And so third party revenge goes its pointlessly destructive way and the cycle will continue, until we outgrow it. Our little corner of the world grows ever colder and emptier - and we must blame ourselves.

It is true that in each case, one may see a host of bitter elders using their naive juniors to fight a pointless proxy war for them, encouraging them to do as little to make their relationships work as possible - if not less. But if they can be blamed, it does not follow that those so counseled are blameless. How hard did they work to change those circumstances of their lives that they now regret? If they were mislead, were they so blind that they could not see where they were headed by merely being willing to look? If some of us find ourselves should now find ourselves alone, how hard have we worked to make a connection with others?



Equally sad has been the way in which as the once young have started to become elders themselves, they have eagerly drawn younger people as they came of age into this pointless little war between the genders, perpetuating it in the process.

Part of the difficulty is a simple one. It has become common among our elders to confuse the personal with the general. For example, a 52 year old woman remembers how young men treated her when she was 20 and the opportunities she was denied in the job market. She projects those experiences upon someone who is 20 today and high pressures her to "see" how badly "men" have been behaving. When it is pointed out to the older woman that the 20 year old men that she is associating with this bad behavior hadn't even been born yet at the time and that it would be illogical to simply assume that the norms of behavior had not changed in the last 32 years - more time than stretched between the summer of love and the end of the great depression, one often is greeted with the look a deer gives as it blinks at the headlights of an oncoming car. Total incomprehension. Or, she'll often simply brush past the point, as if she had barely even heard it. Or, a 52 year old man who is bitter about a divorce settlement, who remembers how his wife was gloating during the hearing, tries to convince a 20 year old guy that women are arrogant predators - confusing "women" in general with one woman in particular.

Some very bitter intergender fighting occured a few decades back. A mental lapse that our elders seem to be in the persistant habit of making is failing to understand or maybe to accept, the fact that the rules that describe the behavior we may typically expect to see out of people vary widely from year to year, from place to place, and from generation to generation. Whether they like it or not, experience comes with an expiration date. That's a painful bit of reality, the notion that so much time has passed since their youths that their experience may no longer be relevant to those young today. That they have become so old, that to the young people around them, they are no longer part of "us" and are now part of "them". This becomes an especially unpleasant thought, especially to members of a generation that defined so much of its identity in terms of youthful rebellion as a matter of fashion, often rejecting many of the things (intellectual achievement, the ties of extended family life) that bring pleasure into later life.

Refusing to face this fact and convincing themselves, at least on a shallow suface level, emotionally, that their fights are of a more universal nature than they actually are, many will persuade those younger than them to take them up. They end up fighting their old fights, now by the actions of the relatively innocent proxies they recruit. A little self examination on their part would be highly called for. In refusing to face the fact that having become old is hard on them, perhaps even more than it would be for most - a fact clearly indicated by the denial that finds expression in their actions - they deprive themselves of the opportunity to see that denial and the damage it is doing. To see that it is time for them to step back and let their old fights die a natural death. Assuming, that is, that those we would so persuade, have not been so consumed by hatred that their very ability to distinguish between friend and foe on an emotional level (and to care about the happiness and well being of the former) has been blunted. Or that the desire to still be in control has not short circuited their consciences.



As sad as the hostility between boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife has been, equally sad has been the hostility of parent toward child or teacher toward student, placing predation where there should be trust. Sometimes, this hostility has been quite overt, as some have argued that the suffering of those younger than them was acceptable or even desirable, because they had to go through the same or something equally bad. "When I was your age ..." they will begin, often making claims that those who were present reveal to have been gross exaggerations if not outright fabrications. But, even were the claims valid, there would be no escaping the truth that the child, having not yet even been conceived, had no control over the misfortunes its parents suffered in their youth and thus can bear no responsibility for those misfortunes. The attitude expressed was one which, if accepted, would guarantee that life would get progressively worse for each succeeding generation, as each individual took out his frustrations on the relatively powerless youths that he could get his hands on.

It is small wonder that so many taught their children to "turn the other cheek" and not hold grudges. Otherwise, what might have those children done, when, in the course of time, they became part of the generation in charge and remembered the treatment that they had received? We have, traditionally, constructed a philosophy that shields the abusive elder from ultimate responsibility for his actions and makes it permissible for the frustrated victim of his misbehavior to find an innocent third party to release his frustrations on the moment those frustrations become a cause for pragmatic concern.

But, of course, the concept of individual responsibility was constructed for solidly good reasons. Without that, those who are, at the moment, maliciously inclined, will not be deterred in any way from acting on those inclinations. In fact, as their actions won't even be judged in any sort of negative light, they won't even receive the correction that they might need to awaken them to the fact that they have done wrong.

Then the baby boomers came into maturity, and ranting about how the teenagers had it too easy and it was about time that they started obeying their parents without question went out of fashion for a while, getting responses like "lighten up, gramps" and "I know that you know that these are the 90's, I'm just not sure that you know that they're the 1990s". But, as we've seen, even if overt hostility dampened down for a while, passive aggression continued.

One might ask why that happened. Now, as that generation grows older, the smiles seem to grow darker, the preaching against those younger than them intensifies and some would be left with the impression that a lot of the joviality that was seen before was just an act that couldn't be kept up. My guess would be that this is an oversimplification - one that keeps those of us who follow them from learning from their mistakes. As, really, they failed to learn from the mistakes of those who went before them.



(Note added, Jan.9, 2003)

What do we propose to do about these problems, other than lament their existence? Many things, I suppose, but one jumps out at us : if the problem is the damage done to our lives by passive aggressive actions of a group of elders who refuse to respect the fact that younger adults are, in fact, adults, fully entitled to make their own decisions without manipulation or bullying and fully entitled to speak their minds freely and openly, then let us give ourselves a place where we can get away from them. The Shrine is a place where those who were born before 1960 (along with those content to be their lap dogs) are banned for a reason.

The elder who is not present, not even by proxy, in a group where one must respect the privacy of those present, is an elder who is going to find it a lot harder to meddle. He will have great difficulty trying to browbeat his juniors into silence when the discussion starts to turn in a direction he doesn't like (throwing a fit and playing the victim when intimidation doesn't work, counting on the young women present to pressure the dissident into silence, out of respect for the elder's "feelings"). For one, a youngr generation which should have been allowed to truly come of age a long time ago, will be let to itself, seizing through its own slightly bold actions the chance to do so.

Thinking for oneself, instead of just mouthing the politically correct party line given to us by the self-indulgent generation which we mave the misfortune to follow, might not come naturally at first. But, given a safe place away from those so many our own age and younger have been conditioned to yield to, and a chance to breathe free, some of us just might find a chance to calm down, catch their breath, and ask themelves, "why are we doing this to ourselves"? In that moment, a chance for healthier relationships, both sexual and platonic, will be born.

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