Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A Mindset Reflective


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and among other things, it forcibly brought home just how quickly time flies and how rapidly things change and get as outdated as fads doing a fastfade into oblivion.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.

13 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Hey you know what, I used to chat with this hillbilly in the US some years ago and he said they never use lock and key for their houses either. Of course he lived somewhere in the boondocks but it still blew me away to think of things like that still happening in the 21st century in the US of A!

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  3. What one generation believes are culture "milestones" quite clearly mean little for the new generation who supply themselves with new references, new icons, and eventually new "milestones".
    I don't think the fact that when one sees the old ideas being ignored by the new generation that some sort of corrosion is taking place in society, nor does this mean that the observer is growing old.
    I think it simply means the mass/mainstream culture is moving on as it has always done. nowadays especially with tech mass/mainstream culture changes are happening at a frightful pace- 'till one feels almost uncomfortable. And i believe you are feeling this discomfort, rather than society being the one morphing into something strange.

    Z

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  4. You have a very good point there, Z. The other day in class, I mentioned Live Aid which I thought everyone's heard of but the kids, mostly all 90s+ born, just stared back at me blankly (the fact that that seems to be their usual facial reaction in class being besides the point hehe). I don't recall in what context I mentioned it but perhaps I should've thrown in Miley, Eminem, Vanlalsailova etc instead. Sigh, it's tough keeping up with new icons and milestones. And you're quite right too about mass/mainstream culture moving on as it always has. I did think that when I reread what I had written and realised that's what every generation has cribbed about with reference to a newer, younger generation.

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  5. Times they are a'changing, of course; but, sometimes, I feel its better to be a little old-fashioned (conservative to you ma'am) than to be so broad-minded or fashionable in a social sense

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  6. I kinda find it hard to get into the minds of my niece and my nephew, its hard to know their mindset. Generation gap is visible within few years.

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  7. A friend and I were talking about how the older generations lambastes the present one for being sexually active. The way they put it, its as if this gen invented pre and extra marital sex. However, we found that there were a lot of "sawn"s and "fa hmasa" etc amongst our parent's gen which would indicate that our gparents were pretty savvy about pre and extra. Granted this was during the insurgency and perhaps the need to umm..procreate was stronger.
    Umm, I guess what Im trying to say here is that the good old days may not have been as Utopian as we are led to believe. And that our social values may not have changed as much as we fear they have.
    Then again, I might be slightly prejudiced towards the present gen since I'm a part of it :D

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  8. I laughed when I read your description of Sunday school. It brought back not so fond memories of Sunday school we were forced to attend when we were in class 4 and 5; and attended for tea, delicious cookies and biscuits when we were in class 6. Everything expounded by some teacher about some obscure passage from the Bible went through one ear and out from the other with the efficiency of a neutrino passing through thick metal. Not because I was/am not a Christian but because none of us could relate to religious philosophy. We cared more about sports and bumming around. So some things in life have not changed much despite the changing times: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

    As for socio-cultural milestones disappearing I suppose they also must follow Darwinian principles: evolve or perish. Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis does seem to be the universal law. It is a double edged sword though. One does mourn the passing away of some beloved cultural milestone. How does one steer between the Scylla of stability and the Charybdis of change? Perhaps a judicious mix of the new and the old, where we are culturally moored yet moving forward with the times is what is required. Oxymoronic and difficult to say the least!

    ku2 hit the nail on the head about sexual mores. I do not know if someone has done a genetic analysis of the Mizos but generally it is true there is much more mixing of the genes than people realise. So Mizos could be as much Nagas as Assamese as Nepalis or Khasis. Anathema to some, specially politicians, but all for the better for folks like me. Preserve your culture and language by all means but also realise that deep inside we are all the same. After all it is just 70,000 years ago that we were slowly trekking our way out of the Rift Valley in Africa. We have definitely come a long way baby......and yet stayed the same!

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  9. Same here, doc OP.

    How old are your niece and nephew, vana? I think with small children, it's fine. It's the teens who start having a mind of their own that begin acting like Mister/Ms Inscrutable!

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  10. Ku2, our forebears were definitely well clued in to sexual escapades. I used to laugh several years ago when I was thick into misual.com, lawrkhawm.com etc when well-meaning kids in phai cities would write stuff meant for parents which ran along the lines of "do you know what your sons and daughters are upto in the phai cities etc?" as if the parents were very naive, unworldly people. I remember once commenting that their parents probably all did the same things at their age et al. And you might want to ask your folks about Gurung-a List etc from the early 70s :D

    Certainly sexual conducts today might just be a little more blatant than they were a generation ago but I was also thinking about other things like respect for elders, family values, that sort of thing.

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  11. Loch, there's a big difference between you at Sunday school and these kids. These come from Christian families/backgrounds and have been attending Sunday school since their formative years, and the bigger ones have mostly all attended gospel camps. Granted at their age they have other things they'd rather do but they've had considerable exposure to religious philosophy to be able to relate to SS class.

    And culturally moored yet moving forward with the times ah, if that was possible we'd all be happy but it is in itself a contradiction in terms!

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  12. Exactly my point. Church, Sunday school, gospel camps and probably something at home too. I think the law of diminishing returns has set in. Irresistible force has met the immovable object!

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  13. i sometimes wonder if things ever really 'change'. when one looks at the evil or good in the world, it seems to be about the same as it used to be. if culture is human response to nature, (and if one sees values/religion as part of culture), it seems to me we just keep evolving. not necessarily for good or bad...just evolving.

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