MORT’s meanderings

     The Great Disconnect.

The reason there is such a gaping disconnect between generations – i.e., “The Greatest Generation” and the “Millennials” - is a combination of memory retention in the former and education that excluded American history, in the latter.  

So in actual fact, experiencing a disconnect between the two is quite unlikely since, there was never a connection between them in the first place. These generations might as well attempt to arrive at a mutual understanding while speaking different languages.  And sadly, shouting doesn’t help all that much.

Successful communication is doomed to failure when the older generation makes reference to people and events that are no longer taught in our school systems at any level and therefore, are completely unknown to the current generation – even those who might carry several initials after their names that represent earned academic degrees.  If the current ‘gen’ was not taught Patrick Henry’s famous quote, or the rich witticisms in H. L. Mencken’s writings – how could they realistically be expected  to relate to any reference that is made to speeches or writings by these people, so long buried in our dust-covered history?  

Can this disparity be reconciled?  Of course; anything is possible.  It could happen if the younger generation studies our history, beginning with the founding of this nation – and if the older generation takes some crash courses in computing, wi-fi texting and learns to retrieve data from a ‘Cloud’.  Yeah, it could happen but, is it likely? Ah dun think so.     

Then, is there any hope that the old codgers and the cool newbees will ever connect for the mutual benefit that could possibly accrue?    Nope.

                  MORT KUFF   © 5-8-2015