I noticed something this weekend that made me realize (for the umpteenth
time) the difference in perspective of different generations. We had a
"coffee house" type of affair on Sunday afternoon at our church. We had
good hot soup all afternoon while different groups entertained us with
popular songs from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, etc.
When we got to the music of the 80s, the person in charge of the music for
that period was about 30 years old (today). Therefore she was in junior
high, high school, and started college in the 80s. Quite a few of the songs
she sang were protest songs about nuclear weapons. I was amazed because
that's not what I remembered as music of the 80s. She commented how she
grew up terribly afraid of nuclear war and felt it was important to be an
anti-nuclear activist because she sincerely felt her life depended on it.
My first reaction was "baloney." I was in public school in the 50s and
early 60s. We actually had air raid drills and got under our tables and
desks in elementary school. I remember the Cuban missile crisis like it was
yesterday and thought nuclear war could break out on any given day. By the
time the 80s came around I didn't worry about nuclear war at all. How could
she possibly worry about it?
But I asked my parents, fortunately both alive and well and over 80 years
old, if they were worried about nuclear war around the time of the Cuban
missile crisis. They said they were not. They'd already been through a
world war. The threat of another one, even nuclear, didn't bear too heavily
on them. I asked if they were aware how afraid I was of nuclear war. They
knew I talked about it some, but they did not realize how afraid I was.
The moral is that every generation has things to fear, things to be happy
about, things to be depressed about, things to look forward to, etc. It can
be difficult to try to imagine what those things are when we examine that
generation from the outside. What we think they think can be way off
target. The best thing we can do, if we take the time, is ask them... then
listen.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817