Looking through the many postings on the internet someone who's observant and stoic enough can conclude that there's much less knowledge about these days. Older people are nowadays just tolerated as the other instead of valued for their experience, and yes, knowledge. Younger people rule.
One doesn't regard experience as important enough because not everyone has lived the same amount of time yet. Personally, I have a collegue who's younger in years than me doing my present job. She's doing the same work but regards me as totally irrelevant. In fact, she would like me gone.
It all reminds of a movie called Logan's Run (1976) that recounts the story of a society that kills off everyone reaching the age of 30. My collegue has then another five years to live. Not that she knows of the movie because before her existance there was nothing afterall. That's sarcasm by the way.
Knowledge is then also left to what the youngsters who know it. From the latest gadget to the newest slang word used in chat. Brave new world is a novel written by Aldous Huxley in 1932 that predicted the society that we'll end up with in the next few years when it will celebrate its centenary.
Huxley, who's first wife was a Belgian-born woman who traveled and lived with him across Europe and the United States till her death from cancer in 1955, married a second time to an Italian-American violinist, self-help author, and psychotherapist who was with him when he died only eight years later.
In his novel Huxley anticipated huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning. With a bit of imagination one can actually see that he was indeed not far off the mark concerning the condition of today's society.
By now I've probably lost most of the readers of this but I don't care. There's an obvious difference between quietness and silence. Almost all of my postings are met with the first but I'll never consider doing the latter. And why? Silence is the undisturbing of the psyche.
We're quiet because others are busy, but we are only silent because we want to be about the business of thought. In a certain way, silence is indeed the very opposite of quiet. We're quiet for the benefit of others, so as not to disturb them, but no, we're never silent for the benefit of our own soul.
I get where you’re coming from, my dad is in his fifties and has young colleagues who often make him feel like his help is unwanted, but as a younger person, we want to be able to do things on our own without someone older making us feel like we are incompetent because we lack the experience. We know that we can ask for help from our older colleagues, but we often like to figure out things on our own and I’m sure when you were younger you felt the exact same way.
@Sanddune26 I hear you. Only today the youngster I spoke about came to me to do something for one single book on the shelve, and I told her what had been decided before. Now instead of doing it herself or even put for me to do after my input of the new books in the computer, the actual book ended up to be getting rid of. She tells everyone that she doesn't like our Harry Potter books because they still have the old covers. No, I don't take her too seriously but I'm also certain that she doesn't like me just because I'm more than twice her age. I don't even try to offer my thoughts and experience, because I work with a group that knows better. I come across that on other occasions too. Never did before ten years ago. There's a definite shift in the attitude of twenty, thirty year old towards fifty year olds.
@Convivial Exactly. But in the sense that it's much better to keep on shining the light. Like Vasquez in Jules Verne'sThe Lighthouse at the End of the World I'm using my wits and knowledge of the landscape now to sabotage pirates and hold out just long enough until a relief ship arrives.
