Generations

When I speak of generations, I can only speak what I observe in the Western world. I have no knowledge, or very limited encounters with people from the Middle East, the Far East, or any other continents. So my observations only come from the Western world, and how we name generations and why. I was born into the Silent Generation that may actually have been the first time a generation was named such because it came out of World Wars, and suffered from severe bombings, air raids, and hunger. Hardly enough. All these survivors, well, I should not say all, but certainly in my family, and amongst friends, the survivors never spoke about these horrible days, except possibly talking about how they had to make do for food for their families or children. I was born at the very end of this Silent Generation. And I do believe there's an overlap with generations before, a new name is assigned to the following generation. The following generation were the baby boomers. And I do feel much more aligned with the baby boomers. It was a time of rebuilding. And because of that jobs became available, with jobs come earnings and purchasing power. And so the baby boomers experienced probably, for the first time, in hundreds of years, I don't know if historians would agree with me. But I do believe the baby boomer generation, on the whole in the Western world, was very emancipating. I understand this is not true for all classes of society. The focus of the baby boomers was to grow a middle class. And we were great at that. We did not worry about depletion of oil or gas, or diminished forests. There was so much at that time. It was not an issue for us. And none of the leaders apparently had enough foresight of what may happen in the future. Then came our children. Gen X. They pretty much continued the baby boomer approach to life and reaped the benefits what the baby boomers had established. Perhaps they started to recognise and set more guidelines, but still nothing serious. In my family we skipped the millennials. And the next generation in my family became Gen Z. While Gen Z is benefiting greatly from the previous two generations and loves to take all the good that comes with it, they are now also faced with the reality that there was a price to pay for it, raping our Earth, and depleting nature. They are so much more aware and have made Gen X and the baby boomers more aware that we cannot continue the way we have in the past. It is not just the overuse in energy, etcetera. There is also a serious change in life philosophy. For instance, from my point of view, while we baby boomers and also Gen X experienced lots of social injustice, the mindset to really change individual minds was not quite there yet. Gen Z is truly, in my view, the first generation that actively wants the change in philosophy, namely accepting other people for who they are and not diminishing or judging other individuals. In fact, somewhere between Gen X and Gen Z we have possibly gone a bit too far in correcting what was a wrong in our society. What we sometimes overlook is that every generation has its own philosophy for whatever purpose, and it is the way it is. And future generations should not look back and criticize and demand justice for what they perceive as wrongdoing. Because every generation makes its own mistakes. It is easy for us to say today, how horrible it was that women had to be second in line to men. But in generations even way before the Silent Generation, that is how life was. And I'm sure it was in all of those generations. There were always rebels, but it was not enough to make changes at that time. Well, today, we have arrived at a time where Gen Z is actually in philosophy, able to have made great strides in changes looking at humanity and looking at Earth. We still have a long way to go, of course, because a lot of the damage we did to Earth cannot be undone. But with all the good that comes out of Gen Z, I do not believe they're able to overcome what is truly needed, even with the best efforts. Because they are still burdened by previous generations. There is the generation Alpha, which is now around the age of thirteen, and will come into its own. But it will be so bogged down by AI that I still do not believe we will make the progress we need to make to save Mother Earth. Moreover, I also believe that Gen Z has to lighten up a little bit and not overlook the benefits of humour in life itself. Having said all of this, I believe that the generation after Alpha may be possible to really make a great difference. So what do we call this generation? Possibly, the bold generation. That generation will have to be quite bold, in recognizing all of the wonderful progress from the baby boomers on, and all the damage it created while in process, and will have to bring quite a new meaning to what we term having a good life. I think it will fully recognize that a good life does not mean having more money than necessary, buying more T-shirts than we can possibly wear, curbing our entertainment, in consideration of saving Nature. And they will probably look back and shake their heads, and say they cannot believe how all of this could have gone on. But there is no right and wrong in generations. It just is what it is. But we must hope for a bold generation to save humanity. Stay tuned