman]

May be I am getting old and weary, I don’t know. I don’t feel it, most of the time and I should hope not, aged 48. At the risk of sounding trite or clichéd, 50 is the new 40, 60 is the new 50 etc. Age is as much a mental as a physical thing and I have long stated that I refuse to grow up, having seen what it does to people.

That said, I find myself tiring of the bright-eyed idealism and generally unrealistic world views of people I meet and who ought to know better. No-one objects to a kid (really anyone up to around 24-25 years old) looking upon their elders with exasperation because they refuse to do things personally and as a group that seem so simple and which would sort them and the world out properly, once and for all. Kids have no sense of history; everything is new and the answers are simple.

Most people are shaken out of this world view progressively between the ages of 20 and 30. They may hold on to their idealism to an extent, but they recognise that answers are hard to come by and certainly not easy. Despite that, a great many people fall back upon intellectual laziness and express trite opinions that their own experiences should lead them to question.

Let’s abandon this and adopt that. Why? Because it feels nice, or because it’s fluffy and the world should be pretty and pink and soft and not hard and pointy.

But when it all goes wrong and the pink and fluffy experiment fails and the shit hits the fan, it’s those who deal with the real world that have to come barrelling in and sort it out. Have a bit of idealism by all means, but let enough reality intrude to temper it with something workable.

Comments

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

Or at the very least have the grace to shrug and say "well, I tried but I guess it just didn't work in practice" rather than whinge too much.

[irdm.livejournal.com]

Speaking of being 50, I found that the number 50 itself is very easy, nay automatic, to compare and contrast other folk's ages as they scamper past.

[itsjustaname.livejournal.com]

*applause*

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

PArdon me sir but your experience is showing. This is why no-one under 40 should be allowed in government, they are still in nappies -

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

Hurrah Sir ! Hurrah !

May the ‘steel toe-capped boot of experience’ be swiftly applied to the ‘arse of inexperience’ (or should that ‘inexperienced arse’.....I’m get confused in my old age/cynicism you see).

Sentiments worthy of Sir Charles Grandiose, sadly missed these five (goodness, is it really that long?) long years now !

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Imagine my surprise at setting a hypothetical fuse in one direction; scampering gleefully behind cover to watch the ensuing fun and having the bang go off behind my back!

I’m sorry if some of the shrapnel from my bombast hit something fleshy; I didn’t realise that you were standing so close.

I’m not entirely sure why you have come out with all guns blazing, unless you know or are related to my rather-more-youthful-than-me colleague who managed to come out with some utter drivel when yes, he ought to know better.

To give you the sense of history you seek in your final, you know, sentence, I refer you back to rants I have made from time to time on the subject that occupies my working days: housing finance. Colleague of mine assayed an opinion on changes that should be made that betrayed an appalling lack of understanding of the system. It was a repackaging of the so-called “fourth way” for council housing, which effectively assumes that we as a Department are sitting on a mountain of gold and occasionally nip down to the basement to count it. You can Google the “fourth way” by the way, if you want to know more. Just make sure that you include council housing in the search. It is a nicely thought out solution to a finance problem that looks oh so compelling until you realise that it would involve additional taxes and public expenditure of around £1.5 billion simply to maintain the status quo.

Well, we can manage to have a poor status quo for precisely £1.5 billion less, because we have it now.

I am all for finding a way of improving our sorry lot, and I dare say that some idealism will be involved on the part of the person or persons who devise the methodology. We all acknowledge that the current system is flawed, but better minds than mine have failed to find a workable solution. So I reserve the right to rail against insipient and uninformed stupidity on the part of those who should know better.

“Older does not necessarily mean wiser. It does often mean intractable, jaded, bitter and cynical.” There you have hit the nail on the head. The idea that there is a simple way out of the problems we are trying to cope with after many years of political neglect, are being bandied around by older, paternalistic, idealistic idiots who think they have the answers, but whose arguments are based upon the unquestioning acceptance of old dogmatic beliefs and built on ill-informed suppositions. This is where idealism needs to be tempered by realism; where they hold “opinions that their own experiences should lead them to question."

As I said, no-one objects to a kid being idealistic; they have no sense of history. But these people “should know better.”

“Old dogs, new tricks, as it were.”

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

Given Phil's earlier posts that day, I had jumped to exactly the same conclusion regaring the target of your oblique rant.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That had eluded me, at least on a conscious level, until I saw his response to my comment over there and started putting 2 and 2 together. I have been umming and ahhing about screening or deleting my comments, because I wrote the above in a fit of pique before I read his comments on his LJ - that's the problem with reading things out of order on LJ notify.

Having re-read his comment above, it doesn't come across quote as snarky as it did when I was in the office last night, annoyed with work in general.

Just deleted and reposted this comment because I realised I'm on my own LJ. Duh.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

No problems, Squire.

It does highlight the limitations of the written word though; we both managed to get upset with things that would have passed unnoticed if said face to face.

If you'll excuse the language it's phrased in, I've unlocked the comment I wrote while in a bad mood above. Skip past the snarky bits and the story is there. You might have noticed that any talk of the office winds me up these days!