GENERALIZATIONS ARE JUST THAT

"Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority – they show disrespect for their elders, and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food, and tyrannize teachers.” That was Socrates’ opinion over 2500 years ago. As the wise Ecclesiastes opined even before Socrates’ observation, there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes’ opinion was correct and valid. There is nothing new under the sun. Generation after generation not only learns from the previous generation but they also make the same mistakes as their ancestors. We learn from history, but not always and never enough. The world would be better and life would probably be so much easier if we learned from the past not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We do but not always.

Socrates, on the other hand, was generalizing and was thus generally correct in his observation of not only the youth of his time but also of all youth. While many young people love luxury and have bad manners, not all of them do. While some talk too much, don’t listen when they should, and make life miserable for their parents and teachers, not all do, not even the majority do; but enough do to make adults generalize when they should specify.

It is easy to generalize, of course. When we do, it is usually about those who disagree with us or who are simply disagreeable. Then we can write them off as being in the wrong or simply wrong because they are different. The problem, of course, is those whom we categorize also categorize us. Whenever we judge others with our sense of our own superiority, we can be reasonably certain that they are returning the favor. Just ask young people what they think about their elders if you don’t believe me!

It is not only easy but it is also safe to generalize. That way we do not have to get to know the other on a person-to-person basis. Yet that is also the only way to not only learn about the other; it is also a great way to learn about ourselves. Once we get to know someone whom we have categorized, however we have categorized that person, we will, more often than not learn that we were wrong. He didn’t fit our generalization. In the process we will have to come to grips with why we were so ready to stuff him into a box in which he obviously did not fit.

I once spent almost ten days with four teenage boys, like 24/7 with them: slept in the same room, rode in the same van, walked the same trails, ate at the same table. None of them fit Socrates’ description of his or our youth. I knew that before we went on our Journey to Adulthood Pilgrimage to the Upper Northwest with our theme of “Finding God in Nature.” We found God there and I found God living in them even if they sometimes talked too much or ate as if this were their last meal. Boys will be boys, we say, whatever that means. However, when we spend enough time with them, whether as adults with youth or youth with adults, what we will all learn is that our generalizations are just that and no more and probably just plain wrong.