There's Hope On The Horizon

What's occurring to me as I listen through the noise and drama of U.S.our political discourse, are the signals as to where our collective psyche is heading. OK, maybe discourse is too polite a word. Still, as distressing as it can be to listen, it leaves me somewhat optimistic about our future. Some of you may, of course, think I've finally devolved far enough into old age, that my senility is showing. Just humor me.

It's occurred to me there is always an emerging redirection between the young and the old, in today's terms, between the baby-boomers, generation X, and the millennials (gen Y) so-to-speak. As our elders (now the baby-boomers) age, they seem to naturally drift more to the right, wanting to maintain the familiar - keeping things as they have been. And to be sure, it's a drift, as distinct from a conscious choice.

According to brain scientists, as we age, and more of our thinking has become hard-wired over the years, we want things to stay the same. Positive neuroplasticity gets more difficult and our negativity biases begin to drive the bus so-to-speak. According to experts, ""The brain continuously scans for bad news; as soon as it finds the bad news, it overly focuses on it."

"Negativity bias is really good for animals surviving in the wild. It's what Hanson calls the "eat lunch don’t be lunch" mentality. But these days, we aren't exactly running from predators, yet our brains are still functioning as if we're in the wild."1.

So drifting to a more conservative view of the way things ought to be (i.e. keep-things-the-same) makes coping in the moment appear desirable. Keeping things the way there have been seems to reduce the scariness that comes along with living. Almost all core value change is a surprise and seems threatening when we're older.

And it seems from my own experience that this shift begins to occur especially after aging into the early 60's; not for everyone mind you, just the critical mass. And with such large numbers of people in the baby-boomer and early gen X grouping, that majority adds up to a big opinion block.

Juxtapose that aging let's-stick-with-what-we-already-know attitude, against the newly forming beliefs of the young(er) generation(s), who have in their youth, naturally arrived at more socially accommodative thinking regarding the biggest social issues of the moment, and you may get a glimpse of the immediate disparity as well as the future that's in the wings and ready to unfold.

These attitude changes seem to come along about every 10-20 years or so, although the ubiquitous media environment we live in today seems to be speeding new attitude adoption more quickly across our young cultures, accelerating consensus in their "community". Back in the 60 and 70's, even with TV, it took a little longer for each new set of mores to formulate across the high school and college populations, and subsequently take root in those subsequent in-power communities.

Now no generation is in complete accord. Each generation brings along its own outliers. And each generation formulates what we could think of as the core values of its community. The power isn't in the attitudes of any single individual in any of these groupings, it's in the thought and leadership community they become as they age into their 40's and 50's and take defacto control of our culture what I'm calling here the in-power community..

Once an in-power community ages into their 40 and 50's they naturally embody and determine the core attitudes of our national social and economic discourse. Of course, they aren't one voice, but many. And they don't completely agree among themselves. Yet the core of what they do agree on, will have noticeably shifted when compared to the core agreements among their elders. And so each succeeding generation brings with it, a wave of new standards, ideas, and social and political agreements.

Today's teens and millennials are already settled on issues about which we are still arguing in our political debates and diatribe. They do not dispute global warming, but instead are focusing on what there is to be done about it. For them, it's personal. It's forecast to have a direct and dramatic impact on their lives and their ability to succeed. And so they are quite concerned about it and focused on it, despite the current political arguments about it.

Our next in-power generation is not concerned for getting rid of illegal immigrants.As far as they are concerned, those people are already here, and the children of those immigrants are already sitting next to them in school, or working next to them in their jobs; and so have already been accepted as belonging.

Our next in-power generation is increasingly tiring of religious righteousness. They are voting their tiredness by participating less in religious institutions. Current poling projections are that our national majority will claim no religious affiliation within the next two generations. What will happen to the tea party in the U.S. when our national majority is atheistic? Or maybe agnostic? Or maybe what we are currently calling "humanistic"?

Imagine a generation of 40 and 50 year-olds, the critical mass and leadership of whom, have already accepted full racial and religious integration, women's rights, LGBT and immigrant acceptance; along with an active commitment to countering global warming, and implementing public policies based on sustainability. If that attitude were in place today, would we be listening to these bazaar 2016 political conversations that assault us every day?

When I confront the available pointers toward the attitudes of the coming Z generation (my grandchildren) and beyond, the preceding is what I see coming. Current political, cultural and institutional resistance aside, this is the now forming core attitude of those who will be the in-power community in the U.S. and maybe the world, in another decade and beyond.
As I said in the title: There's hope on the horizon.


1. - Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of the book Hardwiring Happiness