In my family archives, there is a photograph of the extended family of many generations. The way these photos were set up in the early 1920s in frontier towns was to place the eldest in the front row, with their children behind them. Sometimes, the youngest were on small chairs, or their parents would hold their babies. On the back row, you had the upcoming generation, kids in their late teens and early 20s.
They sat for such photos when the photographer came through town, and there was one shot only.
My great-great-grandfather in the picture is clearly the patriarch, respected but plainly in his last days. In this photo, he was still wearing some medal he won during the Civil War, and his face has the look of bitterness, which I imagine comes from his bitterness at clamoring for his war pension that never arrived.
The back row in this picture is the one that always intrigues me. There are two young men who have a look of cockiness that burns through. They are all wearing hats of a particular sort. They are not cowboy hats, town hats, or baseball hats. They are driving hats. They all had them, because, of course, they were drivers of motor cars.
The picture tells the story of the effect of new technology on the new generation. They were drivers, and that made them different from every previous generation in history. They knew it and believed that it infused them with something special. Instead of gratitude, you can only see pride in the way they held themselves. Their hats were their signature, and they wore them with great pride.
To some extent, this was understandable. It was a time of extraordinary technological innovation. Airplanes filled the air, and passenger planes were on the way. Homes were lighting up with electricity. Radios were in homes. Only one generation had passed since home clocks and books became affordable. Cities were rising into the air thanks to the commercialization of steel. And the old telegraph as communication technology was becoming the telephone, available at the corner market but gradually entering the home, too.
The past seemed dreadful by comparison. The Great War had ended only a half-dozen years ago, and the trauma of that event was fading fast. The economy was bouncing back thanks to cheap money. The future seemed bright. The generation that came of age in this time had every reason to look forward instead of back.
They simply could not have known what was coming. In 10 years from the time this photo was taken, the entire nation would be plunged into a deep economic depression. A new experiment in centralized economic management would commence. But it would not work. Just around the corner was a replay of the Great War, except this time using much more deadly weaponry and ending with the deployment of a weapon of mass destruction that would haunt the rest of the century.
These young men could not know this. If they had, would they have been more respectful toward their elders? Surely, they would grow more so in time, looking back and regretting all the time they did not spend with grandad. They had fallen prey to the perennial temptation to believe that a technological change portended a fundamental shift in the prospect for humanity and themselves such that the old rules, the old principles, the old patterns, and the old virtues no longer applied.
I see that picture taken 100 years ago and observe the same haughtiness among the millennials and Gen Z today. They too were raised in the thick of incredible innovation, from the web to gaming to online commerce to the hope that online influence alone was enough to gain riches for oneself. All one has to do is strike a pose on an image or video site, displayed on the right apps that everyone of a certain age is using.
Such had never been possible in the past. The notion of limits and even accounting seemed so old-fashioned, and money itself seemed like some illusory force that appeared and disappeared arbitrarily. In any case, making money had nothing to do with effort, much less any old standard of merit. Money was something showered on those who rode the tide of influencer status and appeared on the right podcasts.
What is there to learn from the past under these conditions?
In many ways, our times and the times from 100 years ago are running in parallel. We’ve raised an entire generation that had it easy with zero interest rates, opportunity everywhere for those with credentials, and amazing new communications tools. Much of that changed in 2020 and following lockdowns that fundamentally disrupted all routines.
Since then, inflation has been raging, whittling away purchasing power. Now jobs are drying up in every industry. Tech firings were first but then extended to the service industry generally, such that those who have nothing but internet experience find themselves unable to compete. Now we see hospitality jobs also freezing, and the industry under pressure.
Home purchases are impossible for a whole generation, while we have entered the stage when accounts are no longer balancing and saving money is out of the question, even though it pays to do so. Let’s just say that an entire generation has been forced over four years to learn about personal finance. The oncoming winds of recession/depression are everywhere in the air.
What we are also watching is the shattering of an illusion. The belief that all that was necessary for success was to strike a pose, have the right attitude, and hang around with the right gang of people on the make is now coming to an end. It feels in many ways like betrayal. And that is why so many young people are estranged and clamoring for something new. They blame their parents, of course, and are angry at the world for failing to live up to the lies of the times in which they were raised.
Generationally, this is becoming the Greater Depression of Gen Z and the millennials, the bracing realization that the times are not so new and the economy not so magic. Social media will not save them, any more than being the first generation of drivers saved the young people of 1924 from the hardships and sadnesses of the 1930s. They will learn, just as every generation before has learned.
No matter the appearances, no matter how magical new technology seems at the time, nothing about human nature and the structure of reality itself ever really changes. There is still folly, greed, avarice, and arrogance, and there is no technology that can repeal the laws of supply and demand. The rude awakening is happening slowly, but it is happening.
This is the time: Respect your elders. Learn from their own hardships. Listen carefully to their stories. Be instructed by the lessons they offer you. It’s your parents and grandparents who will provide the loving guidance for your future that no tech titan or media mogul can. The old wisdom is never really old, and history is never really just the past.
