I notice more and more disdain between generations especially towards Gen Z’s and millennial’s.

A conflict I suspect is due to differences in perspectives and lifestyles.

Gen Z and Millennial’s are faced with different life outcomes to their parents with many fearing they will have worse outcomes than their parent’s generation. Instead of this creating an understanding or sympathy for a generation facing different challenges, instead there is a disdain. This is sad as it impacts the ability for cross generational learning and wisdom transfer.

Cross generational learning has been a mainstay in various cultures around the world. We can see this in initiation processes where a more experienced guide takes the initiate through a process to share their knowledge. Examples of this are: religious initiation such a bat mitzvah which marks a transition from childhood to adulthood. All initiation rites vary but they often have a common theme of ritually marking the transition of someone to full membership of a society, group, order etc. These rituals often reflects the initiate’s ability to understand the human condition or their communities values and knowledge or even come face to face with death.

These rites often model a journey we are very familiar with in popular culture – The hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is defined by author Joseph Campbell. It details the stages of the hero’s journey as; the call to adventure, being met at the threshold with guardians who supports the journey of transformation which peaks with death and rebirth and culminates in completion of the transformation before the return to the hero’s community.

Referring to the work of anthropologist and their study of culture, I notice a trend where historical societies had rights of passages and rituals embedded within communities. And the research shows that these initiation are fundamental to human growth and development as well as socialization.

However, nowadays these type of initiations are rare and not a standard process embedded in society. It could be said that we are now living in an uninitiated society. Therefore, instead of society using community based initiations, we have moved to a society that favors economic initiations where the rites of passage deemed most important in defining oneself as an adult are: completing higher education, buying a first home etc.

However, in light of the current cost of living crisis hitting these milestones becomes less of an automatic process and instead they become something that requires greater effort than for past generation with less certainty that the effort will be rewarded. An example of this would be a recent graduate, not earning enough to leave their parents homes as they cannot afford rent in the areas that they work, let alone buy homes of themselves. These economic issues are resulting in more negativity in the discourse between generations therefore negatively impacting the formation of cross generational relationships and the continuation of initiation practices.

I would even go so far to say, that as the economic divide grows and economic marker of adulthood become further out of reach for future generations, that we will witness generations facing an existential crisis trying to form adult identities based on other markers such as their strong views, political identity, causes they are against etc. Strong attachment to identity markers has being shown to have some negative impact of the person’s ability to critical assess their opinions as their views have become integral to their identity and sense of self. This make communication and effective dialogue more challenging and these are both going to be essential as society navigate issues such as climate change where we need to reach consensus on how to approach it.

How do we solve it? How do we create communities with initiation practices that will support healthy cross generational discourse. One solution would be holistic mentoring programmes where wisdom’s such as; how to live a good life and how to transition from childhood to adulthood in a healthy way can he shared. We may say that this is the role of parents however with our society currently requiring dual incomes to really keep up a household, caring responsibilities for aging parent. It seems like a responsibility that cannot just lie solely in the hands of parents but rather it is a collective wider society and community endeavor.