Of all the memes that flit across our Facebook pages on a regular basis, one jumped out at me yesterday. You’ve seen quite a few versions of it:
You know you’re a child of the 80s if…
Things today’s kids will never use…
Stuff we did as kids and still survived…
Do your kids know what this is?
Sure, these lists sometimes make me feel old, but generally they make me smile. There’s some nostalgia, of course, as I’m reminded of days gone by. But mostly I’m amazed at how much the world has changed just in the short (HA!) time that I’ve been around.
These memes are going to lead to some very entertaining conversations in the future. Actually, now that the first wave of the Millenial generation has hit adulthood, I’ve already had some of these conversations.
“Yes, I remember walking up to the TV to change channels.”
“Yes, I remember the price of gas being less than a dollar per gallon.”
“Yes, seeing the original Star Wars on the big screen was lifechanging.”
“Yes, I played Pong before it was hip and ironic.”
“Yes, we made the same inane ‘art is for the world!‘ arguments defending piracy when we copied records onto cassettes.”
“Cassettes… they’re little plastic squares with tape inside that recorded and played music.”
“Tape… it’s kinda like film, only it was for music rather than images.”
“Film… it’s what we used before digital video… oh, never mind!!”
My point is, these conversations are already happening in my daily life. And the technological rate of change continues to ramp up… soon it won’t be parents having these conversations with their children. Soon we’ll have teens telling their preteen siblings about how they had to plug their old housecleaning robots into the wall overnight to recharge them, before the new kinetic models came out that actually recharge themselves as they vacuum.
All fun aside, there is a rather serious version of this phenomenon that gives me pause. I’m talking about societal ideologies – the truly stupid things groups of people will believe for no better reason than peer pressure.
This is not new. If this internet meme had been around a generation before mine, it might’ve looked something like this:
“You know you’re a child of the 40s and 50s if:
1. You thought Jim Crow laws were just swell, and the Civil Rights Movement was mostly just sour grapes.
2. You thought the Fair Labor Standards Act was going to destroy the economy.
3. You thought McCarthyism was a perfectly reasonable outlook.
4. You were certain that interracial marriage was the other root of all evil.
IMPORTANT NOTE HERE!! I am not saying that everyone who grew up in the 40s and 50s agreed with these things. But they were common opinions.
And I’m going to be sad when I have to say these things to kids in a few years:
“Yes, we really thought that we had nothing to do with the changing climate.”
“Yes, we really thought that pit bulls were significantly more evil than any other animal.”
“Yes, we still used religion to defend bigotry and bullying.”
“Yes, we still thought supply-side was a valid macroeconomic theory.”
“Yes, we still thought that our Founding Fathers meant freedom of religion should only apply to Christianity.”
“Yes, we really thought people wouldn’t catch on to the fact that birtherism was rooted in deep-seated racism.”
“Yes, we thought Simon Cowell held the key to television greatness.”
“Yes, in our attempt to make people believe we cared about the nutrional value of school lunches, we really tried to pass legislation declaring ketchup as a vegetable.”
Fortunately, just as there were people in the 40s and 50s who didn’t believe their myths, there are people today who don’t believe these. And eventually, things do change. The Jim Crow laws were eventually supplanted by the Civil Rights Act. McCarthyism eventually faded into the shadows.
This gives me hope. Hope that eventually equality will overcome bigotry and bullying. Hope that eventually we’ll realize that it’s the owner’s fault, not the dog’s. Hope that someday my favorite shows won’t be the first ones cancelled.
Until then, I’ll try to be a bit more patient. But let me just say this one last thing:
If we get kinetic robots that self-recharge by vacuuming before I get my flying car, I’m gonna have to write someone a strongly worded letter!
Or email. Or telepathy-gram. Or whatever we’re doing by then…