Times are such that age-old values like integrity, respect, and goodwill are being challenged at their very foundations. The monstrous dark clouds that negative social media activism has shrouded the atmosphere with, refuse to allow most of us to even think of such niceties anymore. Calm conversations, the art of listening with intent and courteous interactions, have been reduced to the bare minimum. This is an era of ‘bare up’ and flare up.
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Yet, some sane voices still exist and they might ultimately win the day. All the prophets of doom and perpetrators of hatred put together cannot douse the flame of goodness coupled with intelligence and dynamism. Success, even today, comes to those who imbibe, reflect and depend upon qualities of head and heart that have stood the test of time. Even in these ultra-testing times!
I wrote earlier in these columns a piece titled, ‘Young voices must be heard’, which primarily focused upon the need to take youthful opinions seriously. It is time to add a modicum of additional gravitas to the same narrative now. This current era clearly does not belong to the middle-aged, who think they rule the world. It belongs to the youth, the Gen Z and Gen Alpha and all the young Gens to come! It is time for those in positions of influence to listen to today’s youngsters with much greater patience, understanding and receptivity.
No one can deny the fact that the 10-year-old of today is probably the brightest 10-year-old in history. Indeed, unless the continuing surge of generative artificial intelligence stifles the brainpower of our students entirely, they will continue to outshine the past and all previous versions of humanity. Why not, therefore, listen with much more patience and receptivity to the refreshing voices of these young ones?
Their opinions should, in fact, be officially allowed to influence modern decision-making, in far greater dollops of seriousness than they are. Why in the world should the usual has-beens (and would-have-beens) be taking radical global-level decisions? There’s a dire need for consultation with right-thinking youth-based organisations and even through open invitations to younger (and older) private individuals to send in their recommendations online, before any major decisions are taken by the system.
Gen Z is the butt of criticism by those who think they know better, but these youthful ones ought to garner much more gratitude from the rest of us for the manner in which they’ve transformed traditional mindsets. Several bastions of rigid norms and restrictions which hitherto held our society virtually in captivity, have been shattered at the hands of these latest revolutionary generations. Young women, in particular, are outshining, outdoing and certainly outwitting all attempts of archaic mindsets to bridle them, in whatever manner. Young policewomen have altered the notion of rugged, unlistening, burly police presence.
Even in the recent protests at New Delhi, while Gen Z was totally on song, with innovative ways of communication and also disobedience, the younger police personnel probably conducted themselves with more credit than older folk. Under immense pressure at most times, it is unfortunately the police forces which have to face the music and have their reputations tarnished when things go wrong. The fault lines clearly lie elsewhere, though. How about adopting a more communicative, respectful and understanding attitude towards the youth of today, if you’re not as youthful as you yourself once were? Agreed, the so-called generation gap is a time-tested, unbridged chasm, between the ages.
But by allowing it to widen more than ever, and to utterly misunderstand modern-day mores, those who should be more mature are conducting themselves entirely abysmally.
The way forward perhaps lies in better parenting and wholesome educational paradigms. The infirmities which do exist in sections of our youth will not vanish by wishing them away. They need to be pegged away at, and to that end, educationists need our full-fledged support. But infirmities in the bulwark of the system need to be chiselled away rapidly, as well. We must create scenarios for the young which allow them to believe in values like hard work, earnestness, empathy and selfless service. Conversations truly matter. And the young must be heard as equal partners.
