[PLUG] Personal Documentation

[Felix Lee]

Jeme A Brelin <jeme at brelin.net>:
> > someone using the phrase "back in my day" is probably joking. it's a
> > lighthearted acknowledgement that the world is changing faster than
> > anyone can keep up with, which makes everyone an ignorant fool from time
> > to time.
> If that were the case, it would never be anyone's day.

yes, it's never anyone's day.  young people think they're close
to knowing everything they need to know.  old people are not so
sure.  this is a gross generalization, of course.

> We're all a bit behind in most fields of human endeavor and understanding
> and way behind in some, but that doesn't mean we get to stop learning once
> we reach puberty or even retirement.

I'm not saying I'm going to stop learning sometime, and I doubt
the woman you were talking to was saying that either.  "back in
my day" is kind of a shorthand way for people to set expectations
and defuse awkwardness.

if I say something like "back in my day, we didn't have graphing
calculators", it means I learned how to solve problems without
them, I haven't learned how to solve problems with them, it
hasn't seemed important yet to learn anything about them.  so if
you use a graphing calculator to show me something, what you do
might not make any sense to me, because the connection between
how you do things and how I do things might not be obvious, and
your idea of what's "simple" or "obvious" might be completely
different from mine, so you'll have to be patient with me.

this type of interpersonal interaction goes against a cultural
schema of "older = wiser", which could be awkward if I project a
message like "you're too young to explain anything to me" or you
project a message like "you should know this already" or other
such implicit messages.  fortunately, there's an opposite
cultural schema, "old dinosaur", which lets you relax in a role
of superior knowledge, and I don't mind being in the dinosaur
role for the purposes of this interaction.

there are certainly problems with following the dinosaur schema
too literally.  I could have said something like "talk to me like
I'm 6 years old", but that has its own set of problems.  so let's
assume we're both reasonable people and can get through this
awkward inequality without too much fuss.  and if I have to
consciously analyze all this and explain it in detail, then I'm
being condescending by not acknowledging your own awareness of
this situation we're in, so instead I've pulled out a
semi-automatic dinosaur cliche to get past this.

it's like flirting.
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