Intergeneration Lost and Found: why suits and skirts don't talk with jeans why they should and how they can

This book represents a study of young people between 18-30, the so-called emerging adult generation, and of the way they interact with members of older generations. It deals with basic characteristics of emerging adulthood. It describes the way these young people interact with information technologies, the impact of which is so pervasive in their lives. It tells the story of a subgroup of emerging adults, the so-called hipsters, to highlight the place of irony in the lives of today’s young people. It chronicles the way this emerging generation interacts and communicates with preceding generations and it attempts to place this generation historically in relation to post-modernism. Finally, it asks what all this means for the way we intergenerationally live together in the twenty-first century. The thesis of this book is that today there exists a profound disconnect between the younger generation of emerging adults and the older generation of their parents, teachers and employers. The generations don’t get one another because they are not like one another. They literally live worlds apart. This makes genuine communication between them difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps the most fundamental way in which emerging adults differ from their elders is that their lives are by and large characterized by the integrity of questioning rather than the certainty of knowing. They like to live on the edge, to try new things, to walk in a space of not knowing. For the older generation these are negative qualities because they disturb the status quo. Thus, today the generations tend to live along side one another with very little dialogue between them about life’s most fundamental issues. The key to re-establishing intergenerational communication lies in each generation respecting and appreciating the other’s otherness. This is best achieved in mentoring and reverse mentoring relationships between older and younger people. Mentoring and reverse mentoring relationships are made possible by the fact that older and younger people need each other and complement one another. A mentoring relationship is one, which provides company for emerging adults, which shows respect and caring towards them, and which supports, challenges and inspires them in a context of an ongoing dialogue with them. In such relationships an older person cultivates a close friendship relationship with a younger person to the mutual benefit of both. A mentoring relationship is more egalitarian than a parent-child, a teacher-student, or an employer-employee relationship in that it also includes some aspects of reverse mentoring in which older adults are mentored by emerging adults. In mentoring relationships both learn from one another and both are changed by the other. So, to remedy the breakdown of communication between the generations, the relationship between older and younger people should become interactive, mutually supportive and mutually influencing. In short, it should be one of ongoing reciprocal renegotiation about the shape of a common culture and society.