Reminiscing, New World Order and Just Plain Getting Old!

I'll be the first to admit that I probably spend too much time "inside my head." Meaning... that I spend a lot of time just thinking and sitting in quiet contemplation.

Right before I started typing these words, I was thinking about the stereotype of old men sitting on their front porch, yelling at kids to "get off their lawn!"

Just an old crow...

No worries... I am not there... yet!

But it did get me to thinking about the way generations always seem to end up with certain rifts across which it is difficult for understanding to reach.

"Oh, I just don't understand those young whippersnappers!"

Sometimes it's the youth being frustrated by the inflexibility of "old people."

That's kinda where it goes, on the surface. But below that lies a pervasive feeling — which I am sure the elders of many generations have experienced — that the entire world is just going to hell in a handbasket.

To be honest, I'm not sure where the world is going... but I have been trying to work out my own generation's version of "posting 200 selfies to Instagram a day," if — in fact — there was an equivalent.

Fall is happenening...

My parents have been dead for more than a decade now, and some of the memories are fading... but I was trying to remember what it was about the world that made them worried about my generation. Who were we, becoming adults in the early 1980's?

What I remember was that my parents mostly hated the music I listened to (how cliché, right?) and were concerned about what they saw as my lack of ambition.

Or maybe what worried them most about my generation was that we were going to screw up the world because we felt like we had a "right" to be happy with our work, our relationships, our free time... and we considered that more important than just getting ahead and building a fat bank account.

Peaceful pond...

Our ostensibly "loose morals" bothered them, too. Our tendency to question the "just grin and bear it" paradigm they had been raised with.

But perhaps what I most have gotten out of this little thought exercise is that it is all but impossible to define the strengths and shortcomings of an entire generation.

Whereas I could loosely argue that I was part of the first generation to grow up fully knowing that they would not do as well as their parents, the truth is that there were lots of slackers among my peers, and there were also lots of "world builders."

But what kind of world were we envisioning?

Island in the sun

Mostly, I remember the people I knew in my 20's sharing the same hope that the "old gray Washington hawks" would hurry up and die off and take all their guns, tanks and wars with them. Already then we were starting to look around the world and realizing that the US was being run by conservative old white men who were hopelessly out of step with what was happening in the rest of the world... and worse, didn't think "the rest of the world" was of any importance.

Side note: I wondered if the government age thing still holds true, so I checked — in my native Denmark, only 24 of 180-ish members of parliament are over 60 years of age and the average age is 44; the AVERAGE age of US Senators is 61.8 years.

How can you expect a country to make progress into a new age when the people running the show are of an age where you typically grow fearful of change and start clinging to the known ways you're familiar with?

Meanwhile, I still don't know what to say to someone who posts 200 selfies a day to Instagram... and thinks you should be able to get whatever you want without having to do much — or pay much — for it.

Maybe blockchain technology and crypto-social communities hold the answer...?

Regardless, this is a new world; and the current situation set in motion by Covid-19 is perhaps a kick in the ass to get people out of their apathy to evaluate what really matters to them. What sort of "New World Order" are we moving towards, here?

Thanks for reading!

How about YOU? Do you think ALL generations have (and have had) philosophical rifts between them? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20200924 22:22 PDT
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