It is not a new thing for the old to decry the young as lazy, irreverent or immoral. My generation is rightly said to believe little and honor less. This is true, in so far as it goes. We do not honor the gods of community, chastity or charity which our fathers threw down. We were taught not to honor them.
When the 60's ended and the Boomers grew up, they mostly accepted the traditions against which they had rebelled in their youth, but with one difference: The fallen idols of the gods were dusted off and placed not on public altars, but private ones. A man came back to the faith, a woman took responsibility for her own career, but it was an individual, personal thing. And so they taught us to live as well.
Those of us who came of age at the turn of the millenium learned that each of us has a duty to his principles and to himself. We learned that integrity mattered in a man, and kindness to others mattered in groups of men. We were instructed to be good teammates and good coworkers, not good Christians or good citizens.
This does not excuse us.
But duties are not what I wish to write on today, and that discussion will keep. This morning I asked myself why else we see the past as better than the future. One reason among many catches my interest: We are ignorant of the future.
Human beings quite naturally know that the past better than the present, for they have experienced it. Of the future we can hardly know anything, but the last fifty years teach us that we will not live the same lives as our fathers. Technology and mores move so much swifter in our day than they did in our grandfathers' that it is difficult to imagine our own lives in ten years, much less those of our children.
Imagination is required to explore the land of the future, but nothing is necessary to predict decline. It comes easily and one finds new things to denounce the more he denounces. I know many men who proclaim the impending moral and political downfall of America--very few of them reinforce their jeremiads with anything more than spit and fire. Why is tomorrow the day we must fall? Why did we not fall during the 1960's, with the Sexual Revolution within and the Soviet Union--a mightier challenger than any today--without? Is our day the worst that has ever dawned? Think of the 1950's, revered as a golden age. Did anyone then predict--could anyone then have forecast, much less clearly explained the minutiae of life in the 21st century?
I doubt it.
The difficulty lies in imagining what shape new mores and new community might take. The Internet is not community, and yet because of it I can (and regularly do) speak face-to-face with my father on the far side of the world. Some imagination is required to glimpse the world in which our children may live, and imagination is in short supply among the scoffers.
It is not that forecasting the future is impossible, nor that the old improperly perceive the faults of the young, but it is interesting to note the reasons why men tend to gloom--for us to take a man seriously when predicting good things, we would require rising stocks or a crystal ball.
I doubt it.
The difficulty lies in imagining what shape new mores and new community might take. The Internet is not community, and yet because of it I can (and regularly do) speak face-to-face with my father on the far side of the world. Some imagination is required to glimpse the world in which our children may live, and imagination is in short supply among the scoffers.
It is not that forecasting the future is impossible, nor that the old improperly perceive the faults of the young, but it is interesting to note the reasons why men tend to gloom--for us to take a man seriously when predicting good things, we would require rising stocks or a crystal ball.
