IT is common sense that adults are more mature than kids or teenagers, both physically and mentally. Embarrassingly, however, that is not always true. Grownups are frequently engaged in factional skirmishes, breaking the law and even starting wars to take over others’ territory. Just like naughty children, they lie, slander and blame others. They are also resentful and vengeful. Moreover, they often fail to control their anger and refuse to listen to opposing voices.
In the 2026 American psychological thriller His and Hers, a wicked man tries to frame the female protagonist, Anna Andrews, as a serial killer but fails. After his arrest, Anna’s boss tells her, “Your defamation suit would’ve wiped him out.” Anna replies, “I considered it, but anger and resentment only hurt the person holding onto them.”
Older people tend to become angry at something or someone easily. They even exhibit explosive tempers, not knowing that anger only hurts them, not the ones they are furious with. As the saying goes: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
The same applies to resentment. As Diane Cameron aptly puts it, “Resentment is like setting yourself on fire and waiting for other people to die of smoke inhalation.” Alana Stewart, too, once said, “Bitterness and resentment only hurt one person, and it’s not the person we’re resenting. It’s us.”
Yet, older people – especially politicians – remain hopelessly chained to anger, resentment, grudges and revenge.
Older people also tend to turn a deaf ear to differing opinions. In His and Hers, Anna’s mother writes to her daughter: “There are at least two sides of every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, his and hers.” If so, we should try to listen to other voices and see things from a dual perspective.
The older generation may denigrate younger people for their immaturity and childishness. For example, older people frown when they see a young motorcyclist or a sports car driver speeding by and making loud engine noises, mistakenly thinking it is a tough thing to do. They also think that young people are clumsy and reckless due to their lack of experience.
These days, however, young people seem to have become much wiser and smarter than older generations. The reason is that young people surf the internet all day, through which they acquire vast amounts of information and knowledge quickly and socialise with others, including foreigners, through social media. In that sense, older people, who learned things slowly by reading paper books and who socialised with others via snail mail and landline telephones, cannot possibly excel over today’s young people of the electronic era.
Thanks to the internet, today’s young people are also adept at crossing boundaries and transcending borders. They are also free from the binary opposition that subjugated the older generation. Moreover, thanks to frequent overseas travel, young people now possess a global and transnational mindset, whereas the perspective of older people remains hopelessly parochial and national.
Another noteworthy difference is that, unlike the older generation, today’s young people are free from the ideologies that enslaved their elders. Because older people endured unbearable political and historical turmoil, they were heavily influenced by rigid ideologies. Furthermore, radical teachers and seniors at school secretly brainwashed them. The problem is that they do not realise they were brainwashed.
Watching the clash of Communism and McCarthyism in American society in the 1950s, Philip K. Dick published a short story, Imposter, in 1953. In the story, the protagonist Spence Olham, who is a model citizen, is accused of being an android imposter sent by aliens to sabotage Earth. Astounded by the false accusation and hunted by security forces, Spence desperately tries to prove his humanity throughout the story. In the end, however, Spence finally realises that he is, in fact, an android imposter from outer space. He simply did not know it until then.
The same applies to indoctrinated people. In the past, when a natural disaster hit one of our neighbouring countries, older people who were brainwashed by political activists’ propaganda muttered unconsciously, “They deserve it.” In contrast, when the same country recently suffered another natural calamity, our young people expressed deep concern and prayed for the safe evacuation of its people.
Before the world, our young people showed the capacity to embrace others and exhibited decency, integrity and humanity, which the older generation seriously lacks. They also courageously protest when they believe the government has made mistakes, while older people often cave in and remain silent. By showing these virtues, our young people make the older generation blush with shame.
Look at the faltering world older politicians are presently dismantling. Watch the atrocities of the wars they have thoughtlessly started. And behold their dogmatic ideologies that have massacred innocent people in cold blood! Indeed, the older generation should learn from the younger generation. Young people are our only hope. — The Korea Herald/ANN
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.
