Parenthood now requires sensitivity and understanding from both parents, and cold hugs and absent pats don't cut it anymore. Parents are expected to be able to answer tough questions and to be there for their kid in said child's biggest self-defining moments. Social life has also mutated beyond recognition, with the word "Friend" having come to mean more "Casual acquaintance" than "someone whom I'd call if I ever ran into trouble and needed help". The entire concept of maturity has slid closer to the late thirties and early forties, and the very idea of being "set for life" is now gone. People no longer find themselves in Company Lifer positions, they flit left and right and might occupy multiple bottom-level jobs for long years. We reach our final careers later in life, too.
On the flipside, we're more educated than Mankind has ever been - and also more ignorant. We're given tremendous opportunities for self-discovery and general betterment, we're taught to be curious and to want to understand things around us, and at the same time you've got stuff like Fox News and far-right newspapers basically urging folks to close their eyes and shut out the world. We're living in a world of orderlies and janitors with Ph D's and doctorates that aren't recognized by their adoptive country, and of idiots who forge their resumés and occupy high-level positions without any real associated knowledge.
Faith is standing on the rockiest, flimsiest ground it ever has known, with Science curb-stomping so-called "Traditional Family Values" at every turn. We're beginning to understand that nobody is a special snowflake in the grand scheme of things, that the Pale Blue Dot - to quote Sagan - is just one meaningless dust mote in an immensity we're only beginning to chart. There is no great plan, there is no Rapture to come, the righteous can sometimes be left to eat shit while the wicked pocket extraneous bonuses or severance packages.
All the things we were told would come about - above and beyond the Jetsons stuff, and considering ideals such as world peace or the end of hunger or disease, are looking as far away as they did back in the day. The fifties' blind optimism is gone, replaced with the postmodern doubt of the 2010s. If you're a Gen Xer or even someone from Gen Y, then you're familiar with the concept that apathy is our time's great epithet.
For all that we can do, we bother with less and less. The previous theory about future human evolution was that the human brain was growing, but that's changed to point to a shrinking motion. You can see this as being good - our brains are being optimized over the course of thousands of years, with excess neural links being terminated - but you could also argue that the countless prostheses we stick to our brains (referring here to the Internet, Wikipedia and the like) are making us dumber. Searching is easy, so research becomes a pain in the ass. Instant gratification is king, so why bother? I know master's degree recipients who didn't even bother with research and who flat-out paid someone else to do the hard work for them.
They have their degrees. They'll be let in as teacher's assistants and Bachelor's teachers - and they can't be bothered with research. If you can't see the tragedy in this, then I can't help you.
What's sadder still is how aggressive, sometimes downright violent, the opposing forces to these changing elements can be. Feeling left behind in a world that's hurtling forwards, fearful sorts let their apprehension turn into hate. That hate gives us sad sacks like the Westboro Baptist Church, Canada's REAL Women, as well as any convinced Bible Belt group you'll find that happens to consider hate crimes to be a part of their God-given rights.
I'm in Quebec, and one of the hot buttons there, as of late, is the restructuring of the State's administrative machine to better reflect the fact that we're living in a non-denominational society. The seats of governance in Quebec tend to have one or more crucifixes stuck on their walls, as a reminder of the fact that we *used* to be a Catholic nation.
My grandmother is 82. She thinks we should keep our religious symbols up, and thinks it's fine to ask of Montreal's Jewish and Muslim communities that they keep their kippas and hijabs out of our sight. She thinks crosses have their place in town halls, because she's seen what we call "The Great Darkness", back when Maurice Duplessis used to govern the province back in the thirties. Back then, the clergy had an almost excessive amount of control, and a very unofficial Morality Police was in effect. It took the Hippie movement and the sixties for this to end.
My family's history contains its fair share of practising Catholics. I'm not one of them. I'm an Atheist, and that's a fact my grandmother can't swallow. She comes from an even earlier time than the hypothetical fifties that started the thread, but I think the point still stands.
