Bridging the Generation Gap and the Chasm of Language By David Mark Speer

The Wave of Population Growth Swells and Crashes

Getting older, if you’re lucky, teaches you a lot. One lesson that springs to mind is however profoundly things may change, some stay the same. Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts and in some cases the hero is the same one, reincarnated for the latest tour. Of course, that can apply to villainy as well; the same old spectres will rise again and again, wearing their same brown shirts and ghost’s robes and fast-talking gaslighting nonsense and we’ll all say we’ve never seen the like. And every generation (X, Z, Y, what next, -1?) believes it was chosen and the one that came before in their greed, apathy, self-righteousness and every other failing are at fault for the rising seas and ever present chaos. Conversely, old folks have always thought kids are stupid and getting dumber. And to a large degree, both are right.

The paradigm as described is so intrinsic, there’s little point in debating its existence; the challenge is to get beyond it. A recently uncovered factoid bears witness — China has nearly 398 million people over the age of 65. That’s more people than live in the United States. Whole sections of the Middle East and Africa are populated by at least a half a billion people under the age of 40. The arithmetic is fancy, but what it adds up to is that what was called the generation gap will soon become a chasm.

Further complicating the picture is the fact that the population of countries like the U.S. and China will continue to age while in many other parts of the world (due to climate change and the competition for resources that forces migration in flight from the resultant armed conflict) there will be growth in the younger demographics (20 to 40 years old). Recently the U.S. banned (or allowed to continue) the use of TikTok – so far as can be discerned, a sales platform for user-generated video – and there is a significant swath of Americans who have never used the app even once. The app’s influence, however, outweighs its reach by light-years.

The way we speak to each other, across the holiday dinner table or through the ether of the tech clouds, has been fundamentally altered by the brand-new ways we’ve found to do the same old thing; stratify and separate, create in-groups and outsiders while cursing the other side for never coming around to our way of thinking.

Are We Ever on the Same Page? Are We Even Reading the Same Book?

Much mistrust between generations comes from the lack of common pop cultural references but it goes deeper than that. In large measure, generations are speaking different languages, not just different terms of art. The “media landscape” Boomers and Gen X grew up with was three networks and one phone company. Two, if you count MCI. What we must grapple to ground now is a streaming digital miasma favoring addictive social neuron-rebuilders that promote alienation and linguistic division over community. The result is that all too often we short-circuit the first step toward effective civic communication by assuming the other party is met in bad faith just because of their age. In a world worth striving for through mindfulness and openness expressed through empathy, we can’t write each other off just because our slang doesn’t connect.

Using “like” too many times in a series of sentences or being too laconic to say “brother” so that it comes out, “brah,” shouldn’t disqualify anyone’s opinion or stance on the big issues of the day; people shouldn’t be ignored because they traffic in the coin of the realm they were born into. It serves no greybeard or fussbudget well to wag the finger of shame at “these kids today” rather than humbly acknowledge how much of a scam the American Dream they were sold really is.

The explosion of new jargon and shorthand has flooded our airwaves and echo chambers with handy ways around communicating deeply and meaningfully – from the now passe “LOL,” to a paraphrase of a TikTok response video that begins, “No because what do you mean…” With memes and emojis so readily available, why use an alphabet at all? It is not just a question for old English teachers to sadly ponder but for us all if we are ever to find a common syntax to express the deepest sentiments necessary for directing our energies toward our highest purposes, to actualize our best selves. The phenomenon is multifaceted; language divides face us at every turn and the sheer volume and pace of change threatens to dash the hope before it fully forms.

Embracing Empathy Across Generations

Wherever possible, we need to take full advantage of opportunities to celebrate the best of the latest crop of creative wonders for themselves, as expressions of their historical moment — while never letting the underpinnings get too far out of sight. The reason for this is clear. While a tendency toward tribalism and fear of the Other is part of humanity’s makeup, they are not the only driving forces that may yet animate the work of bridging the generation and language gap.

Celebrating – at full volume, in full voice and, as Neruda would say, fully empowered – all that connects us, from common turns of phrase for the run-of-the-mill to the way we describe the warmth rising in a proud father’s chest as his son takes first steps, takes a kind of courage for which no medal has ever been awarded. Sharing that spirit of pure loving kindness as unconditionally as possible, falls under the category of radical empathy (to love thy neighbor better than you love yourself, for the good of all as it were). Should that be the direction we’re travelling, then it will be easier to see how everything connects.

The foot-stomping melodies of the Appalachians owe an ineffable something to the drums of West Africa, while the flutes of the rainforest whistle for their dead just as subtly as bagpipes ever could. The roots of our shared cultural heritages must not be covered in an undergrowth of lost-cause lies and magical thinking masquerading as public policy, hunches and gut-feeling xenophobia run wild.

How much of a difference is there between Altamont and the Fyre Festival? Or Woodstock and any edition of Coachella? Plenty and none at all, for each were moments of convergence between the artistic and the commercial, the expansive and the elitist and where the best of intentions led to as many innovations as banalities in the final analysis. None of that is to pronounce a pox on anyone’s house – it is more than anything, a call to see the commonality and soak in the life-affirming possibility of old and young feeling weak and strong at the same time.

Whither Brain Rot, Meme Addiction and the Conversational Crutch?

The Oxford Dictionary presents an annual word or phrase of the year. For 2024 it was “brain rot.” An irresistible phrase, if not a tad morbid. The linguist in an article on the topic was arguing that people aren’t getting stupider — just lazier. By mimicking the carelessly truncated language of the internet that accounts for a prevalence of “stylized verbal incoherence,” phrases like “much feels,” once used in texting, are now spoken aloud.

People of a certain age may remember a cartoon called “Battle of the Planets”. The convoluted fairytale plot is beside the point; there was a character on the show whose speech consisted of clicks and chirps to punctuate or emphasize. More than a few moms whose kids watched the show at some point got fed up with the repetitively silly sounds and forbade the show. The kids thus deprived moved on to something else, for sure, but health experts today are seeing evidence of children making up nonsense languages as a coping mechanism against the effects of long-term gaming and scrolling. The cognitive decline described (as seen in the use of non-standard language) is essentially, “brain rot”. Nothing very new about the problem, just a very different way in which it manifests.

Similar to the way kids in the sticks started spouting Broadway-inspired catchphrases as soon as talkies hit their local nickelodeon, people now use casual, off-handed and ultimately cryptic language to catalogue their reactions and emotional states inspired by the memes and internet-based junk language (audio, visual and text) that surrounds like a fog that doesn’t lift easily. According to the linguist, it’s just a phase; we’ll soon grow weary of it and perhaps go back to the lyrical and highly formal style celebrated in sepia-tinged voiceovers of letters to the folks back home written during the Civil War. To hope for such a pendulum swing may be a fool’s errand, but there’s no reason not to think it could be so.

Interpreting the sea change we are witnessing in the moment as the final shape and face of things as they are (and of things to come) is just short-sighted, but we can’t be blamed for our nature. It is perfectly natural to be selfish and vain, wanton and cruel, uncaring and unkind. We are at most fault for not rising above that debased and fallen level of being to take the painfully radical step of truly embracing differences of all kinds, seeing them as leverage toward the evolution of a better humanity.

#SOAPBOX #GENZWELLNESS

DAVID MARK SPEER

is a writer and poet from all up and down the Eastern seaboard (Miami, Atlanta) and now lives in Brooklyn at the edge of Park Slope and the beginning of Sunset Park. His work includes a chapbook, Space & Direction: Grand Island, Nebraska, an entry in Autonomedia’s The Worst Book I Ever Read, annual contributions of essays and poems for the last decade+ to Sunday – a literary magazine published by the Middle Collegiate Writers group, short stories in Lunar Offensive Press’ Rag Shock 1 - 4, and a 12-poem “cycle” exploring transcendental, existential and metaphysical themes.

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