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<\/a>To be honest, I\u2019ve always had a problem with authority.\u00a0 As I teenager, I was insistent that respect must be earned, not taken for granted; and boy did I make earning my respect hard back then.\u00a0 (My belated apologies to all parents, teachers, youth leader, and so on.)<\/p>\n
Since moving out of my adolescent phase, though, I have tried to grant everyone respect by default.\u00a0 It is discourtesy and contempt that should have to be earned, not respect.\u00a0 But respect does not<\/em> equate with deference.\u00a0 I may respect your opinion, I may cherish you as an elder, but that does not mean I will defer to your judgment.\u00a0 While I try to express my respect for the experience of those who are older than me, I have little patience for those who invoke their age in an attempt to claim deference to their judgment.<\/p>\n It seems I have this problem most with people who are around my parents\u2019 age.\u00a0 As I get older, the age of the people I have this problem with moves up as well.\u00a0 When I was in my 20s, it was people in their 40s and 50s that most grated on my nerves.\u00a0 Now that I\u2019m almost 40, it\u2019s people (mostly men) in their 60s and 70s.\u00a0 It\u2019s possible that there\u2019s something about the Boomer Generation\u2019s attitude toward authority, or I have unresolved parental issues, or both.<\/p>\n In any case, I remain deaf to appeals to the authority of one\u2019s chronological age<\/a>.\u00a0 One reason is because I don\u2019t see much of a correlation between chronological age and wisdom.\u00a0 I know some people in their 20s and 30s whose inherent wisdom and life experience make me feel as naive as an infant.\u00a0 And I know people twice my age that act like infants \u2014 especially when their ideas are challenged.\u00a0 In addition, it seems to me that people, of any age, who are wise, have no need to claim the authority of years.\u00a0 Their wisdom speaks for itself, through their words, their acts, and their demeanor.\u00a0 While people who invoke their chronological age to compel compliance often have little else to recommend them.\u00a0 Sometimes the people who claim ageism are guilty of a kind of reverse ageism themselves, displaying disrespect for all those younger than them.\u00a0 Ageism \u2014 discrimination against the aged \u2014 is a real phenomena , which I do not intend to downplay by my comments here.\u00a0 But it does everyone a disservice to conflate ageism with the mere refusal to kowtow to every word that comes out of the mouth of an elder.<\/p>\n Those, of every generation, who invoke the authority of their age and cry \u201cageism\u201d when no one listens seem to be cut from a common mold.\u00a0 They are comfortable with the status quo, and they fear that the times they are a changin\u2019.<\/a>\u00a0 These would-be elders claim to define our future by appeals to the past.\u00a0 No doubt, there is a critical role for tradition, for structure and institutions.\u00a0 They act as a bulwark against chaos, both social and personal.\u00a0 And our elders are the guardians of that bulwark.\u00a0 But bulwarks can become obstacles.\u00a0 And unless the structures of the old generation are vivified by the energies of the new, then they stagnate.\u00a0 I think it is the job of the older generation to act as a kind of governor<\/a> on the throttle, against the lead-foot pressure of younger generation.\u00a0 But the older generation does not gradually lessen \u2014 and ultimately remove \u2014 that restraining force, then the whole thing stalls.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be turning 40 this year, and I feel caught between these two forces \u2014 both despising and clinging to the ideas of the first generations of Neo-Pagans, while both fearing and thirsting for the ideas of the newest generation of Pagans.\u00a0 How to relate to these two generations is the question.\u00a0 I\u2019m reminded of a scene from the 1967 film, Guess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner<\/em>, starring\u00a0Sidney Poitier,\u00a0Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy.\u00a0 Poitier plays a young black doctor, John Prentice, whose white fiancee brings him home to meet her white parents.\u00a0 The meeting is later joined by the black parents of Poitier\u2019s character, John.\u00a0 There is a scene where John\u2019s father, a retired mailman, pulls him aside and tries to dissuade him from marrying a white girl.\u00a0 When John refuses to listen, his father appeals to his age and John\u2019s obligations to his parents.\u00a0 While John\u2019s response is unnecessarily disrespectful, I think, something he says about the obligations of one generation to the next has stuck with me.<\/p>\n Mr. Prentice: Son, you\u2019ve got to listen to me. I\u2019m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but you\u2019ve never made a mistake like this before. \u2026 Y\u2019know, for a man who all his life never put a wrong foot anywhere, you\u2019re way out of line, boy!<\/p>\n John: That\u2019s for me to decide, man. So just shut up and let me\u2014<\/p>\n Mr. Prentice: You don\u2019t say that to me! You haven\u2019t got the right to ever say a thing like that to me. Not after what I\u2019ve been to you! And you know that, and I know that. Yeah, I know what you are and what you\u2019ve made of yourself. But I worked my ass off to get the money to buy you all the chances you had! You know how far I carried that bag in 30 years? 75,000 miles. And mowin\u2019 lawns in the dark so you wouldn\u2019t have to be stokin\u2019 furnaces and could bear down on the books. I\u2019ll tell you, there were things your mother should have had that she insisted go for you. And I don\u2019t mean fancy things. I mean a decent coat. A lousy coat! And you\u2019re gonna tell me that means nothin\u2019 to you. And you could break your mother\u2019s heart?<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n John: You\u2019ve said what you had to say. You listen to me. You say you don\u2019t want to tell me how to live my life? What do you think you\u2019ve been doing? You tell me what rights I\u2019ve got or haven\u2019t got and what I owe to you for what you\u2019ve done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing. If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you were supposed to do. Because you brought me into this world and from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me, like I will owe my son, if I ever have another.<\/strong> But you don\u2019t own me. You can\u2019t tell me when or where I\u2019m out of line or try to get me to live my life according to your rules.<\/strong> You don\u2019t even know what I am, Dad. You don\u2019t know who l am, how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life, you would never understand. You are years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it\u2019s got to be! And not until your whole generation has Iain down and died will the deadweight of you be off our backs! You understand? You\u2019ve got to get off my back. Dad. You\u2019re my father. I\u2019m your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This idea, that generational obligations flow downward<\/em>, has stuck with me as I have had children and watched them grow into teenagers, watched them grow beyond the limited scope of my vision for them.\u00a0 I think it must be this way, each generation wearing itself out in service to the next, each new generation climbing over the last to reach new vistas. We fathers and mother, leaders and elders, have to do this, have to sacrifice ourselves, knowing that we likely will not see the gratitude or appreciation that we deserve.\u00a0 We have to do this knowing that our joy must be found in seeing the next generation thrive, even as we decline.\u00a0 Watching the ideas of the new generation surpass our comprehension, even as the institutions we cherished crumble.\u00a0 It must be this way, or else we as a people get stuck.\u00a0 This is perhaps the enduring legacy of the Enlightenment, which despite its limitations and failures, showed the human race the way out of the perpetual cycle of the slavish worship of tradition.\u00a0 And we Pagans are children of the Enlightenment, as surely as we are children of the Romantics.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>