Generational break

Brexit has sent shockwaves around the world! In this vote to embrace change, the outpouring of angst is from the young people. After four decades of same old, same old, one might have expected them to welcome change. But no, the older age groups dream of new reality outside of the EU!

Millennials have taken to the streets in protest. Bucketfuls of ketchup underscore the verdict as a "bloody joke"! This generation thrives in Diversity, and on foreign soil. Now they face uncertainties. They perceive the country turning inwards culturally. The outrage is at its becoming isolationist. They fear their world shrinking down to one small island. 

Baby Boomers spearheaded the concept of globalization some decades ago. Then they advocated open borders - but for business purposes. The migration of other nationalities into their world was perhaps never considered. Now they fear cultural invasions, and Brexit presents opportunity to reclaim their distinct national identity.

The two generations, once close because of globalization, now plant in opposing camps. The bonhomie is lost. Bitter political rhetoric stokes differing views of the concept to ignite the fears for the future.

In a tv discussion after the referendum, the hostility was apparent. While a young millennial guest spoke her piece, an older fellow guest repeatedly interrupted her flow to question her stand. Clearly incensed, she vented that, as the privileged white male whose generation had already taken away their future, he now wanted to also take away her airtime! 

From across the world, it appears as if the advocates of the change did not themselves believe in Brexit actually coming to pass. Now that they have it, there is backpedaling on claims. Most importantly, they seem at a loss for plans to consolidate and take forward the change.

Consequences to the verdict, however, were immediate. Many that had voted swayed by emotions, regret the outcome.The markets fell. The currency value reached its lowest in three decades. Investors grew jittery. Some trading had to be suspended. Scotland wants independence. EU leaders adopt a hard line. And then at Euro 2016, England falls to shock defeat against tiny Iceland...

Blurred lines

History has always been the bulwark of our culture. Through the ages, we reference a then-and-there we never really experienced to explain actions or rationalize happenings.

That we descend from the gods… that our civilization is the oldest… that in ancient times democracy existed … that over centuries, we withstood the onslaught of other cultures… that monarchies, colonies, and dictatorships passed on… that on the strength of our traditions, we faced diversity but never lost nationhood.

From it we draw meaning for our existence. We do our best to live up to the grandeur and the superhuman heroics. The lines blur between real and fantasy in the stuff of legends we know as traditional heritage.

Then virtual reality happened. Generation Next took to the change like duck to water. History creates at the fingertips as the online transcends all else.

Descend from the gods… assume civilizations of any age… withstand the onslaught of other cultures… raise and demolish democracies, monarchies, colonies, dictatorships instantly in the here-and-now experience. 

The Internet fulfills networking needs and gives meaning to existence. They live through it the images of grandeur, of superhuman heroics, the stuff of legends. 

The interface enables 3d worlds so more real than reality that the lines between blur. In the virtual world of continually streaming information, diversity flows into the living room. It is the new culture the generation connects to, to explain actions or rationalize happenings. The old moulds are broken...Is this evolution?

Worthy of the gods

The other day, I noticed a long queue of young men outside the doctor’s chamber. I wondered what could make so many youths collectively sick. It turned out to be a recruitment drive and they awaited medical reviews. I imagined they were in the city chasing their dream job. They seemed to hail from rural areas, a little out of comfort zones in the urban surroundings. One by one they they were called into the room; some stayed there, but more returned outside. The ones returning were the ‘unfit’ group, and disappointment writ large on their faces. In their sheepish looks around, their continuity with tradition seemed imminent – that is, to abandon dreams in the face of failure. 

Indians invest huge effort in pursuing goals. The practice of rituals and identification with mythological characters is quite pronounced in this region, and so is the belief in fate. We presume to be descendants of the gods. Although lacking the requisite supernatural powers of the epic characters, we expect to be like Prince Arjuna, the archer extraordinaire of the epic Mahabharata who never missed a shot. Even through a reflection, he could pierce the eye of the fish revolving high above. Because Arjuna thus won the princess, we expect to be similarly blessed.  

We forget that as mundane humans, we have to contend with the interfering variables that mythology does not. Our talents also are not equivalent, and wins therefore, are dicey. But failure does not sit well with the heritage we claim. And when we do not succeed at the first try, we take it personal. We are shamed by failure, and do not invest in second chances. Should the one try we make hit target, we can continue to greater exploits. Should it not, we give up entirely. It is all or nothing, with no middle path. This is our morphogenetic learning, the song of culture, as it were. 

I remember being fascinated by rhymes in childhood. The cadence of similar sounding words allured me into ambitiously trying my hand at it. Like:

Donkeys can bray

Some houses are gray

Lions can roar

My pretty dress tore

Birds can fly

And I can cry.

Now, considering that English was then learned only in school, it may have been an achievement for a 5-year-old. But as ‘verse’ was probably little more than a few similar-sounding phrases strung together.  Perhaps with a few decades of honing, something impressive might have resulted. But while I quietly admired my handiwork, an English teacher of the school, noticed my childish scrawl. She was a tall, dark, severe-looking woman and we were all afraid of her. She took my little creativity and frowned at it. I awaited her response with trepidation, expecting punishment or at least a public dressing down for my temerity. Instead, she praised my penmanship as worthy of publishing in the school paper. Her intent, I am sure, was only to offer encouragement, and she probably put it out of her mind soon after. But I assumed she would make it soon happen. For days and weeks and months I waited for the word or sign of making the hit. When it never came to pass I my self-esteem so plummeted I never rhymed again.

We are not taught to handle defeat, hence the fear of public humiliation is consuming. In the school I went to as a child, getting exam results was like visiting the dentist. We could not just pick up our scores and leave – pain was inevitable! The entire class assembled, names were called one by one and performances announced. We learned early that being bottom of the class would earn sustained ridicule from peers. Chants of failure, failure would follow the unlucky everywhere, even amongst children that could hardly spell the word. I actually thought the term was ‘fail-year’, to signify unworthiness throughout the year. My anxiety was double because, at home, it was relative to the monies spent. The standard was set at first in class, and no result below that pleased the elders. So, each time, I died many deaths before I learned my fate!

Respect for elders is a strong thread of the Indian/Bengali cultural fabric. Authority figures are viewed too intimidating to question, and we tend to read divinity into their manner. Even half a century later, I recall the unwittingly effect of the Mss Broughton of the sixties that put paid to my poetic proclivity! Similarly, the group of ‘unfit’ young men would probably read one disappointing medical review as absolute rejection of worth. These Arjunas of the twenty-first century would soon pack up their dreams and fade into oblivion.  Do not give up, I exhorted forcefully in the vernacular. The bowed heads jerked up in surprise at my sudden interjection. ‘Unfit’ today does not make you unfit for life, I said. Ask to understand exactly why you fail the test today. Correct it, and make sure nobody finds you unfit the next time. I waggled a forefinger at them to emphasize the role of the social elder I was appropriating. The country wins if you win, I added, which brought reluctant smiles to their faces.

Engrossed in the mythological fantasy, the tendency with every bump on the road, is to quickly sideline opportunity as not fated for us. We need to respect our own efforts enough to change the dismissive social attitude that relegates to nothingness, genuine efforts on the learning path. To enable adaptability to a changing world, our stories must include personal experiences of failure to highlight the resilience we lack. As a people we now need to invest in new human stories from diversity to help us accept failure without shame. The historical tale of King Robert Bruce, for instance, who, inspired by the tenacity of the lowly spider, found the courage to fight again after six crushing defeats, to finally win his throne. The eye of the fish should be a guideline to focusing mind on task. We should not belittle ourselves by taking it as the only acceptable standard of achievement worthy of the gods.

Disappointing the future

In childhood, the future holds great promise. Images of things perceived novel around us crowd our brains. At one time or other, and with the discovery of new, exciting roles in life, we emulate train-drivers, firemen, stuntmen, superheroes, writers, musicians, dancers, and so on, as our models for life. The want to be is fleeting, to vanish when some other novelty grabs attention. But adults often are impatient with these daydreams taking away from actual goals. With intent to protect them from themselves, they assume control of and direct their children’s lives, in their own image.

It seems to me that the modern habit of sticking children in walkers to ‘protect’ them from injury contributes to dependency - and the fear of falling. Many sheltered young people I hear about voluntarily transfer their life-choice decision-making, almost in throwback to the joint family process of yesteryears wherein the head of the family ruled over all aspects of the extended family members lives. Although families in India had since transformed to nuclear, becoming smaller and independent of traditions, in some areas, the social dynamic appears unchanging.

For instance, the allure of ‘love marriages’ (choosing one's own partner) diminishes, perhaps because divorce rates have climbed four thousand percent in India in recent times. In a growing trend, these children look to having their life-partners secured for them by parents instead. Technology has become a hugely useful tool in the burgeoning market of marriage ads. There are specific websites to meet the demands for community, caste, status, looks, ad infinitum. I see the parents of grown sons and daughters avidly trawl Internet to find suitable matches from around the world. As in the corporate industry, SWOT analyses are conducted of individual and family and, in concessions to democracy, a final ‘shortlist’ of candidates made and presented to generation next.

Following the parental spadework, the prospective brides and grooms then venture out dating down the list to discover mutual chemistry. When The One is found, the parents from both sides then meet to hammer out the nitty-gritty between them - including the covert gives-and-takes of dowry - so that marriage along traditional lines might occur with full pomp and pageantry. In the process, the parents and other authority figures find relevance in their own existence.  Otherwise smart and intelligent young people also cultivate the expedience of this generational symbiosis extending continuity with the past. It is perceived a useful allocation of family resources, to collectively prevent mistakes from happening.

My question is whether the continual spoon-feeding allows the children to grow up at all capable of assuming their adult responsibilities, especially to think outside the box in situations unexpected. The children are taught to avoid making mistakes in life, and learn to have little faith in their own choices. The point missing in the remote control is the practice of falling and getting up again. Neither as parents nor as teachers do the elders pass on this crucial art to those in their charge.

An opinion I found on the ’Net says:

To gain admission or be hired at top-tier universities, we have been on a winning streak, earning awards and top grades with ease. We follow the rules to get ahead. We have often forgotten how to fall, much less how to teach others to fall. If we do fall, we carefully hide those failures from students and colleagues to preserve our reputations. As classroom experts, we rarely venture afield to remember what learning by trial and error feels like. …Much of the time we have become entranced with being experts rather than learners—and thus have distanced ourselves from the students we hope to teach.

 

We assume that disappointments with the adult world were more rife in our time, because in those decades, technology did not wipe away boundaries between people or open global avenues of opportunity. I remember that as the youngest member of a joint family, my reality was constantly looking up to others, wanting to follow in their footsteps. For instance, the dance school where older girls went became my goal in life. I dreamed of becoming light as a fairy, graceful as a swan, just like them. The family elders, on the other hand, were obviously counting the monies; their resources stretching thin. They had no incentive to invest in further training that would probably lead nowhere, since, at that time, there were no reality shows to play out competitions on television, hawking lucrative deals to motivate contestants’ guardians. Education, and only education was then the thing, especially for girls! It was left to my mother to break the news to me. Rather than admit the truth, she opted instead to say that it (dance) would lead to ugly fat in later life! That crashing comedown for me, probably affected my perceptions of self and elders thereafter. I always wanted to be a dancer, but somehow felt constrained. 

The mindsets of parental control have changed little even today, and parental aspirations may replace the children’s aptitudes. Because the social environment continues to support total obedience and respect for elders, the younger members feel powerless to rebel against the family authority. They begin to believe it too much to combat attitudes and customs to charter the new course they want in life. Those that cannot conform, learn to be disappointed with the adult world, and suffer low self-esteem on pathways that little interest them. 

In a bus the other day, sudden raised voices attracted attention. I looked over at the commotion to see a young girl, obviously on her way home from school with school-bag and wearing school uniform, standing quietly by an empty seat while a couple of women on either side of her screamed at each other over her. Because both women wanted the seat for themselves, they were each bent on preventing the other from taking it. The teenager caught in between was clearly unimpressed by their antics, and ignored all calls for ‘the poor child’ to take the seat and settle the matter! I found her impassivity curious and got talking to her. She was sixteen and already believed adults, including parents and teachers, were hypocritical. Here was a person in a hurry to grow up and out of their control. 

In real life, she was a high school student living out her parents’ desires of a doctor or engineer in the family, struggling with physics and math, while her heart was in literature and she dreamed of being a writer. She was the budding poet that nobody around her knew about, and sometimes she wrote under a pseudonym to preserve her identity. Her parents, she said, neither knew nor cared about her aspirations. I asked why she didn’t sit down with the adults and talk out what she really wanted to do. No point, she said, they never listen. My father only gets angry and starts shouting.The strain showing on her face expressed far more of her isolation than her words did. She told me she hated going to school, because the teachers spent more time promoting their after-hours tutorials than disseminating knowledge in school. She felt she would probably learn far more from the ’Net than she did by attending their classes. 

Many students say their school counselors are uninterested in their growing pains and merely advise focus on studies, avoiding distractions. It is a sad commentary of our times that despite the new global openness, the choices open to new generations is to either live in dependent relationships or in alienation. Any psychology-based outside help carries social stigma that families avoid like the plague, thus perpetuating the disappointments. The children of today need astute guidance to growing up as levelheaded adults capable of independent decision-making in a rapidly changing world. More than them, it is the parents and teachers that urgently require counseling on the necessity to adapt to the environment. 

The elder generations need to remember their own ordeals of the earlier times, and enable youth of today to negotiate the travails and crises they must encounter in life. Young people must be allowed to explore the environment around them, to make mistakes and to learn from them. They are entitled to truth from the elders, sharing of experience, and independence. It would help them interact freely, and without misconceptions, with the changing global scenario and demographics of diverse groups. Else, they harbour in the corners of their minds unprocessed fears, angers and disappointments that poison perceptions, stunting their development as the people of our future.

Under the cover of lies

I heard the other day that a young man of my acquaintance fibs. He is now adult and working with a multinational concern in his campus-recruited first job. Educated at a reputed institution, he is the former frat boy who survived gruelling initiation rites to learn the ropes of organized living. The family is immigrant, which makes the achievements more impressive. Yet, He lies, says his father, matter-of-factly. I question a person's deceiving where he need not and even fabricating rationales to compound the lies - more from curiosity about the motivation behind the pastime, than from a moral high ground.

The saying is: You can fool all people some of the time, you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. But these old adages are hardly a deterrent! Lies have become an accepted form of social communication. Its practice is active across all of humanity, and knows no social barriers, age, education and gender. Although the purpose behind the action may vary in each case, do it enough times and lying becomes an end in itself.

For little children, their little untruths are a defence against a world where everybody towers over them. The motivation is fear, of being punished or deprived of rewards, mainly in physiological terms. They may give in easily to the joy of scribbling on walls or table tops, but the spirit is unwilling to take on adverse adult responses. Denial – even with the tell-tale crayon dust under the finger-nails, shows up their powerlessness. The same may be said for the poverty-stricken, the illiterate, the very elderly, and women that have no control over their lives. The lies are their survival technique before intimidating authority. The young man I mention is hardly in the same boat; he is of age, his destiny is in his own hands. Perhaps he has just not been weaned off the childish habit of fibbing.

It may also be that deception is the game he is now hooked on playing. In the age of information, new generations grow more accustomed to shades of grey than to the moralistic black and white of yesteryears. In the childhood of our time, the emphasis at home and in school is on honour, sacrifice and other virtues of righteous living – extensions of social collectivism in part, in part catechism. The story books we love to read transport us to the fantasy world of magical creatures, and each carries a lesson to learn. In school, to pass the class, we have to pass the moral science test. Right and wrong becomes clearly demarcated in the mind. Indeed, pithy proverbs pop out of long term memory at inopportune moments, to create doubt, dilemma, discomfort and the omnipresent burden of guilt. The moral science subject is now obsolete in schools, perhaps to reduce pressures on impressionable minds. The social learning at home too is in abeyance because families have shrunk, and both parents are employed. The books that fascinate the earlier generation have lost their allure. The young are left alone to role-play in the virtual reality that appears at the touch of a button. Fact is they know more about video game plots than they do about human values.

Furthermore, blatant lies have become the weapon of manipulation in today’s world. Lawyers, for instance are said to be liars by profession, scarcely concerned any more with justice. They weave webs of words to twist and turn perceptions of events, projecting as the absolute truth the perspectives of their own clients. In similar vein, the search for political power in any organization requires mastering the art of persuasion whereby a molehill may be made to assume the proportions of a mountain, and vice versa. The point is to bring down opponents wresting from them the reins of power. In corporate industry, the Madoffs, the Lehmans and the Lawsons of the world use their genius with numbers and technology with the same cynical disregard for human values to defraud their victims and even their own organizations of currency notes in the millions. They call it hustling, spinning elaborate cons to dupe the unsuspecting. There is no remorse in scamming the elderly and the financially weak out of their trust and their life savings.

Cynicism permeates the interactions of groups with other groups. There is take rather than give in this predatorial world that transposes going for the jugular from the wild into the organizational process. To use subterfuge to get close to the prey and to then move in swiftly for the kill is an act that plays out regularly in everyday life. People learn to be less disturbed by lies, which in fact interweave into their social masks. These hide their true natures or conceal their vulnerability. The motivation is again fear, but in psychological terms, because nobody wants to lose. To be the winner, the game must be played and played well. The humans tend to forget that their minds have evolved beyond that of the other animals; that they actually need to adapt to the world of other people, rather than to orders on the food chain.

The heroes the young emulate are in virtual reality, sometimes perceived as more real than real life may be. The ploy set up for immediate rewards can turn into the long term habit they wear like a second skin. They may begin to live the lie, believe in the illusion, and be caught up, unable to escape, in the traps they build for others. Like addicts, they seek the next score, the next adrenaline rush, and the next win in the games of their own making. Lies may become the compulsion that pushes people to deny their true self. Peel that cover of lies away and there might be a frightened child within, afraid to grow up, making believe his maturity. 

Image of a homeland

Within three decades of India’s independence, the brain drain raises a furore, as demographic migration to the West becomes a popular trend amongst the educated. In enlightened self-interest, the future generations of India’s freedom fighters willingly choose to break tradition and swear new allegiances. They actively ignore perceptions in the mother country of being mercenary, traitors to the nationalistic ideals of their forefathers. The assumption may be that people choosing to emigrate base their decisions on felt affinity with their destination regions. However, the emotional reactivity that tends to surface later suggests that the choice may have been economic opportunism.

A century or two earlier, while India was a colony, it was routine to forcibly shunt workers to other lands as cheap manual labour. The colonizers then decide to harness the Indian intellect as well, to increase profitability. The “Baboo culture” is thus born - that is, educated Indians, the Baboos, inducted to maintain the system, become the backbone of bureaucratic functioning. Education in India is structured along Western lines, replacing the indigenous universities of its more ancient civilization. Missionary schools spring up all around the country dispensing knowledge and conversions to Christianity. University colleges for higher studies open doors to Western sciences in the presidencies of the north, south, east and west. Obviously, the medium of study is also mainly English.

About the first quarter of the twentieth century, things begin to change politically. Satyagrahis (freedom fighters) burn symbols of Western affluence, clothes, etc., on the streets as demands to end colonial rule gain momentum. Eventually, independence is achieved. But the price of freedom, people realize, is empty coffers. Almost overnight, the erstwhile rich colony is stripped of its wealth. The Partition that carves Pakistan out of undivided India displaces thousands on the grounds of religion. Hindu families in Pakistan and Muslims in the new India are evicted from their respective homelands and pushed across the new borders.  The thousands upon thousands that are forcibly unsettled, that lose their homes, their lands, their families and their very identity in the political machinations, feel that they go from frying pan into fire. Ironically, they preferred to forge bonds with their erstwhile masters, and rage at one another. The traumatic wounds of this separation continue to bleed to this day between neighbours in the sub-continent.

At independence, there are about six hundred kingdoms and princely states in India. It is a momentuous task to bring them under the banner of a secular, democratic republic. Obviously, no consensus can be reached on elevating any one regional tongue over others as the national language, and there are twenty-two of them officially, along with thousands of dialects. English, the once foreign tongue, is the common medium of communication around the country, indianizing according to the grammar and speech patterns of each state. The bureaucratic system also survives social and political turmoil. Even today, the country’s civil administration is sustained by the “baboodom” of yore. It functions as before with paper files and manual entries, is loath to adapt to the modernity of electronic communications, and its incumbents often occupy the same spaces and look very much like their predecessors of that bygone era.

 

The traditional joint family structure that society is built upon disintegrates, post independence. The extended branches of family are now often separated by the new borders. Each splintered segment is compelled to find their own financial stability. The outlook towards women also has to change. For economic reasons, their education links to employment for the first time. Learning from European and Anglo-Indian teachers becomes a matter of course for boys and girls born in the new democracy. In the early days, knowledge dissembled is swallowed unquestioningly. What comes out of the Book is gospel truth – including for instance, nursery tales picturizing the white mother as thinner, prettier and smarter than any other, black, red or yellow!

No surprise then that the children learn to identify more with blonde hair, blue eyes, and the English language than they can with their own shattered roots. The image of the “homeland” also blurs. In the 1970s and ’80s, skilled young adults being westward bound are perhaps the logical conclusion to the childhood aspirations.

Moreover, the leaders of the new India struggle to run the fledgling democracy. The country joins the ranks of penurious developing nations. The people that had sought to become their own masters find they have to seek aid just to get by. Clearly, it will take decades for India to be at par with the leading nations. Getting out to richer pastures makes most economic sense. Besides, the architects of the new democracy failed to include compulsory service to the nation in the constitutional duties for its citizens and hence, the governments watch helplessly as new crops of graduates fly away to bring fame and fortune to their overseas employers. The brain drain leaves a vacuous workforce in the nation that, thinking future, nurtures the cream of its youth through years of subsidized education. The countries that grew fat on the gullibility of Asia and Africa are able to call the shots in the reconstruction of the nations they previously ravaged. They are now the lands of plenty beckoning India’s new intelligentsia.

 

Traditional values in India base on strong family relationships across generations. The family buffers its members against adversity, providing the social security and support the state cannot. Children live with their parents and care for them in old age. These are the just rewards for the many sacrifices they make to raise them to adulthood. But in the new reality, the elderly left behind in India find themselves unable to cope with living alone or in the care of hired help. Bereft of the traditional extended family environment they have grown to expect, their emotional suffering is acute.

The immigrant communities soon find out that their relinquished citizenship does not guarantee integration into the new society in the West. People brought up on collectivistic values gradually realize that multiculturalism in the West is a patchwork of demographic fractions maintaining minimal social interrelationships outside of work. While socializing in distinctly dissimilar cultures is difficult in itself, the immigrants from the Asian sub-continent and Africa also carry the colonized stigma. Consequently, each social group becomes inward-looking, fearing the decimation of their unique cultural identity. Realizing perhaps a little late that money is not everything, their focus shifts to forging strong intra-group bonds. They form a Little India, a Chinatown and so on, to preserve culture through the associations, norms, customs and rituals experienced in childhood. These become the heritage to keep alive in their adopted homelands thousands of miles away from their origins.

First-generation immigrants probably carry a suppressed sense of guilt that they abandon their familial duties for riches. Indeed, they are more strident in their attempts to recreate the way things were back home. They demand obedience and respect from their offspring in the mould of the traditional culture. They dream of establishing continuity with the past they renounced a few decades ago, including the segregation of gender. But often, they are unaware that the homeland itself has evolved beyond that point, while they cling to some obsolete image of it. Children reared in the West are caught between cultures. On the one hand, they imbibe the liberalness of the here-and-now environment they live in. On the other, they are bombarded with parental projections of there-and-then traditions that scarcely match their present experience of life. In a new cycle of change, this dichotomous image of a homeland may seem alien and meaningless to the rebellious young. The older generations thereby perceive their liberal leanings as mercenary, traitors to the cultural ideals of their forefathers...