one common conception occurs concerning differences among men and women as being issues of “a man thing” or “a woman thing.” i dispute that there is really that much of a difference, that people are more similar than they are not and the actual differences between men and women are overstated. i think differences are individually based, not gender, race, etc.
one more conception, particularly shunned by me, is that there is a difference among kids from generation to generation. i don’t think generational differences exist as much as perceptions are tinted by the things going on in current life. when i don’t wear whatever clothes kids today wear, listen to the new hip music or other trends, is that cuz i am too old and don’t get the younger generation, or is cuz of the roads i have travelled and the experiences i have had? those haven't been on the popular path and, as such, not part of the popular opinion which make up blocks of thinking. i didn’t dress or act like other 17-year-olds when i was 17 myself, so why would i act or dress like other kids now that i am older?
in today’s terms, technology is used as a measuring stick for overall changes and life events. by that rationale, we should feel every six months is a new generation. the real issue is that people have an extremely hard time seeing their own lives and times in historical context. in other words, differences among eras can be confused with people being ego-centric. for much the same reason, we consistently face an impending doom, the coming rapture. from y2k to the end of the mayan calendar last december, and every year in between, people need to feel like their lives and times are the most important in human history. but is 2013 really that important? in the year 2213 will people be able to mention one thing that is happening right now? is 2013 as important as 1066, or even 1968, for example? in the end, life is not any different now than it has ever been. people still lie, cheat and steal, like any other time. nations still fight wars for territory or other economic gain and make it into a religious or cultural difference to hide truths. the horse of troy may be outdated by humvees and stealth aircraft, but the concepts and motives are exactly the same. the only things that change are the names and details. in the 1960s, people used a blender. in the 90s, it was a juicer. a different name for the product, same function. the ford’s and chevy’s of yesterday are now rusting in junk yards or have been turned into scrap metal just as the trucks people are waxing so dilligently at the car wash today will tomorrow's be scrap metal. TVs used to have tubes and bulbs and now they are flat, lcd screens. video games used to be in bulky home consoles, now they are handheld and portable just as telephones have become. but none of this changes the fact that people need to play and communicate and consume. we once had slaves shipped from africa. when that was outlawed, we used women and children as slaves. we went on to using prisoners for slave labor. a current method of choice has been illegal immigrants. there have always been slaves, there will always be slaves. who will be the slave population next? what matters is that the fact and way of life doesn’t change. people exploit people for their own gain.
i have commonly said is that certain person’s in one area or aspect of life serve the same the role as someone from a different place and time. many people have never understood what that meant, but for every person you encounter in one setting, there will be someone in a different setting who plays the same part. like in every play, there is a jester and a hero. like in every elevator, there is someone who thought it would be funny to fart. that type of person can be found in every setting. sometimes they have the same demeanor and sometimes even look the same. despite all the supposed differences between people, similarities are the norm. the same cycles of behavior happen over and over again throughout history.
i love seeing kids listen to new hip music as a way to escape the old crusty music of their parents. when kids caught up in the hysteria of the dope rhymes they hear right now wake up tomorrow with their own kids liking something that they themselves can't understand. that type of thing will continue happening. but we find that the music is not any different. someone like rihanna has been doing in more recent times what madonna did the other day. the difference between the two is not from a different generation, but a different style of life. and there have been numerous people to step up and claim the hip crown from year to year. take words from atribecalledquest in the song excursions “back in the day when i was a teenager, before i had status and before i had a pager, you could find the abstract listening to hip hop. my pops used to say it reminded him of bebop. i said well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles, the way that bobby brown is just ampin’ like michael.”
pagers may have given way to iphones, but the message is ageless. hip hop, a culture, like all other cultures, follows the same blue print. from one generation to the next, things work in very similar ways. cultural connections ring even truer. hip hop and metal came of age at the same time, ie in the same generation, but hip hop seems to speak more like a previous generation’s jazz than hip hop is identifiable with metal. birds of a feather flock together, as they say. and being of the same generation doesn’t make you of the same feather. for example, i could more easily see uma thurman pal-ing around with lana turner than i could see her with paris hilton. let’s take that example to another level.
take ralph waldo emerson, for example. ralph had characterized his mother’s “manners and character the fruits of a past age.” a certain country song i heard on the radio last year referred to his dad’s music as borderline abusive, but in time he gets it. harry chapin’s song cats in the cradle sees his child grow up to be exactly the same person. as ralph waldo emerson got older, he realized that his mother was doing all that was in her means. sure, kids today feel completely detached from their parent’s generation. but is that only a feeling? i argue yes. a kid in 2013 may feel like 1973 is ancient history. as emerson showed, kids in 1820 seemed to think parents who came of age in 1780 were archaic. but looking back historically, who today can see much difference between 1820 and 1780? the only thing different between generations is the similarity that kids need to create their own life.
i came of age at a time when video games were an advancing craze. when i was a child, video game consoles in homes were relatively new and kids who could own one generally did. when i was 16, most kids at least had the original nintendo. i did as well, for a little while, a hand me down version with a couple of hand me down games to play on a hand me down TV. throughout high school, kids played video games. and the next year’s kids did so progressively more, and so on through out the 90s. yet, now people like to think i don’t play video games because i grew up in a older generation. in my generation, people played them, but i didn’t then, as now. no different than now, there are many people my own age that play video games, while i still don’t. people today buy the newest phones, cars and such because they can. not because they need the technology, but more out of a need to fit in with trendsetters. and we certainly can’t confuse the need to be cool with a generational difference. kids in every generation seek to be cool as much as they seek to separate themselves from their parents. yeah, we have different types of gadgets than in the past, different types of cameras, phones, video game consoles, etc. and to some extent the new gadgets foster a different lifestyle, such as people getting killed by texting drivers, but the degree of differences like that are minimal. to a greater extent, each person’s demeanor determines how much they care about these things or get caught up in the latest trends. in most cases, people get caught up in the latest trends if they can (i.e., they have the necessary education on the subject, or the money to purchase new toys, etc.). for example, do you have an iOS7? maybe not, but i bet lots of junior high school kids in japan have something equivalently as good. does that make them of a different generation than the same aged kids in america? no, it means they have different opportunity.
i have rarely ever had a TV and most certainly have never paid for a TV. try to typecast that behavior into a single generation. so, thinking back to ralph waldo emerson, and the question of could you recognize a generational difference of a kid born in 1870 between that of a kid born in 1800? that’s harder to see because people in 2013 are outsiders to both. it’s as hard as trying to envision what today will look like in 2083. looking back at some of the technological advancements since 1970, changes seem to have come very quickly. but when a person looks back in 2083 or even 2213, the pace of technology advancements from 1970-2010 might seem to have taken entirely too long. after a certain point, emerson realized that though some differences existed (his mother was “one of those old fashioned women who grew up in boston wearing george washington’s name embroidered on her scarf”), he didn’t identify with differences as much as the more significant things. what was significant was that “she secured the essentials. she got the kids educated.” a poor single mother could at least get all her kids through harvard. imagine a poor kid in boston today even getting a chance to tour the harvard campus. if you wanna argue for generational differences, try to convince me using that argument! yet, it can not be generational. it is about finance, culture and opportunity. the differences that separate people of all times.
think about this more deeply… ralph waldo emerson was born in 1803. if the generation difference holds much water, then he should be like kids born in 1803 than in 1767, as his mother was. consider a japanese kid born in 1803 who had a mother born in 1767. do you think young waldo and the japanese boy would be more alike and the mothers alike, or would waldo and his mother be more alike than either would be to the japanese family? it’s kind of hard to prove, but i would bet that cultural differences being more significant, now as then, that the families would be bonded more strongly rather than being able to relate to foreigners on the other side of the world. the same goes on any level…country boys don’t understand city boys, poor kids play with other poor kids, co-workers without college education typically form cliques that don’t include those with college degrees, smokers share most gossip only with other smokers and so on… these types of relationships apply across all generations, because they are more easily able to identify with like minded people than people who simply share the same birthday.
i would even go so far as to say that zodiac signs have more relevance than generation identification. if all this isn’t convincing enough, take it straight from the late great utah phillips. he was a man who spent his life studying the underbelly of american culture and came away with some amazing wisdom. in the song bridges he scoffed when someone reduced folk music as being 60s stuff. a guy told him “you sing a lot about the past, you can’t live in the past.” to which utah said, “i can go outside and pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know and bring back in here and drop it on your foot. now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it? … anybody who told me i couldn’t live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if i remembered it would get me in serious trouble … that 50s 60s 70s 90s, stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don’t happen that way … packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas…” a good starter for a larger debate? ralph waldo emerson, utah phillips, and atribecalledquest are several great minds espousing the idea that generational differences are overrated, and the things that happen in one era can and do happen in every era.
finances, education, culture, opportunity…these things effect peoples lives to a great degree, generational influence is to a very minimal, if any, degree. generation arguments are a scapegoat keeping people from seeing the world in a more realistic and wholistic perspective. try to look at life, especially your own experience, from an outsider perspective now and then. that is very difficult to do, but will make you wise. and don’t get me started about differences between men and women.
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