Came across the Mindset List a few days ago and among other things, it forcibly brought home just how quickly time flies and how rapidly things change and get as outdated as fads doing a fastfade into oblivion.
It's an unsettling thought that socio-cultural milestones can disappear so completely from generational memory or morph into something quite unrecognisable. Kind of disorienting. Like goalposts bobbing around like bouys instead of staying fixed in position. It also gives me a niggling sense of disquiet as to what touchstones do we have left that won't shift or drift with time and new developments. Is nothing constant anymore?
A couple of weeks ago I was watching a fellow Sunday School teacher earnestly telling the kids about life choices and how they could shape their own futures by the proper use of those choices. Now I've heard so much negative reports about kids these days, especially school-going kids, I have to confess that I was cynically wondering how much any of the lesson was going down. As usual the kids were sitting quietly and seemingly listening politely but I couldn't shake off the feeling they weren't all there. With all the transformations in attitudes and outlooks that have come with cultural meltdowns and fast changing lifestyles, aided and abetted by technology and the media, kids today have such radically different views and look-outs, and parents and adults seem to be left behind in the dark, fumbling their way through all the dizzying shifts and turns of societal changes.
Change is good most times, and technology is amazing. But nothing comes without a price, and I suspect that's where our age-old constants will eventually be robbed. In Mizoram where the community is still close-knit, society classless and religion respected, I don't look forward to the time when the Mizo mindset might reduce all these to nothing. Or morph them into unrecognisable shapes and patterns.
