old men

A few weeks ago during a family Zoom call, my uncle--my mom’s brother--made a joke. His connection wasn’t great so I didn’t catch the whole thing, but the premise was Spanish Flu and COVID-19 sitting at a bar. COVID-19 says something about bringing attention to income inequality, and Spanish Flu rolls its eyes and says “millennials.”

My sister and I couldn’t stop talking about it afterward. A few months ago my uncle also made a mildly off-color remark about gender-non-binary folks. And this is not “that one conservative uncle” we’re talking about--he’s a gay man who came of age in the ‘80’s.

It makes me think of a lecture series I listened to recently about conservatism. One of the recurring themes throughout the series is how conservatism is resistant to radical change and prefers what is familiar, but change is inevitable, so as the world changes, what is familiar changes with it. In the late 18th century, being politically conservative in the US and the UK meant being royalist and anti-capitalist. Capitalism was a radical new idea that “conservatives” were generally opposed to. It wasn’t until capitalism had been established for a few generations and communism emerged as a revolutionary alternative that being politically conservative came to mean being pro-capitalism and anti-communism.

It’s true that as people get older, they tend to become more politically conservative, but it’s not so much that our political beliefs change. It has more to do with the world changing around us. The radical changes that excited us when we were younger become the norm, and new alternatives emerge to replace them.

I don’t mean to pick on my uncle here, but what he said struck me as a stark example of how quickly we can let ourselves get jaded and complacent. It wasn’t that long ago that he was a young man fighting for the rights of gay folks, and already he seems comfortable chuckling at young people who are fighting for their own rights. I love him, I respect him, I know he probably meant nothing by that joke, but it made me mad, and I keep thinking about it. I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg of my feelings about the generational divide right now.

The best I can do is try to be aware of that shift as it happens in me, and acknowledge that it’s just a part of human nature.