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distortingmirror
7 juin 2009

Each generation is convinced to be the last good one

A fascinating tendency across history is the belief that the next generation is "lost" or at least "worse" in a way or in an other than the current one. In all domains of social life, and particular education, respect and moral, the generation in power (roughly, today, people beyond 30 years) is convinced that the generation to come can not hold to the standards in place. Talk with your friends, listen to their disocurse on the "youth": you will notice a radical change of ton as soon as they start to work, found a family and earn good money. Some researchers have found 3000 year-old stone-written texts explaining exactly the same as what the media and the "elite" tell us today: the youth is undisciplined, lacks respect for authority, uninterested in political life and the common good, uninterested in school, and so on. How can we explain such a common trend across history? Why do we fear so much the generation after us? Lack of trust in others? Too much confidence in ourselves? I can only see a reaction of protection against the freedom of thinking and lack of attach to materialist interests that the generation in power sees, rightly or not, in the youth. Another explaination is that, sorry for the tautology, we have all been young, and we tend to compare how good we were (or thought we were) and how bad they are today. And we think we have the legitimacy to compare, precisley because we have been there once. In brief, "we don't need no" discourse on a hopeless youth.

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