By Astika

Does it seem to you like civilization is taking a step backward? Rude manners, shameless lying, and backward-looking leaders who seem to want to recreate the Stone Age? An older woman I know recently expressed dismay about how the world was going ‘to hell in a handbasket.’ She was particularly concerned about the tattoos and piercings young adults are sporting. She saw it as a sign of moral decay, along with immodest dress and all those vulgar T-shirts! This lady felt she was upholding her Christian values by looking down on human beings who didn’t match her standards for public appearance. Her complaint boiled down to how ‘spoiled’ modern youth is.

When looking at photographs from the earlier days of her generation, I marvel at how almost everyone seemed to hold the same standard of dress in public--the age of the coat and tie, and ‘proper’ dresses, but that was just the external appearance. What about internal reality? I said, “Morality is more than skin deep.” Today’s youth, with their tattoos and vulgar T-shirts, is possibly the most moral generation the world has ever seen. They care about human rights, social justice, equal opportunity, domestic violence, and the welfare of the planet in ways their parents and grandparents never imagined. Their concerns, I said, seem a better indication of moral virtue than the fashion we wear.

My friend was offended and pointedly asked, “Then why aren’t things better?”

My answer was immediate, perhaps too quick. “They are better,” I said, “better for more people than in your day.” I went on to explain that in her day we weren’t as tuned to media as we are now. “You didn’t hear about every murder in America on the nightly news. There weren’t a hundred channels trying to compete for who could shock you the most. Alarm and dismay have become the currency of good ratings, so today, we know more about what’s wrong than ever before.

She laughed and said, “You have no idea what we knew … even if it wasn’t on the radio or television.

At that point, our conversation ended. If it had continued, I might have replied, “And therein lies the problem. You knew, but you didn’t do anything about it. You ignored the evil. Now, the fruits of that evil are on display for all to see, and many in the older generations (mine included) are embarrassed in front of their children and grandchildren. And they are mad about having their failures exposed.

It seems to me that it may be we, older generations, who are the ‘spoiled’ ones. After all, it was we who lived in a time when America ruled the world economically and culturally without meaningful competition from abroad. The 50s and 60s were an American gravy train, and we enjoyed the best at the expense of everyone else. Did we use our wealth and power to promote the general welfare and a better world? Not so much. Some did, of course. No generation is monolithic but composed of individuals who make their own choices. By and large, however, we separated ourselves from the Third World rather than pitched in to help out. We were too busy scrambling to see who could possess the most expensive car and the biggest home in a gated community. Our energy went into vanities rather than leadership.

Today’s youth face the consequences of that moral lassitude. Rather than a moral decline, I insist the spiritual and moral standards of society have risen above what they were in the past. Whatever your opinion about today’s fashion, nothing in it can compete with the moral depravity of ignoring racism, the poverty within your own community, and the endless, senseless waging of wars. The moral high ground of past generations is a myth, and the political and social dysfunction we see today is just the bitter fruit of past neglect.  

But let’s not blanket any generation with a one-size-fits-all praise or blame. Each generation is called upon to make sacrifices. Past generations have done their part, and we would do well to thank them for their service and forgive their shortcomings. We will do even better if we don’t repeat their mistakes or allow ourselves to be blocked by obsolete attitudes. We must avoid wasting our energy on recrimination and act decisively to repair the damage. Let’s realize that every generation has its heroes and its villains. The mass of ordinary people are sandwiched in between. We need to rise above the merely ‘ordinary’ if we are to save ourselves from ourselves.

The greatness of each generation has always been defined by those who could rise above negative conditions and accomplish the needful. That is the challenge facing every generation of young people. Will we rise, or will we sink? To believe and to feel in your heart that you can rise and will rise is the mark of greatness. It is the badge of genuine faith. There are plenty of folks in the older generations who will gladly join with the young, both to mentor and to learn from them. We aren’t all frozen in time and bound down in the cobwebs of the past.

The past wasn’t greater or more important than today. The exact opposite is true, today is vastly more important than the past and can be far greater in every respect. The necessary thing is to be a forward-looking person. The American people are by nature forward-looking. We see and understand that The Founding Fathers were far from perfect men. There were almost as many among them who feared freedom and equality as those who advocated for it. They built into the Constitution a maze of restrictions and offsetting powers intended not only to thwart the overly ambitious but also to prevent direct democracy. Worse of all, they could not bring themselves to honestly address the most pressing moral issue of their day—slavery. They left the issue unresolved and the nation divided. This planted the seeds of a future civil war and the present animosities and divisions that divide us. We are quite literally suffering the consequences of their moral lassitude.

But not so much as we are suffering our own moral lapses and cowardice. It falls on us to finally lay racism and religious bigotry in the grave, to build a truly united nation and a cooperative world. If we are paralyzed by past attitudes and unable to act justly and decisively, it will be our grave that we’re digging. Evolution will not be kind to us if we are weaklings in the 21st Century bound by the crippling social attitudes of the 18th and 19th Centuries. The past is dust. Today belongs to us.  

In my previous article, I said that the challenge of this generation is to be better than their forefathers, to be better citizens, to be better civically, spiritually, and morally than their parents and grandparents. I stand by that assertion. Evolution demands better of each generation. To remain the same is to fall back and disappear in the void of time. As much as the nation needed the Founding Fathers or the WW2 generation to be fighters, it now needs us to be peacemakers, both at home and abroad. That means better human beings, better internally as well as externally, than have ever lived on this planet before. The winning attitude will not be a sour cynicism or a hopeless despair that whines, “Every man for himself.” The necessary attitude will be one of a truly heroic heart and soul that declares, “This is our moment to act heroically and selflessly for the benefit of the earth and mankind; this is our time to lead on to a brighter future.”

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 Astika Mason is the author of a collection of short stories, A Dream Immortal. He is has been a spiritual seeker for more than a half century and is presently a meditation teacher in San Diego.