<p>Griping about young people has always cracked me up. Who the heck has raised that generation - or rather, failed to raise them properly? Oh, that’s right: the same people complaining about them.</p>
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<li>Physical differences. These are less now than before.</li>
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<p>My grandparents grew up in a world barely lit by electricity - extremely minimal in the E. Europe of their youth. I had b&w tv. The internet is not as big a difference in your daily life as central heating and light bulbs and cars over horses.</p>
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<li>Cultural. </li>
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<p>This depends. Immigrants experience vast change in 1 generation but the big generational shift was the breakdown of the traditional old/young relationship in the 60’s and the rise of a true counter-culture fueled by drugs and draft resistance. I don’t see anything as large now as that.</p>
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<li>Resources. </li>
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<p>To me, the big difference between my father’s generation and mine is the absence of widespread poverty across ethnic groups. My dad went to good schools in poor but decent neighborhoods - an experience that really doesn’t exist today for the poor - as the huge mass of people, both immigrants and 2nd generation or more, were lifted both out of poverty and then back into it in the Depression and then out with the War. The lack of that widespread experience is, to me, driving much of the selfishness of modern US society; there is less feeling we’re in this together and more that it’s about what I got.</p>
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<p>Some say that it’s because of the feminist movement – that smart young women don’t go into teaching in the same numbers they used to; they’re now becoming lawyers and so forth.</p>
<p>People of every age have, and always will, comment on the lack of experience of those who are younger. Because one truly does learn by experience. </p>
<p>There was a great deal I knew at 19 that I did not know at 15. Surely that is true for you, OP? </p>
<p>That being the case, can you not imagine that it is, indeed, possible that people who are 50 have learned things that they did not know at 19? And perhaps they hear in what you are saying the very positions, attitudes, and beliefs they espoused at that age but have put aside after hard-won experience? And could you not imagine that you will also learn and experience things in the next 30 years that will cause you to think differently?</p>
<p>My daughter assumes that her parents and grandparents have always been old fuddy-duddies. My parents were literally friends with the poet Allen Ginsberg. He came over to our house to hang out with them when I was a pre-schooler. Now, my father is voting Republican. What explains this? Not “generational” differences. Time, experience, lessons learned.</p>
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<p>Well, all those are true. They were just as true for us as they are for you. If you know it all by age 19, then you’re the first in the history of human development.</p>
<p>Even though life experience has given me insight that my 19 year old child doesn’t have, I feel that I still have a lot to learn.</p>
<p>My grandparents have grown more liberal in time, same with my parents. I reject the idea that experience and age almost automatically makes you more conservative about things. </p>
<p>I personally have never been raised in a family or with friends where there is a generational divide. I’ve never thought of my parents as old “fuddy-duddies” and my parents and their friends have never treated me like a young-un who knows nothing. </p>
<p>With that said, I recognize that this is a problem as old as time and is in pretty much every known culture. For those who do see previous generations as out of touch and bitter old people, we can take solace in the fact that we don’t ask dead ancestors for advice like many African cultures. Imagine the generational divide there :p</p>
<p>My grandparents have grown more liberal in time, same with my parents. I reject the idea that experience and age almost automatically makes you more conservative about things. </p>
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<p>I don’t think the comment was meant that way … rather, I think it was meant to illustrate that our experiences shape what we become & that what we become may be 180 degrees from what we once were. </p>
<p>It is absolutely true that experience is a great teacher. No matter how much we think we knew when we were young adults, we later realize we had so much to learn. When I look back on how I handled situations in my first real job, I now know I could have handled them so much better. I did the best I could with the experience I had … and I sure wish I had had a mentor. Mentors can help us avoid mistakes. The old folks who try to give you advice are only trying to impart their wisdom & possibly help you avoid making mistakes they themselves made.</p>
<p>The world has changed so much in the last 50 or so years of my life, but I know for a fact that every generation experiences its own huge changes. There will always be some tension between generations, but it’s not a problem … just a fact of life.</p>
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<p>Sorry that wasn’t meant towards anyone specific. I just mean in general, younger generations tend to think that all “old” people grow into conservative old “fuddy-duddies”. I reject this idea and I find that older people tend to surprise me.
I wish generations would listen to each other before they form assumptions is more what I meant.</p>
<p>Thanks for your post, DeskPotato. I agree strongly.</p>
<p>I’d have to admit that I have played the age card once or twice on CC. Generally it is in a context where I feel that some poster is reacting callously to another poster, and that bothers me. As one ages, one sees more and gains broader perspectives as a result of having close friends with many, many different experiences. In my case, life experience has promoted stronger empathy with others.</p>
<p>I should add that I am not agreeing that people grow more conservative as they age–just that experience tends to be worth something.</p>
<p>An interesting illustration in the literary context, I think, comes from Robert Frost’s poem Directive. I read that in a college literature class and completely failed to understand it. QMP read it in a college literature class and had the same experience–but asked me about the poem before deciding to write a paper on a different topic. With the advantage of years, I understood the poem the second time around.</p>
<p>OF course there’s a “generation gap”–always was and always will be.</p>
<p>Remember the old saying “Ve grow too soon old und too late shmart”? :D</p>
<p>I remember reading Marjorie Morningstar in college and completely identifying with the young Marjorie. Reading it 20 years later, I was appalled by her naivete and found I could identify with the older, settled Marjorie. Don’t know why this surprised me…</p>
<p>Wikiquotes says that quote from Socrates is misattributed, it is from a play by Aristophanes.</p>
<p>[Youth</a> nowadays - Wikiquote](<a href=“http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Youth_nowadays]Youth”>Youth - Wikiquote)</p>
<p>There’s a few other good quotes there.</p>
<p>Wikiquotes is not a reliable source (nor is Wikipedia, BTW). In any event, whether it’s Socrates or Aristophanes, the point is the same.</p>
<p>I wasn’t arguing the point.</p>
<p>Here’s another quote of dubious origin, but it is entertaining nonetheless:</p>
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Attributed to Peter the Hermit, 1274 A.D.</p>
<p>Just watched the entire Marjorie Morningstar movie on youtube. I am positive we scared my folks over the years with some of our choices of beaus over the years, but fortunately we didn’t chase any Noel Airman or his kin. Natalie wood was very attractive–too bad she died so young and mysteriously.</p>
<p>Indeed, I didn’t mean to imply that people inevitably become more conservative over time.</p>
<p>Just that people do learn, grow, adapt, and change over time.</p>
<p>It is remarkable how similar my 19 year-old daughter’s views are to my views at the age of 19. They are idealistic and somewhat naive views which I understand but which, in my case, have been tempered with a dose of realism. It didn’t occur to me until recently that these were also my parents’ views when they were 19. At 19, I thought others who didn’t see things my way didn’t understand, or didn’t know the facts I knew. </p>
<p>One of the most important things I’ve learned since that age is how little I know, how narrow my own experience is, and how much I have to learn.</p>
<p>I don’t understand what is the topic being discussed here…
Could someone bring me up to check with a small summary?</p>
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It’s an open discussion.</p>
<p>Ok I think I understand now:
Basically I don’t think there is much of a generation gap rather an AGE GAP.
Really the difference between me and my mom is that she been through more and learned more. There is nothing major that really separate us except I’ll be learning more than her but she will still experience more than me and I will be experiencing different thing. That is an education gap, not a generation gap.
Even as I see my grandparents. There isn’t a generation gap. They just learned things differently. But I notice the gap… when I learn they don’t learn a new way to do something until you tell them. That is the generation gap. </p>
<p>^This whole post made no sense to me so I’ll just post it anyway.</p>