All too often we will explain away the behaviour of an older generation by attributing it to a generational difference.
But to do so is to perceive the individual in question as a passive victim in the face of cultural forces, without any agency to make their own choices and cultivate their own thoughts and ideas.
In any given generation we have a choice – to embrace the narrative we are pedalled, or to question its efficacy and seek out the truth behind it.
To be born into a culture and society is to be influenced by it to some degree – the systems of power and prevailing narratives. But, the degree to which we are influenced by this is our choice. We can choose to embrace it unquestioningly, or we can go on a journey to unpick the threads of influence woven into our sub-conscious minds, liberate ourselves from it as much as we possibly can, and (re)construct our own worldview.
As the world has become more globalised and connected – albeit largely in terms of the transmission of western beliefs and systems rooted in colonial and imperialistic thinking – the singular events that occur in each generation reverberate beyond a single community. They also reverberate through time. The longer the consequences of these events go unaddressed, the further their impacts travel.
And while there are some collective lived experiences shared by an entire generation that will shape that generation, it will do so in different ways. This is because there are forces at play that affect the individual and collective experience – such as gender, class, and the colour of our skin. All of which influence how a given culture perceives us and engages with us, and how we in turn experience generational events.
The dynamics of these forces evolve over time as culture itself evolves, and will result in creating an environment particular to a given moment in time. But there are those threads – such as racism, sexism, and other prejudices that weave their way through time as they are never fully addressed. And nor can they be while racist, patriarchal structures and thinking continue to underpin a culture.
Because of the external and internal forces being experienced, the culture within different communities within a society will evolve at different speeds and in different ways. But this diverse eco-system that exists within any society – the lack of homogeneity – is why we always have a means to witness and explore something other than the worldview we have inherited from our family and community, and the prevailing narratives of wider society.
It is easier now than ever before for us to connect with people outside of our own community – those with differing worldviews and lived experiences, and to expand our understanding of the world around us. We can delve deep into the inner workings of a complex machine that those who benefit from its output try to conceal from us.
The tools we now have at our disposal, combined with the diverse and dynamic nature that ensures cultures and societies are in a perpetual state of evolution and never static, creates so much potential for change, and the challenging of existing injustices and prejudices.
We each choose how we engage with the prevailing narratives of the culture in which we were born and raised, and the one in which we choose to live. While it takes time and effort to discover and understand the complexity of our present, the less time and effort we spend questioning the narratives being pedalled by those who gain the most from the status quo, the more we are abdicating responsibility of our own choices and actions to those vested interests. And in so doing, we are sustaining the injustices that are causing so many so much unnecessary suffering.
The uniqueness of each human being and how we see and interpret the world means that it’s unlikely that any prejudice exists in the absence of its counterpart. It’s us who chooses which to embrace. To root out the prejudices that exist and liberate our cultures from them, we must go back to the fundamentals – we must nurture a respect for all life, and an understanding and acceptance that regardless of the culture we grew up in, our lived experience, our class, gender or colour of our skin, we are all equally human.