A THOUGHT FOR NOW - DO THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS MISTRUST THE OLDER ONES?

Living involves us having to traverse many bridges, each of which might sometimes help to prepare us for crossing the next. So can one generation sometimes assist the others that follow, but all might  have to cross their life bridges..

The younger generations can, at times, be characterised by their arrogance and thinly concealed mistrust of the older generations. They are oftentimes not minded to accept the premis that the older generations, partly by virtue of the fact that they have been living on the earth longer than them, have really used their time productively to become wiser, and are really able to teach them how to avoid having to learn from painful experiences.

Yes, despite this almost automatic belief within the younger generations that 'I can do better' than the older generations, including their fathers and mothers, who, in their childhood, they might have aspired to become like, leadership within the world, has become the prerogative of the older generations.

This might be probably partly because the older generations have been around longer and have benefited from the old concepts of 'seniorism', 'elderism' and 'dynasticism.' Yes, it really is the case that the younger generations should relate to the older generations with 'respect for respect,' but should not automatically trust them because they are their seniors. 

Consider for a moment, the disaster which could befall anyone who were to trust, say, Robert Mugabe, the President of that terribly misgoverned country, Zimbabwe, simply on the basis that he is over 80 years old?   Yes, the younger generations could learn many lessons from RM, but they would all be of the nature of what you should not do, if you want to be a good leader. They would also be about the nature of the man himself, of how he does not trust anybody else to lead the country, and about his lack of trust in its future; when he passes on.

Of course, it is not the case that, ipso facto, leaders from the younger generations are wiser and more trustworthy, as we have seen from the leadership of, say, Kim Jung Un, in North Korea. Like Robert Mugabe, the lessons to be learnt from Kim Jung Un, are all about what you should not do, if you want to govern a country in the best interests of its people.

Trust is something which is built up as a result of a dynamic relationship which consistently reinforces and validates the mutual expectations and aspirations of the people involved in the relationship. So, the relationship has to predates the trust, which is a result of it. This trust is not to be confused with a person's 'faith' in something, which does not need any objective validation, although, if it is not 'reinforced', 'faith' could wither away.


Live your life as well as you are able to, and keep an open mind about whom you might be able to learn from and who you might be able to teach something which they did not know before. Prudence is neither the preserve of the old or the young, but rather that of who has learnt the lessons of living best and has drawn the best conclusions from them.