And just to underscore this, I read this a second ago:
I am increasingly convinced that the schisms we seen in society are the same as in families. The children are choosing differently, and just as my father was deeply offended when my brother chose to grow his hair long and turn to drugs in the Sixties, generations today are wholesale dumping value sets that have brought us where we are in the world. I think that's healthy. Religion likes to argue we owe our parents fealty. Huh. That' s interesting. The way I see it, JW, we owe our parents the wisdom to see what was wrong, and to do something about it. That cost me my relationship with my father. Dad brought me up to think critically but the moment I used that critical thinking to see some of what he believed and his actions as morally repugnant, I was the Evil Witch of the West and he booted me out of the family.
You can't bring your kids up to think for themselves and then get righteously pissed when they are smart enough to pick holes in your reasoning. That's a gift. Feedback is hard, it hurts, but it serves. It serves. That doesn't make previous generations all bad or all evil. Our reaction to the feedback is what's toxic.
Every generation, I suspect, has its turn when the kids are grown enough to discern differently. What's unfortunate is that older people, and I suspect this has always been the case, take that personally and attack the messenger. That kind of emotional arterioschlerosis is what entrenches bad policies, bad politics and and destruction.
However as long as this society lionizes the uber rich and people hanker after the Tony Stark model, we are in deep shit. There are plenty of younger people completely seduced by the idea that rich= easy life, and are perfectly willing to brazenly monetize anyone and everyone, which is little more than the perpetuation of Rockefeller robber baron policies.
I don't have the answers. But writing about these things does help. At least for my part, because I do read opinions that differ from my own, and in doing so, particulalry over time, I understand and see differently. There is immense value in that.