..from one generation to another
May 24, 2010 (Monday)
As I read the newspaper this morning, some of the stories got me to thinking, “Since younger people look at life differently, what events have shaped their thinking? Or even more to the point, “What events shaped the thinking of the older generations?” Taking it from my personal point of view, what did I see or experience before those 30 and under were born?”
The span from 1931, the year of my birth, to 1980, after which those 30 and under were born, includes a lot of history that shaped the thinking of several generations.
There was the Great Depression, which resulted in many people being raised poor who could not remember the giddy and prosperous decade of the Twenties, experienced by their parents. That was followed by World War Two, during which young men disappeared from our midst one after the other, to experience combat. Many never returned. After that, we lived in a kind of fantasy world, as the nation tried to rebuild itself, with many people trying to convince themselves that life was better than it was, followed by a period when a fresh generation crusaded against a shaky, “Let’s pretend” type of value system, plunging into the use of drugs to create a virtual world of mental and emotional bliss. That time was followed by a period of creating new values, in an attempt to face true reality, not make-believe. Then came 1980, when the “under 30” generation came into the world, never having known the decades just described. Is it any wonder, then, that they should view life differently from us who saw all this?
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that, “compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination. Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.” This compares with less than one-fifth of people in their 30s (19%), 15% of those in their 40s, 14% of those in their 50s and 10% or less among those 60 and older.” The younger people have grown up in a different world. Their views of life reflect that fact.