“When I look at the younger generation, I despair of the future of civilisation.” — Aristotle, 300BC
Not exactly an original thought, is it? Who among us over 40-somethings hasn’t worried about the future of the world because we just don’t understand kids today? And yet, if you’re like me, you are also annoyed that over the years you have apparently turned into your own father.
My father was a good, strong man in every way; he was a devoted and loving dad and a good provider. He could make me think, make me smile and he hugged me when I needed courage. But at some point he just stopped going along with all the nonsense in the world.
As he got older my dad used to rail against the collapse of American values, corruption in American politics and the loss of American jobs (to China, mainly.) When he whittled it all down he figured all the problems in this country started in millions of homes at empty dinner tables while moms as well as dads conducted their own lives outside of the house. He never expressed his disdain for women working outside the home but I think he felt it. Kids were left to raise themselves, he’d say, parents were allowing kids freedoms they weren’t ready to enjoy responsibly.
Life, my dad thought, had gone down the crapper. As he put it to me more than once, “I like people individually but as a species we’re not worth a damn.”
Sometimes I think that way, too. It annoys me, not because I’m channeling my dad but because it feels like I’m digging in my heels and giving up. I’m edging closer to the rocking chair and I don’t want to go there.
Yesterday the Rocky Mountain News published its last edition. Newspapers across the country are losing their grip on the Information Age. There’s just too much competition from electronic gadgets and cyber sources. Nobody has time to read anymore. “News” is gleaned from short sound bites on television and radio. Broadcasting is a technology slipping into history
Nobody wants to talk these days. We’d rather text and tweet than actually have a conversation. Expressing ourselves electronically is easier and more efficient; it removes the inconvenience of having to listen.
As I watch the world evolve beyond my personal comfort zone I have come to understand why each succeeding generation eventually reaches a point where it can’t or simply refuses to keep up. We all fall victim to the inevitable grip of nostalgia and are given to wistful expressions of “Back in my day…” We long for a simpler time that probably wasn’t really simpler, we were just younger, more curious and more resilient.
We just get tired, I think. That’s okay but when we do that we have to accept a very hard truth: time is passing us by and our culture won’t stop to wait for us to catch up.
Whether that is aging gracefully or quitting, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I’m going to try to keep up for awhile.
(Copyright 2009, D.L. Williams. All rights reserved.)