Shri Divyanshu Shekhar
(Young author Shri Divyanshu Shekhar writes poems, stories, plays and scripts in Hindi and English. His first collection of poems “Zindagi – ek chalchitra” was published in May 2017 and first English Novel “Too Close – Too Far” in December 2018. Today we present his article “Generation gap”. Shri Divyanshu ji represents youth’s/new generation’s views and if someone would like to represent his/her views representing old generation are welcome in Hindi , English or Marathi .)
☆ Generation gap ☆
I chose this article because lots of time, I observed the conflicts between the younger generations with the older generations. We can see these conflicts in our families too, even though we never expressed. I read articles on this, also heard the experiences of people, and then decided to write on this topic.
Generation gap refers to the chasm that separates the thoughts expressed by two different generations. More specifically, a generation gap can be termed as the differences in actions, and beliefs exhibited by younger generations, versus older ones and it causes conflicts.
This is a very important topic to be discussed, which one people generally ignore. We use to blame each other but we don’t talk and act to resolve this matter positively.
If I go for a debate, this topic may create a great war of intellectualism and a book might be less for this topic. But I am going to introduce a single reason
behind this terminology as I found it most suitable in the current scenario. I might be wrong but I observed in this way.
I think “Technology” is the reason behind this “Generation Gap”.
Technology is the knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment. It’s a sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.
And knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering or learning. It can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding. It can be implicit or explicit. It can be more or less formal or systematic.
We are in a technology era and we can’t deny that technology has a great impact on our society, mindset, thoughts, and our beliefs. It changes the way of thinking and doing work. It passes information and we store those pieces of information in memory and we learn from them.
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviour, skills, values, and preferences. We know the fact that a human brain is a great learning system that can automatically learn and improve from experience.
And those leanings make our perceptions and we all act according to data in our mind. Obviously, learning is not limited to any age or any constraint. But as per research and experiences, we have to agree that most of the new things we learn at a younger age or it is better to say that we enjoy learning at a young age.
I saw that the new generations have lots of complaints with older generations and vice versa. But have you ever thought that they are not bad people, they are just technology blind people.
Young people expect that older people should understand them but they don’t try to understand their compulsions. Old generations have seen lesser advanced technologies at their younger age and suddenly within few years lots of new things came up and they found difficulties to cope up with those new and advanced technologies and they are still struggling.
Older generations had more faith in hard work while younger generations have more in smart work due to available advanced technologies. So we can say that they consider each other as technology blind people.
But younger generations also have to agree that they and these smart technologies are results of the vision and hard work of older generations.
Have you ever imagined how technology got advanced in just a few years? Where were we and where we are? How our mindsets got changed within a few decades? If you get this, you can find a relation between technology and the generation gap.
Now younger people can communicate anywhere in the world via different internet-based applications but our older generations were unable to make such conversations even with their close friends at their younger age.
Now the younger generations are very familiar with the concepts of friends of opposite gender, love, relationship. They can easily express their feelings.
But most of older people in their phase couldn’t express such feelings in that way. On a funny note, most of them couldn’t move from the concept of “Crush”. I heard a few stories that they use to like someone but that person got married to someone else and in their next meeting they were proud parents.
So as I discussed above that technology is the reason behind this term “Generation Gap”. But what should be the solution for this? I don’t want to close this topic like an informal letter by saying, respect your elders and love your youngers, because both deserve equally. Every problem has a solution and in this case, solution should be mutual, not one-sided. Because every generation has their own struggle stories.
I observed one thing, lots of people after attaining a specific age, don’t want to learn new things. It might be because they want more stability, more relaxation, and less future struggle. They start telling their old struggle stories and try to glorify themselves. They start imposing their beliefs and practices on younger people which is wrong but if they make learning a habit, it won’t create such problems.
But it is not as simple as I wrote. I also think it’s not only their fault, but it’s our fault too. We accept them partially but we expect that they should think and act like us completely, like free, open-minded, not like a moron. Actually, it will take time and we should guide them patiently as they guided us to learn walking and various life lessons.
I heard from a few young people that their next generations will suffer less than them. It might be possible and I wish for that but even though they will have their complaints with you for sure. Unlike your parents, you get bored from a 1980s movie, similarly, your kids might get bored with a movie of 2020 too.
Blaming is the easiest way to escape from responsibilities. But it will take years to change the data in people’s minds and their perceptions. And to achieve this, generations should broaden their acceptance criteria and they should be open for learning.
So, people of different generations should respect the differences and have to put efforts positively. Their continuous and collaborative efforts will eliminate conflicts and will form a better society.
© Divyanshu Shekhar
Kolkata (West Bengal)
