I notice in the comment columns of the UK press, there is quite a lot of inter-generational rage on the part of younger generations at the Baby Boomer generation for having somehow stolen the goodies and making miserable the lives of those trying to get started in life. There may be something in this, though the economist in me says that each year the world more or less consumes what it produces, and it is hard to squirrel food or services away. The financial claims on goods and services may be different. But I guess that each generation would not be here, if the previous generation had not invested in its up-bringing in terms of food, housing, health care and education. Humans take about 20-35 years to become independent these days. How much that is worth may be debated, but there it is. But the rage may reflect this extended dependence period, exacerbated by the cost of housing. There is nothing quite like being dependent on others to make us angry. Elder care is a whole other source of conflict that I will post on separately.
Bruce Wexler in his excellent book ‘Brain and Culture’ throws some interesting light on inter-generational conflict. In his view, the years from birth to ten years old see the human brain at a very plastic stage, in which parental and environmental imprinting more or less dictates brain structure. After the age of ten, the human brain during teenage years sees a struggle to integrate itself and form a separate identity more or less successfully. Hence the terrible teen years. Finally, in the adult stage the brain becomes increasingly rigid and less able to change, less plastic to outside influences. It tends to try to make the world conform to how it feels it should be, given the rather rigid world view rather than how it is. As the Torah says, as adults we tend to: ‘See the world as we are, not as it is’
This three stage process is not a big problem in traditional, unchanging societies, which largely no longer exist. However the world is changing very fast and the imprinting in the infant stage is increasingly done by media or peers that reflects a radically different world from that of the parents. So the imprinting is creating a different world, which in teenage years is being imprinted, and fixed, and which distances the growing teen from the world of his/her parents. And the end state adult world is now very different from that of the parents’, so conflict continues inter-generation-ally.
So what is to be done? Well knowing about the process is a start so it is not about moral failings or individual orneriness is a start. It may also be a case where this awareness can drive some inter-generational empathy. Coming to understand the world the adults grew up in and the new emerging world on both sides. But much research in recent years suggests the adult brain retains a considerable plasticity in later life if it is actually encouraged to learn new stuff. So part of the answer is for adults to continue to learn and interact with the emerging new world, perhaps with their kids are their guides. I try to do a lot of that.
Finally, there is an angle associated with immigration. Second generation immigrants are living in a world even more than usually different from their parents and can become fundamentally disoriented between parent world and outside world. This is the generation that may be attracted to fundamentalist solutions to gain some stability in the conflict between worlds. Not surprisingly a proportion of terrorist originate in this second generation. Understanding of what is going on might help provide awareness to this generation and avoid the plummet into fundamentalism and violence. Education systems can of course adapt to this process whether it involved normal generational difference or the even stronger effects of immigration first versus second generation conflict.
This is Bruce who is at MIT:
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