"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it," I read from a list of Max Planck's quotes.
Isn't this, I thought, the case for all the generational gulfs? Gulfs created by history and science, time and knowledge? Social norms about sexuality and religiosity; political disagreement on the methods of action and essence of ideologies; cultural taste for the arts and aesthetics; individual attitudes towards technology and multiculturalism; communal paradigms of morality, freedom, and meaning. Much more so, I'd even argue, for these human concerns than for scientific truths, since science, it seems to me, has lost a lot of opponents outside of it. Science trots along as the rest of our ideas bark and marvel at it, as well as to each other, as they always have.
Between me, my parents, my grandparents, my older cousins and younger nephews, our influence on each other is mutual, not to mention necessary and inevitable. But for the ideas and beliefs we each hold, our influence seems mostly frictional, and at best, intermittently cyclical. It looks like most of us of each generation carves out a room of ideas that we adore and uphold. They flourish into uncontested truths, then die out as the next tenants move out to make their own room.
Between me, my parents, my grandparents, my older cousins and younger nephews, our influence on each other is mutual, not to mention necessary and inevitable. But for the ideas and beliefs we each hold, our influence seems mostly frictional, and at best, intermittently cyclical. It looks like most of us of each generation carves out a room of ideas that we adore and uphold. They flourish into uncontested truths, then die out as the next tenants move out to make their own room.
What is the value of convincing and compromising for action? What is the beauty of pure and persistent belief? How am I rooted or trapped in my times? Has time passed for the better or for the worse? Have we buried our heroes and enemies for the better or the inevitable? (1/9)
I overheard the other day, through the radio app murmuring on the background, "I think it's so important to talk to people from other generations." Probably was something about learning from their experience and perspective, taking in pieces of their stories and wonders. "Most people will get something out of it that they didn't even know it was there."
What difference does it make? I cannot destroy the generations or dislodge myself from the confluence. Besides, holding an untimely truth is more solitude than glory, and at the end of the day, it's all just passing of the torch onto further into the unknown future. Meanwhile, I'm free to leave my own room.
Mothagesso.
