Generations

At 82 I have lived with 5 generations. That includes my grandparents, parents, siblings, my kids as well as siblings’ kids, and their kids, our grandkids. We are not yet expecting a sixth generation, kids of my grandkids. We have a few more years to go with that.

Five generations of family supporting and nurturing fellow family members. The cousin network is weak with our family only because we have always been far flung and visited rarely. As their ages advance, our minimal relations continue to fade even more. But core family? We still connect.

Oh, my siblings do not connect except in major instances, and even that has proven somewhat weak. Disconnection seems to be more the explanatory note on this specific element of our generation. But the rest of the generations remained secure for many years. [For the record, my sister lives in Arizona, my brother in New York, and I'm in Chicago metro.]

I raise this issue only because we have lived, worked, and studied in a social order that challenged us to consider what we inherited politically from earlier generations, and what we are preparing to endow our later generations with. At this sitting, the prospects appear dim indeed.

The theme that echoes continuously in my mind is involvement. The lesson was then and still is, don’t take your freedom and social order for granted. Each of us has work to do, a duty, to understand our current social order, develop a supporting belief system to keep it working, and then prepare subsequent generations to do the same. Taking for granted anything places it in peril of loss or replacement. There is no guarantee that the replacement is as good or better than the original.

This means we must remain current in our knowledge of current affairs. Read or watch the news. Discuss the news with others for sturdy understanding of the issues, or continuing research to understand the complexities and tangent issues. Know who is running for office and support those you believe will support a social order that continues what you believe. This is important work and takes time. At any given time, we may misunderstand key elements and will need to study them further. In short, our duty never ends. It is a continuing challenge for each of us.

The MAGA generation is one lost in perceived damages done by others. They awoke one day to feel their social order crumbling and disappearing. Had they scratched the surface a bit, they might have learned that they had not voted often enough or voted for people who allowed bad things to happen. Had they understood the issues and personalities better, they might have made a difference that spoke to their values and aspirations. I sincerely doubt that MAGA supporters feel losing our freedoms of speech, assembly and conscious is their aspiration. I think they believe others are guilty of this and made life miserable for them. Examination would prove them wrong. Fulfilling their duty might have helped them make the system work better to support their values and beliefs. All this without damaging others' freedoms and beliefs.

The American Way is not an easy one. We have a current presidential administration that does not support the US Constitution and actively spurns court decisions. They have advanced war and frustrated peace at many turns. This could have been avoided had more people simply done their duty to understand issues. But now? God only knows what horrors we have before us before returning to a global village at peace with itself.

June 25, 2025