Those kids should pay my pension! - a generational conflict

 

(photo by pixabay, grossmutter-und-grossvater-halten-kind-auf-dem-schoss-302083)

Those kids should pay my pension! - a generational conflict

By Maurice

Sitting in the local pub with people of all ages, I often hear discussion about the gradual deterioration in the personal qualities of subsequent generations. Older folk especially often voice concerns about the future and what younger people can or cannot do to make it a bright one, as they claim to have done.

Unfortunately, a common way in which the older, ‘hard-working’ generations perceive the new, ‘lazy’ and ‘self-finding’ lifestyle of ‘Gen Z’, those born after 1996, is that ‘these young people can never achieve what we did’. In fact, however, this is a widespread misconception for the very reason that times have changed, and younger people simply don’t have the same goals as older generations, who they may even blame for the problems of the present. What’s more, the dismissive attitude of older generations towards what their offspring are doing is not helping to end but rather is exacerbating the ‘war’ between the different generations.

From Gen Z’s responses to whatever survey you choose to read, it is clear that younger people are actively trying to shape their lives differently than their parents or grandparents. They anxiously say: ‘I don't want to end up like a grumpy old man or woman, bitter about social change, who doesn't understand how to live an open-minded life’. In the face of issues such as climate change and growing financial insecurity, it is only natural that they first focus on their own lives before worrying about living them according to the outdated preconceptions of older generations.

The different age groups’ conceptual framework for understanding what our lives should be is not the same. No one in Germany has to rebuild cities destroyed after a war, nobody has to interact with computers as though they were a completely new technology. So, the only logical consequence is that each generation must be free to choose its own life goals according to how it perceives its external world, and whatever our age, we should respect each other’s decisions.