The generational gap used to be a real issue years ago. I wonder if it is much of an issue today. I think that older cultures, like the Chinese or Arabic one will always respect their elders even though there have been great strides for modernization. A property of society is that people acquire new habits and think they are acting very differently from the way that their grandparents did. My understanding is that if you take away the trappings of the contemporary scene you get the same needs that need to be satisfied. Everybody wants to assert their identity and needs to have their ideas confirmed or accepted.
I was reminded of this gap when having a discussion with a student who drew out two curves that represented generational differences. Actually he intended to show where youth is heading and where the headspace for adults is, but it all boils down to the fact that he was referring to generational differences. He made an interesting assertion. During the movement that both old and young go through, there are moments where the two courses coincide and both adolescent and adult can have similar views of an experience.
The voyage of life for the young and old then was not all about being distant from one another at all times. According to him though the frequency at which both generations would have similar opinions or react the same way towards an external stimulus were not as frequent as I proposed. There was the difference between our points of view, which makes discussing social changes very subjective. Some people then are probably better able to common chord of understanding between themselves and younger people and that is what we used to refer to as "bridging the generational gap". Others cannot tolerate innovational changes especially when they feel threatened.
The bridging is relative, as far as I am concerned and some people are better able to do that than others. Another point brought up was that when peers have a closer understanding an empathize with what their younger contemporaries are thinking about, their concern for finding lasting relationships in an anonymous world outside the protective nucleus of their families, that can be exemplified by the two curves of life approaching one another.
A greater distance between the curves would then be associated to a tendency for adults to refute the ideas that the young propose, or vice-versa and to an inability of the two to find harmony in their views.
