As a young, 21st century adult, I feel like have been able to experience both the most progressive and wonderful changes the world as seen, as well as the most detrimental. But, with that comes this sense of despair from my inability to incite progressive change from those older than I that gives way to heartbreak for those younger than me who are stuck in a cyclic inability to think for themselves because of what we have created in their minds. I can honestly say that I believe my age group, the strange middle way between the Millennials and Gen Z is one of the most open minded, free-thinking groups of people. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that there are those who don’t think for themselves, those guided by bias and social influence. But yet I still wonder how my rag-rag generation could help save others from the bottomless pit of mindless manipulation that dictates our society.
I know what you’re thinking, ah jeez another feely millennial here to complain about the baby boomers. So, before I start, I’d like it to be known that I personally stand on the belief that defining someone by a label, without personally knowing them, only stops the creation of constructive, unbiased thoughts. With that being said, I also want you to know that I do not intend to bash on the Boomers, this is just my observation of how all the different generations interact within the world. Besides, how could I degrade the very people who raised me? After all, the Boomers are the ones we gave birth to the Millennials, and the Millennials to Gen. Z. The whole idea of labeling generations is just to show how life has continued cyclically through time from parent to child. Which is why I feel it is necessary to break the cycle of traditional thought between parent and child; why we should start to encourage our children and ourselves to think freely of the world beyond our little reality.
This whole train of thought came about as I attended a lecture by an Islamic scholar hosted by my school, only to see that the majority of those in attendance where a lot older than me. Instantly, my heart filled with dread as the Q&A portion came up, because, I thought, that these older people would most likely be very harsh and judgmental of this man who is dissimilar to the majority of the older conservative, Christians around me. But, as they started to ask questions, I was thoroughly surprised to find that they weren’t here to be argumentative, but genuinely wanted to educate themselves. To say I was shocked was an understatement. I expected some sort of impatience or detestation to be passed on this man, but none came.
So then I started thinking, why did I feel like these older people were going to behave so terribly? The best answer I could come up with to debunk my bias is that I have been living under the whole idea of the adult brain as being akin to something that you can’t teach “new tricks to”. From examples in my life, and around the country, I have formed this idea in my mind that all those older than me are easily more excitable and rash when approaching globalized content nowadays. Maybe due to the fact that the world wasn’t as small when they were younger, or maybe due to the fact that the content of education has increased tremendously over the last few years, but I’ve noticed that the generation’s above me just haven’t been able to think broadly in terms of the “Greaters” of the world. The Greater Good is given up for the good of oneself. The Greater Issues are far more localized. And the Greater Picture is ten times too small. Globalization has seemed to forced closed the minds of the older generations, and thus in turn oppresses the us younger ones by either enclosing our thoughts in the concepts of old or restricting our views to what they want us to see.
Don’t think that we, as parent-child generations, have formed our own realities separate from the world?
Well, if it says anything I literally come from an area nicknamed “The Bubble”. Due to its secluded quality of life in comparison to the cities all around it, a quality of life built up by its founders and carried on by its children, it has become so renowned by its nickname. People from all over the state know what The Bubble is the second I speak of it because it is so wildly known as the perfect little town, living in its own perfect little world. When I was younger, I never understood why people called it that, I honestly never even thought about the negative connotation that hides behind the secluded concept of our town. But slowly as I grew up and traveled further, saw the world clearer, I understood: the people of my town have it made. Our adults can do what they please, going on expensive trips whenever. Our schools have a high-standing educational base, and exceptional tools. Our children grow up without worrying about what they will eat or toys they will play with because they can have it all. Now, mind you, I’ve always lived on the outskirts of this bubble, on two separate sides of the county, and with that I have been able to also see how, in comparison, those around us have nothing. On one side of us are worn down projects riddled with the crimes associated by poverty and on the other bare countryside filled with indescribable, unknowing poverty. I am so fortunate to somehow been born in this little bubble, because it gave me so many resources that I needed to grow. But, I am also so disturbed at times by what I see within our suburbia. I see children who have never been confronted by the need to think beyond The Bubble, raised to think that The Bubble is all they need in the world. And I see parents who allow this, if not enforce this behavior, by pushing their privileged ideals onto their children.
And I doubt they even know they are doing it.
That’s the thing, really, we have become a nation that doesn’t really recognize individual thought anymore. We live under this façade that freedom of speech is synonymous with free thought, but really we succumb daily to the ideals of our society. Just because we can say nearly whatever, doesn’t mean it is of original content. These thoughts, which we think are “free”, are just the thoughts of those above us cramming words down our throats and clogging our minds with what we interpret as free because we get to repeat whatever filth it is publicly. Just as I expected the older people in the lecture to be sensationalized and radicalized by the far right, they probably expected me to be an intensely feminist, liberal hippy. Because that is what our society, our media, has conditioned us to think. And, as Immanuel Kant, and enlightenment thinker, says, man cannot think outside of his “self-incurred tutelage”, his “inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another”. In modern terms, this can be interpreted as the idea that our minds have been molded so subconsciously and so deeply that, even though we have an outstanding amount of information stored, we don’t know how to use it without the influence of one another. Today is the most advanced we have ever been intellectually and technologically. Yet, why are there still wars? Poverty? Hate?
Simple. We still fight each other ruthlessly, globally and personally, because, although we finally have the information and ability to make progressive and comprehensive changes, we can’t get past our own impressed thoughts to do so. For example, we know that there are people starving by the millions around the world, and we have the ability and the means to provide, we just don’t. We don’t help them because it never occurs to us that, in the truest of realities, that there is more to the world than just our tiny little bubbles, because we have always grown up around rhetoric that has convinced us that we are our own worlds. That’s the tricky thing about American individualism, it subdues the collective.
It’s this ideology that is passed down generation after generation, warping within our minds in ways we could have never imagined. The hyper masculinity pressed against the children the war-torn Baby Boomers, the “be a man!” ideology is passed down to their children who grow up unable to cope with the slightest of infringement of their sexuality and gender. So in frustration, they subconsciously must show and prove that they are men. And that’s where rape comes from, the need to show dominance by a group of children who sexuality was constantly invalidated, because their parents, who were subjected into accepting societal ideologies as fact, have forced them to do the same. A group of children whose morality should tell them it’s wrong, but their mind can’t think beyond the fact that they have to be a man and must act as a real man would.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am in no way justifying rape or trying to give reason to it. But, as a college student, this is something that weighs heavy on my heart as daily I see the effects of sexual assault daily. And as an American, I have a duty to ask “why” is this plaguing our society and try to seek the root of the issue. I really do think it has a lot to do with how we were raised to think blindly within a situation, regardless of the facts we know. As a woman, I know without a doubt that it is never the victims fault, but yet I still think “what were they wearing” or “where they drinking”? Because I have grown up in a society that, beyond fact, always makes the victim the instigator because it is more convenient for society as a whole to place blame rather than accept it. Don’t think that’s true? Take a peep at Brock Turner’s ruling, because yes alcohol is the reason for rape. Not the rapist. How absurd to think it’s the rapist’s fault?
It’s not about right or wrong anymore, rather who or what is more acceptable by society. How disturbed it that?
So, this is where I put my foot down. But before we blame generations or set bias, let’s take a look at ourselves. Do you question anything for yourself, or do you question what you are prompted to ask? Do you make judgment based on fact, or do you reply to thing solely based on the emotional response you think you should show? Do you think about your thoughts at all? Has it ever occurred to you to break down the most intimate, and intricate of your thoughts? Have you ever tried to seriously answer ‘why am I thinking this’ in hopes of enlightening yourself beyond your bubble?
I feel like my generation is so pivotal in the fact that we are the barrier between old and new, the keepers of the future. And with that ideology, we are the only ones who can speak for both. So I implore you to think about your thoughts and actions, think about why the why the world is, think about human nature. Don’t allow yourself to fall victim to ingrained ideology, fight against societies constructs and see reality as it is. We all must strive to withhold our individualism while simultaneously not losing our sense of unity; seek the reason and the solution.
I hope my generation will be one that learns to educate themselves so that they can have a conversation with those before us. I hope we learn that we can have those conversations without being radical, that we can be so understanding that we can use our rhetoric to promote a civilized compromise between the past and the present. I also hope that my generation allows for ourselves to be malleable enough that we can change when the world calls us to, that we still hold our morality, but also understand when it is time to progress. I hope that we can look at the children in our world, with sight of future children in their eyes. I hope that we can encourage them to treasure their thoughts, and have the courage to be kind and logical. I hope that when these children grow up, we have not forced them into a box of uncreative, inherent thinking, and that they too will come to be understanding of us. I hope that our world can be bettered by thinking outside of our realities, and at the world as a whole, as its entirety.
And lastly, I hope that my words have made you choose to think.
