36# The Next Generation

We Call It Rebellion Because We Cannot Bear the Truth

For more than a hundred years, we have been telling ourselves the same convenient lie: that every new generation rebels. That they are loud, disrespectful, ungrateful, determined to destroy everything that came before them.

But perhaps we only say that because we cannot stand being corrected.

If we look closely at the decades since the 1900s, without nostalgia or romanticising the past, we do not see chaos. We see a pattern. An uncomfortable, revealing pattern: children grow up and recognise their parents' mistakes faster than their parents are willing to admit them.

A Century of Questioning Authority

The early 1900s clung to order and discipline as though they were shields against the fear of the unknown. Then came the 1920s, tearing open that corset. Suddenly there was freedom, excess, a new sense of breathing. And what were they called? Irresponsible.

The 1930s and 1940s revealed where blind obedience could lead: to fear, destruction and war. Yet rather than learning radically from those experiences, the 1950s retreated into the illusion of the perfect family, into traditional roles that concealed more than they healed.

Then came the 1960s, asking questions nobody wanted to hear. Why this obedience? Why these rigid rules? Why these double standards? And once again, it was called rebellion.

The 1980s shouted their existence into the world. They became loud, exaggerated, impossible to ignore, perhaps because they understood that those who speak softly are rarely heard. The 1990s began questioning systems, established truths and everything they had been taught to accept as "normal".

When Questioning Became a Demand for Change

With the 2000s came the internet, and suddenly it became harder to lie, harder to control information and harder to dictate what people were allowed to think.

And the 2010s? They began speaking openly about things previous generations had preferred to keep silent: mental health, identity and inequality.

Now come the 2020s, a generation that no longer merely asks questions but demands consequences. A generation unwilling to keep carrying broken systems simply because they are called traditions.

And here lies the point many people do not want to hear:

This is not rebellion. This is correction.

The Mistakes We Pass Down

Children are not born to destroy their parents. They enter the world and see, more clearly and without the filters of habit, where their parents have conformed, where they have remained silent and where they have accepted things that should never have been accepted.

And that hurts.

Because it means the older generation passes down not only knowledge but also mistakes. Because it means tradition is not always a source of stability. Sometimes, it is simply another form of stagnation.

Of course, some things deserve to remain: values, humanity and everything that connects us. But much of what is defended in the name of "tradition" is, in reality, nothing more than fear of change.

The Next Generation Is Not the Problem

We call it rebellion because the word progress demands too much responsibility.

Because if it is progress, then we must admit that the next generation is not the problem.

It is the answer.

And perhaps that is the most uncomfortable truth of all:

It is not that young people are too radical.

Perhaps we have simply been silent for far too long.

Anastasia Weimer