Remember, Remember the 9th of November
I was jokingly using the phrase generational amnesia the other day to describe people’s behavior when they’re no longer children and they start to believe their generation was better than the current ones they see. However, I decided to Google “generational amnesia” to see what the real definition is and I was surprised to find out that I wasn’t too far off base. My use of it stems from seeing and hearing so many people my age sound like our parents and grandparents when it comes to entertainment, behaviors, fashion, and general things that are cyclical, not necessarily better or worse.
I remember when I was about 17 years old, I was talking to my grandmother who was almost 80 years old. She was telling me how much she hated my parents music and how much it sounded like garbage to her. The specific band on her personal chopping block? The Beatles. She was turned off by the whimsical nature of their tunes, stating that it sounded like they did too many drugs before they recorded their music. Granted, she might have had a point there BUT The Beatles are legendary and iconic in the music world. So, her critique did nothing but make me laugh. She cited some other groups that she considered not good music that my parents actually listened to and I was shocked because my parents are the reason I love music. Their taste was the best because they didn’t just listen to the stereotypical music of a Black person who grew up in the 60s and 70s; they enjoyed music from a plethora of genres AND decades.
However, they have also been guilty of calling the music of my youth trash just like my grandmother felt about theirs. I can recall my dad going on a small rant about how unfit Too Short, NWA, The Delinquents, Jodeci (he assumed they were rappers because of how they dressed LOL), and even 2Pac was for the radio. He detested gangster rap but enjoyed some of the lighter hearted tunes (see: Will Smith and Heavy D). My father genuinely believed that the music of his time was far better than my generation’s, forgetting that no new wheels had been invented when it came to the content.
Music is an easy thing to bring up but older generations will also swear on their own lives that the youth of current generations do more drugs, have more sex, are more disrespectful and lazy, and also too sensitive. It’s a boring ass song that it seems like all adults are doomed to sing once they hit 30+. They forget that they were once teenagers attempting to figure out life while everything around them seemed to change. They also forget that the children of our current era are direct results of the adults raising (or not) them.
The article Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet on the BBC website stated, “It’s certainly true that older generations can fail to remember what it was to be young. With age, there comes a predictable derision of youth that seems to afflict almost every demographic cohort over the age of 35 years or so… Generational trashing is actually eternal human behaviour… since at least 624 BC, people have lamented the decline of the present generation of youth relative to earlier generations… The pervasiveness of complaints about ‘kids these days’ across millennia suggests that these criticisms are neither accurate nor due to the idiosyncrasies of a particular culture or time - but rather represent a pervasive illusion of humanity… Every generation is handed a world shaped by their predecessors - and then seemingly forgets the facts.”
I find myself reminding other adults even as young as 30 that nothing we see is new. Apparently it’s common to forget how we’ve changed over the years from being a newborn. It’s almost like people have told themselves they’ve always been the mature, well-adjusted person they believe themselves to currently be… when that isn’t the case and never has been. The article goes on to say that this generational amnesia extends to how we see the entire world and I agree.
And here is where we can say that previous generations are different. Technology has advanced so much over the years that yes, the technology of my grandparents, parents, and mine, is significantly different from my daughter’s generation. But the constant fact is that each generation had advancements in technology that changed everything around us and the next generation in line has benefitted and suffered from the changes. The article gets very serious and starts talking about the generational changes associated with climate change. While very interesting, that would shift this conversation into a different direction I’m not writing about right now.
The point of all this is to remind the reader, whether young or old, that it’s all cyclical. And all the time and energy spent on spouting “kids these days” rhetoric could be spent sharing experiences so something can actually change. Once again, the problem and solution resides with the adults.
