If it is not acceptable to make broad generalizations about people based on gender, race, sexuality, or nationality, why is it perfectly acceptable to use stereotypes based on the age of arbitrarily defined “generations”? In the United States and the United Kingdom, four cohorts between the ages of 11 and 76 have been identified (Table 1): Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z (those over 76 or those born after 2010 are prewar generation respectively). Generation Alpha).

It is seldom right to … sacrifice current benefit

to gain a dubious advantage in the future.

John Maynard Keynes

The founder of modern macroeconomics

(Personal translation)

And you’ve probably heard/read clichés, mostly negative, about these generations that the media abounds with: for example, baby boomers are sociopathic, selfish, technophobic old men who stole the future from the younger generations.

The majority of Gen Xers (ages 42-55) were described as lazy, disloyal, the lost generation who complain that they had a bad day at the barber/barber. The stereotypes used also call them dirty skateboarders who listen to grunge music, apathetic and cynical. And worst of all, they have no work ethic.

Millennials (or Gen Y, those born roughly between 1980 and 1995) are considered narcissistic, emotionally dysfunctional, but also well-educated, ambitious, work-oriented “snowflakes.”[1]

Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2010, is the largest in American history to have grown up with the help of technology, the Internet, and social media. They were called tech addicts, materialists, anti-socials, or social justice fighters.

An interesting aspect of the youth of Generation Z is the belief in its regenerative qualities – a heated version of the old belief in inevitable historical progress. Virtually every generation since the 1920s has had its young leaders who passionately believed that the groups they represented would finally bring order to a chaotic world and push social progress to new heights. This idea is contained in the remark of the French philosopher Auguste Comte back in 1869, when he equated the concept of generation with the “basic speed of human development”:

We must not hide the fact that our social progress is largely based on death; this means that humanity’s successive steps necessarily require constant innovation…from one generation to the next.[2]

Climate change and “conflict” between generations is a lazy myth

Since the seminal contributions of the Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim in the first half of the 20th century, generational thinking has become a very powerful idea. Unfortunately, it was marred by stereotypes and myths that created a completely false picture of the various cohorts and the “conflicts” between them.

These stereotypes and myths fuel false “battles” and “conflicts” between generations. A convenient example is the attitude to climate change. The current generational myth, one of the most destructive, claims that older people don’t care about the apocalyptic effects of climate change and the fate of the planet. Thus, the elderly, with their inaction and insensitivity to measures proposed by liberal governments, are destroying the future of the young generation Z, the only and true savior of the planet.

When Greta Thunberg was named Person of the Year by the magazine at the end of 2019 timeshe was only 16 years old and was the youngest recipient of the award. time introduced Greta as flag bearer in the struggle of generations [s.m.]avatar of young activists around the world. A clear suggestion that for some she is on the front lines of the war between the young and the old.

The proposal was immediately picked up, and suddenly the slogan of young eco-activists of recent years exploded (about 800,000 mentions in the search engine): You will die of old age. I will die from climate change.

The famous star of Generation Z Billie Eilish, praising the Swedish student, said in an interview:

Greta Thunberg leads the way… Let’s hope adults and seniors start listening [cu privire la schimbarea climei]. The old will die and they don’t care if we die too, but we don’t want to die yet.

While obviously not bellicose about baby boomers, these statements clearly suffer from gerontophobia.

On the other hand, even if we look superficially at the climate marches, we will notice that they are far from universally a young movement. For example, in the west Extinction Rebellionwhich took place in London in 2019 with Greta Thunberg as guest of honour, the people charged with offenses by the Metropolitan Police ranged in age from 19 to 77.

What the younger generation blames the elders and adults for is mostly “short-term” thinking, although, among other animals, we are monkeys who have learned to look ahead.[3] Our brains, unlike the brains of almost all other species, are wired to perceive the future as if it were real.

But just because we can think about the future doesn’t mean we always do. In the competition between “short-term” and “long-term” thinking, the former wins. One obvious reason why we don’t spend so much time trying to look into the distant future is that there are aspects of planning that are very difficult to control. There’s also an emotional motivation behind our reluctance to plan for the “long term”: we’re trained, culturally or evolutionarily, to fixate on the present, worry about the medium term, and ignore the long term no matter what. poison.

The justification for “short-term” thinking from one of the world’s greatest economists, John Maynard Keynes, from whom I also took the motto of the article, contains elements of pragmatic thinking:

It is seldom right … to sacrifice a present advantage for a doubtful advantage in the future … It is unwise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction diminish and our control over outcomes is infinitesimal. Our chief concern, then, is the happiness of our own contemporaries; we should beware of sacrificing large numbers of people in the name of an undefined goal, no matter how beneficial it may seem.[4]

What is the reality behind such stereotypes? Is there value in looking at the world through the prism of generations? Let’s move from theory to practice.

publication A new scientist and King’s College Institute of Politics, London, commissioned an online survey of 2,050 UK adults between 2 and 9 August 2021. Datasheets are available at www.comresglobal.com. Professor Bobby Duffy (King’s CollegeLondon) published statistical and graphical analyzes of the data here.

For example attitude REAL from the four generations discussed above, we selected the following respondents’ answers to the question of how concerned they are about climate change.

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