Generational conflict dominated the news in August.
This month prominent politicians around the world verbally attacked and even threatened the life of this 16 year old girl. And it raises the question: why do older people hate young people right now?
Writing an article in the Washington Post last week, Stanford psychology professor and neuroscientist Jamil Zaki says that with time and distance, empathy decreases. You know how you get upset about the mass shooting victim staring you in the face on TV, but the 100,000 young people who are committing suicide this year is just a number? Empathy also decreases the farther one looks into the future, to your children and grandchildren’s lifetimes.
There is one other reason. NineShift convened a panel of highly rated psychologists, Drs. Moe, Curly and Larry. And what they told us is that in times of societal change, like these, when not only reality is changing but also the values and attitudes of the lost past era are coming under attack, that people cling ever more to their belief system, shouting ever louder defending their outmoded obsolete values. Because that’s the big thing older people have left.
They don’t really want the Amazon to burn down. And they know they won’t ever have to ride a train or become a vegetarian. They will be dead long before meat is rationed and trains have replaced cars. But they do have their belief system, and will have their belief system until they die, and that appears to be the one constant they - - we - - you - - have in this rapidly changing way of life. PHOTO: Greta Thunberg, age 16, of Sweden, arrived in New York earlier this week aboard a zero-emission no-pollution sailing ship. She has become a world leader on the climate emergency.
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