Can we only understand our contemporaries? We live in a time where clashing ideologies of different generations are a daily occurrence, but can there be a common consensus once we put our judgement aside?
It’s easy nowadays to get confused by all the denominations of generations: so, let’s break them down a little. Notice: This is by far a generalization, so by no means does this necessarily mean that every single person will agree with the following categorization, but they are the common traits that have been re-occurring in different studies.
I’ll start with my grandparent’s generation, so let’s talk first about the “Silent Generation” that is situated before 1945. Needless to say, the influence on the population was primarily by the Second World War, the rise of nuclear weapons, the Cold War… Tough times, I think we can all agree on that. It’s a generation that grew up respecting authority, working with the system rather than rebelling against it, and having a “work hard” work ethic. A quote that is cemented in my brain comes from my Polish grandmother, who whenever I would go to her for advice would say “cold blood and the drive to succeed”, there was no space for being “touchy-feely”. Many might agree that most of their grandparents have/had this toughness about themselves, same here! And then add a pinch of the rough eastern European side to it! Although I must say, I’ve come to be very grateful for it, even though I am also well aware that it made me insensitive myself sometimes, but at the end of the day, this striving to get through it all and survive helps when life gets a little rough.
Next come Baby Boomers (1945-1960), a generation that witnessed the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement and higher educational standards. They started questioning the authorities and many of them were competitive workaholics, believing that hard work will get you to your goal.
Generation x (1961-1980) grew up with the rise of the personal computer, the idea of the “working woman”, and are often accused of being helicopter parents to Millennials/Gen Z. Helicopter parents are known to over-parent, to micromanage their children’s lives, which then results with the latter not knowing how to take decisions of their own, without feeling anxious and unsure about it. This phenomenon then became known as “Snowflake Generation”, which is used to describe Millennials/Gen Z.
Generation y or Millennials (1981-1997) have witnessed the beginning of the Internet, the rise of terror attacks and the invention of social media. They often get accused of being the “snowflake generation”, meaning they are overly sensitive and complain a lot, not appreciating how “easy” they have it.
Gen Z 1997 and onward, have not known a world without a cellphone or the internet. They usually have a strong digital presence and are very vocal about their opinions, often engaging in activism. They grew up with climate fear and are often seen as a generation that puts a lot of focus on prevalent mental health issues.
We live in an era where all these generations live on the same planet, which leaves us with a paradigm of different values, a different set of priorities, and cherry on top, different political opinions. If I talk to my grandmother about some feminist movements nowadays like the “free the nipple” phenomenon, I don’t really expect her to agree with it, or understand it for that matter, since she would question in what way that movement can be considered feminist. In her time, feminism tackled different issues, such as being able to attend a university, buying a house in your own name etc.
And just because the LGBTQ+ movement for instance is as obvious as the sunrise to some, doesn’t necessarily mean it is as easily comprehensible to let’s say someone’s grandfather, who has trouble understanding the concept of a person identifying themselves as “they” , or someone wanting to be married to a lamp (a marriage that I would personally love to attend to be honest!). I think it’s important to empathize with an older generation’s trouble to comprehend modern movements and their way of coping with it. It’s unreasonable for us to expect them to understand it all so effortlessly, just as we also sometimes lack the ability to understand where their reasoning comes from. An opinion is an opinion at the end of the day, whether someone agrees with it or not.
With that comes the prevalent issue of the “cancel culture”, which I personally find to be the summum of hypocrisy sometimes…In an era where people are proud to call themselves extremely tolerant, how can it then be that the moment something comes up that they don’t agree with, they “cancel” that opinion, and even worse, everyone seems to follow and participate in the “cancel culture”. I find it interesting how sometimes the very things that a generation tries to solve, in this case the act of intolerance, are rampant in their own everyday lives. Professor Jonathan Haidt has talked about something he coined “safetyism”, a moral culture that we nowadays live in, encompassing trigger aggressions, the cancel culture and so on…
We live in a “walking on egg shells” environment where overthinking how we phrase something without offending anybody, has become commonplace. I personally don’t relate to the incessant need for political correctness, as I don’t find it in accordance with the true notion of freedom of speech. On the one hand we pride ourselves on our freedom of speech, but how real and free is any of it, once we filter everything through a sieve of “try not to offend anyone”?
I firmly believe in Plato’s concept of having a “dialogue”. An open space, for people to share their opinions, thoughts, whether they agree on something, or not. I would even say that disagreements are incredibly important to the intellect, as long as they are not divisive. There should be no judgement, but a creative discussion between people who have a different opinion on something. In essence, I would even go as far as saying that being challenged about one’s opinion is absolutely essential! You can refresh your argument, learn a new point of view, maybe even further strengthen your argument or maybe you’ll end up changing your stance, just a bit. Sky is the limit once you become open to listening to different opinions, be it from different generations, on political beliefs, etc…
I believe that all of us carry the generational imprint of our parents and our own generation in one way or another, and we’ve all had difficulties shaking that decade-long cultivated imprint off. One day I catch myself complaining about people whining and being as they call “overly sensitive”, another day I celebrate how far we’ve come in talking about the importance of mental health, and the fragility of it. One day I might listen to an old Elvis Presley vinyl, cursing about nowadays lack of real instruments in modern music, the other day I might end up being at a rave, enjoying it…It seems to me then, that I’m like a walking contradiction, one day agreeing with one generation, the next day with another one.
And that is, I think, the essence of it all. If people were open enough to listen to what every generation thinks, believes in, I’m sure there would be a lot of things or levels that they could relate on, at the end of the day. Because believe it or not, our parents rebelled against their parents, just as much as our grandparents rebelled against the generation before them, in one way or another. It’s always easy to point the blaming finger at someone, but there is no productivity to it whatsoever. I’ve always found it questionable how you can actually compare people from different generations, and judge their actions or their views. How can someone judge something that they haven’t experienced themselves, only know through reading about it in history books or seeing it in movies…?
The judgement we pass is usually influenced by our era, our political movements, our friends…that’s a lot to take into account, isn’t it? Someone once told me that parents, in essence, are like children that have children; they stumble and fall, learning to walk somewhere along the way of the journey that is parenthood, without there ever necessarily being a finality to it, since you always learn and grow no matter what phase you’re in.
My grandmother, when I asked her whether she understood young people’s opinions, to my surprise answered swiftly, that she loves being around young people and talking to them so let me leave you with a very smart small talk I’ve had with her:
“So you actually like young people?”
“I love being with younger people and talking to them, they often come to me for advice and I love giving it.”
When I asked whether she’s not of the cliché opinion that young people are accused of not “knowing the harshness of the world”, like for instance surviving a World War, she says: “Every information I get, from every talk that I have, with every different person, is a different type of information, but it’s still something new and different. Of course they don’t understand war per se, nor will they understand how it is living through it. You can look at someone’s scar and empathize with it, but that doesn’t mean you have that scar on yourself, being able to feel the pain of it. I guess that is where the older generation’s harshness comes from…”
Older generations were more about repressing than expressing, and that is perfectly fine. On some days I love our generation’s freedom of expression, and on other days I’d rather have some people express themselves less, to be honest…Our generation is loud, which in essence is a good thing. But sometimes, by lowering the volume you hear the sound of a different song playing, not far from you, equally as good, just different. But who am I to tell someone what to do?