José Ortega y Gasset he of the great maxim so applicable to social work ""Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" is a Spanish philosopher who among other great ideas presents an interesting perspective on generational divides. He claims that there are two types of "generations", this word defined as a cohort of people who grow together and identify with the cultural, social and intellectual dominant mores of the period when they reach adulthood and intellectual acuity. we have had the Lost generation, the great generation, the baby Boomers, who as a close member of my family describes as this cohort that has gone through the world as a giant snake goggling up everything in sight. There was also the X generation, and the Millennials. Garcia-Ortega's argument was that there are two manifestations with each of these. There are those who pursue and continue the previous generation's work and mores, thus keep some balance and stability and the breakaway generations who aim to break away from their parents and recreate the world anew more in line with their thinking. These are of course generalizations and one must be careful to not fall in the trap of putting everyone in the same basket.
This brings me to the current crop of youth, who are now coming of age and going out into the world of academia and work. They are certainly a breakaway generation and they have been questioning all the established mores that some of us foolishly deluded ourselves and thought that yes, things are complicated but they are better than they have ever been at any period in human history. That could be true for a small slice of the pie of humanity but certainly not for the vast majority of women and men, toiling away at the factories of our new found consumerism and access to every commodity that can be bought with money.
Which brings me to Thanksgiving and their questioning of it as a racist, imperialist holiday which wipes away the genocide committed against the native Americans and celebrates the great and bountiful properties of this great nation. It is the one holiday not associated to any religion, and thus thought to bring together this melting pot or as we now define America, this great stew that is called the USA. This generations aims to erase the past by renaming buildings, taking down statues and even eliminating holidays. It is not a concept I am happy with because when we wash away the past, we forget about its harsh lessons. I was listening to a podcast on NPR, as I was driving to a Thanksgiving weekend in Bethesda, of which Titus Kaphar spoke or statues and art and street names and approaching their changes as we do with the constitution. alongside the old, you present the new with an emphasis on why we have done so. That is, we amend the past, we don't erase it. This leads to much more illuminating discussions that the old Maoist style of the cultural revolution which aimed at erasing the past and creating "the new man". It of course did nothing of the sort. The Khmer Rouge attempted the same with genocidal results.
Thanksgiving does not have to be forgotten and changed, it can be nuanced and inclusive. How can we make it more aligned with the true history of America, and yet as a people, continue to get together on a day where religions for the most part take a back seat and people eat turkey (the turkey genocide is another story for another post) relax on the powerful tryptophan that it releases and watch football or play assorted games. On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for the family that I have, for the food that I will be eating, for the weekend that will permit me to relax and go visit the Smithsonian, or some of its museums to be more accurate, walk along the Potomac River, and remember that once, probably right where I am writing this, Native Americans had communities and thrived along the Potomac. they, too will be remembered at our table.
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