Title: Who the Bleep cares about younger generations? By: Selma Carvalho Source: Goan Voice Daily Newsletter of 14 Sept. 2009 at http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/
Every twenty years the world renews itself either awash with blood or energized with hope, idealism and fresh intellectual output. I've pondered on why every twenty years for the past century has been marked by a new frontier in our lives. Could it possibly be that every two decades a new generation comes of age which hammers the malleable nucleus that is society and resculpts us? The year 1918 marked the end of World War I, dubbed "the war to end all wars". Yet, 20 years later the dark shadowy precursor to World War II loomed large all over Europe. Hitler had preyed successfully on the discontent of German youth, creating in 1922, Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, the equivalent of a Boy's Scout organization, which by 1926 took the shape of the more ominous and menacing Hitler Jugend, Hitler Youth. By 1933, Hitler was to claim to the world: "I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication. That is how I will create the New Order." It was the proliferation of youth movements in Germany which were so successful in forming the mass of Hitler's rallies, in intimitating and coalescing people with random street violence into an organised unit and finally it was the collective vigour of this youth that marched into Poland and effectively began World War II. On the other side of the fray, aging Prime Ministers like Churchill might have been at the helm, but it was the lives of the young, gunned downed in the millions and their innocent but firm belief in the values of democracy and nationhood that finally maimed the maniacal, marching armies of Germany. It would take another twenty years for the world to witness another revolution, this time holding up the placard, Make Love not War. The sixties would revolutionise the world, possibly in a way never encountered before that era. This was the generation that challenged every frontier which up until that time had been sealed by religion and culturisation. What is often lost in what seemed like unbridled licentiousness of sexual permissiveness and the swirling of opium smoke, is that this generation moved the moral zeitgeist of the times ahead in terms of race relations, women's rights and finally ended the Vietnam War. If ever there was a glorious moment of sunshine emanating from an almost Biblical sky, shining down on earth upon beautiful, young men and women ready to embrace each other in equality, then surely the sixties was that moment, its very essence encapsulated forever in the three day festival of music and love held at Woodstock, New York in 1969. Twenty years later, a group of gangly, nerdy young men, Bill Gates and Paul Allen amongst them, would burst onto the world scene to speak a language no one else knew or understood and to change the way the world communicated with each other. It was young men working in their parent's garages that would consign to the dust of history the telegram, the telex machine and eventually the personal secretary who among other things prided in taking dictation and opening up tons of daily corporate mail. More importantly the advent of the personal computer and the internet would disseminate information at a scale and rate previously unheard of, germinating in its wake new thought processes, shifting paradigms, evolving whole communities that would come to exist in a mysterious place called cyberspace and ultimately challenging what we understood of geography, time and proximity. Twenty years have passed since that last evolutionary leap in our universal society and another generation has come of age. Are we standing on the cusp of yet another revolution which will redefine humanity? Is it simmering in the colleges, libraries, eateries and watering holes of the young? Are they discussing new ideas and thoughts which will foist change on us? It's certainly an exciting thought to believe that this generation too has a revolutionary waiting in the wings to take flight as humanity holds its breath. Do leave your feedback at carvalho_...@yahoo.com
