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Everyone knows the feeling of their parents’ ideas seeming out of date. My generation seem convinced that our version of liberal values would never be superseded and are shocked and disbelieving that this might be happening. Maybe *this* is the key to the “cancel culture” panic.
The feeling of anger and disbelief towards the critique of the generation rising up behind is precisely what we celebrated when we were the young rejectors (likewise our parents versus their parents in the 60s). So maybe all this is healthy.
If we fundamentally agreed with the values of people 20 years younger than us *that’s* what would be worrying.
Cultural change isn’t just about what people think, it’s about the way things are discussed. The feeling that the discourse of the young is uncivil and dogmatic is perennial to every generation.
Every generation of modern times “cancels” their elders, and every generation of elders feels it as a shock and an unwarranted slap in the face.
It’s very hard to receive this slap and accept it as something healthy or natural because this is the feeling of your generation being elbowed aside. The grumpiness of age stems, perhaps, from the impossibly of truly accepting that your own world view might have gone out of date.
Old people clinging on to antiquated views seems funny when you’re young, then, when you’re not young, and the same dynamic is still in play, the whole thing suddenly seems a lot less funny.
The real shock is to find yourself feeling culturally old before you feel physically old. Nobody ever warns you that your ideas might age faster than your body - and that the first core value to reach decrepitude will be your sense of how ideas should be debated.
