Talkin' about our generations

The “generation gap” will always be present.

The movie “Gran Torino” left me thinking about the generation gap I’ve experienced with family, friends and coworkers. At times it is a minimal disagreement, other times they are pretty severe.

A 78-year-old Clint Eastwood directed himself in a movie about a Korean War veteran and his interaction with a neighboring Asian family, in particular a teenage boy.

The film displays the different views between the aging man and the teenager, and it started me thinking.

I believe we learn about our world while growing up. Morality is provided by parents, churches and our culture. We tend to retain things our parents say and believe. For some, they resurface after the “rebellious teenage” period is over.

While growing up in the 1980s, I learned communists were evil people bent on destroying America for its capitalist ways. As I got older, I  viewed communism as a failed form of government and the people from these countries need better education about capitalism.

Smoking was once viewed as not only acceptable and cool, but healthy. As generations continued growing up, we learned cigarettes will kill you.

There are times I do not understand people older than me. When this happens, I occasionally feel the need to stop and think about their generation and its morals and culture. How they view the world is different. Not wrong, just different.

Their experiences provide a filter to how they view things, just as the next, younger generation does.

I admit I do not understand why younger generations want to wear pants drooping down off their hips, or piercing their face for jewelry, or the lack of comprehension that the world will not bend itself around a young person’s will.

Here too I need to think about the world they are growing up in and compare it to mine. Theirs is very different. The “Cold War” is a chapter in their history books, just as the obsession with text messaging will be in their children’s.

If we believe everyone holds the same ideas and morals, we are in for more misunderstandings, arguments, fighting and a bleaker world in 2009. Do you fully agree with what your grandparents think? Your parents? Your children? Your grandchildren? We are all from different versions of our world.

But some things are the same. We all understand love, friendship, kindness and generosity, for a few examples. But many basic ideas change with the culture of each generation.

Freedom today is different than the ideal taught to my parents, grandparents and me. But the FBI listening to American citizens’ phone calls, without cause or the protection a warrant offers, might be part of freedom to the next generation.

I used to think the people responsible for the generation gap were the older people. But it really is each generation. Older, younger, same age – we all think we have the right view on the world and the others should respect us and learn why they should agree with us.

But it won’t happen. My generation learned where my parents’ generation failed and we are arrogant enough to think we know all the answers.

If we did know all the answers, good old Generation X would take time to understand the Baby Boomers, Generation Y and the Millenniums.

Then we could start building bridges across the gap.

Bill Stevenson is the Columbia Basin Herald’s managing editor. He’s a geezer amongst a very young staff of Millenniums. Lord help him.