Earlier this month in New Zealand, 25-year-old member of parliament Chlöe Swarbrick was giving a speech in support of a bill to combat climate change. The Zero Carbon Bill intends to set a target of zero carbon emissions for her country by 2050.
"How many world leaders, for how many decades have seen and known what is coming but have decided that it is more politically expedient to keep it behind closed doors?" she said.
"My generation and the generations after me do not have that luxury. In the year 2050, I will be 56 years old. Yet right now, the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old."
Just then, somebody from the room—we assume an older colleague—heckled her, supposedly making a comment on her age.
“Ok, boomer,” she said, raising her hand, before returning just as swiftly to her speech.
The video soon became viral and the phrase “Ok, boomer” became a catch phrase to express the youth’s frustration with the older generation.
Certainly, it has not all been praises for the youth. Millennials—roughly those born between the years 1983 and 1996, and among which Swarbrick belongs—and even the Gen Z that comes after them are often portrayed as self-centered, restless, and who have low capacity for sacrifice. Born into the conveniences brought by technology, these young people have never known what it is like to do painstaking work.
It’s gross generalization and purely anecdotal, but they are unapologetic over their “attitude.” Nothing wrong with it, they seem to say, as they scoff at the older generations’ attempts to lecture them or put them in their place. After all, aren’t their older counterparts responsible for the cumulative mess we now find ourselves in, with regard to the climate and most other things? Is not their hypocrisy, their desire to keep up appearances and their and faux-morality the root of all that is wrong in the world?
The vilification of other generations, whether younger or older, does not help find solutions and foster solidarity. Both the young and the old have high stakes in our present and our future. It is true that most of today’s decision-makers belong to the older generation. They have earned it, sure, but they must not squander the opportunity to do good even when they won’t live long enough to see the results. Meanwhile, the young must acknowledge that only time will make them learned and wise. Wisdom comes not through theoretical knowledge but a firsthand experience of success and failure, even folly, but also redemption.
Let us no longer speak in contempt of those who may have different world views and methods from us. Instead, we should not tire of seeking a common ground and acknowledging that everyone of whatever age, whatever stripes, always has something to bring to the table.