That is, how much do you feel you belong in your generation?
I feel similar to other Americans my age in that I have close relationships with my parents and I prefer computers over televisions, but I'm at odds with my generation when it comes to multitasking and social networking. The historical period I sympathize with most is the Enlightenment, but I have only a superficial understanding of its history.
As I psychologist, I feel aligned with behaviorism, so I'm not entirely happy with how behaviorism has fallen out of favor over the past fifty years. While I'm not against postulating or studying purely mental phenomena, as John B. Watson was, I agree that the proper goal of psychology is the prediction and control of behavior. I fear that the "box models" of cognitive psychology, which describe mental operations in an elaborate fashion without making many concrete, quantitative predictions about behavior, may do more harm than good. One way in which experimental social psychology is more behaviorist than cognitive psychology is that it is more likely to involve the prediction of intuitively interesting behavior one otherwise couldn't predict. Cognitive psychology, by contrast, feels more like post-hoc explanation.
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I'm not dead yet.
I definitely feel like a modern Michigander. While I may yearn to spend time outdoors, I don't feel that technology has precluded me from being able to enjoy it or has had any other negative effects on my life by any fault of my own. I do long for the days when people focused more on each other and less on their phones (but only in voluntary social situations; when I'm with a stranger in an elevator I definitely have my nose in my phone or else just stare stonefaced ahead).
I don't really get all the psychology terms there, but yet you somehow still make me wax nostalgic for the good old days of psychology, when things made sense!
I mean, the question at hand is difficult, though. Kelsey, my girl friend, once described me (upon being prompted by a friend of the faily to say "what is he like?") as "well, I think he was just born in the wrong time"
That being said, can I really say I was born in the wrong time? I don't know. I know I rather don't like society and the direction that it is headed, but then again, the direction it came from isn't much better! Slavery and oppression have been lifted so man could race headlong into enslaving himself to debauchery and degradation. At least being trodden down and beaten by the cruel society of yesteryear, one could still have dignity!
Ah well. People have always been more or less the same. Though I still think it would be cool to have a sword, back when that kind of thing was normal. Really what I'm saying is I would like to be in the game Morrowind, but there never was a time really like that. Or Super Mario RPG, or Paper Mario... a fantasy land, but it lacks an equivalent in the real world.
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