Following last Tuesday's post on generational conflict, a friend and relative pointed me towards an article at the Pew Research Center website: "Forty Years After Woodstock, A Gentler Generation Gap" by Paul Taylor and Richard Morin, published in August. The main thrust of the research piece was to trace musical taste, but results touch on many different social aspects too.
Pew's findings are interesting, though some of the musical results seem obvious enough not to require anybody going to the trouble of conducting a survey. In a way, although the survey's findings are more optimistic than the impression I had formed from articles and comments elsewhere, I can't help wishing that this very idea of investigating differences would just go away, and start being thought as totally irrelevant to anything.
It is relevant to marketing of course, so it won't go away. That is a pity, because every division embedded into our consciousness, however minor it may seem, can grow and spread, and develop into ugliness. There's more than enough evidence of that in history.
I keep hearing, at the back of my mind, words of one of America's past presidents: "Tear down this wall!" It must be the Aquarius in us both coming to the surface. (Winks and exits.)
Pew's findings are interesting, though some of the musical results seem obvious enough not to require anybody going to the trouble of conducting a survey. In a way, although the survey's findings are more optimistic than the impression I had formed from articles and comments elsewhere, I can't help wishing that this very idea of investigating differences would just go away, and start being thought as totally irrelevant to anything.
It is relevant to marketing of course, so it won't go away. That is a pity, because every division embedded into our consciousness, however minor it may seem, can grow and spread, and develop into ugliness. There's more than enough evidence of that in history.
I keep hearing, at the back of my mind, words of one of America's past presidents: "Tear down this wall!" It must be the Aquarius in us both coming to the surface. (Winks and exits.)
4 comments:
I kind of agree with you about not investigating into differences, its not always a good thing.
Hi Laura ~ no, it's not. I see no advantage at all to ordinary people, only to those who want to sell us something - be it ideas or goods. ;-)
I don't think that it is a changing world that is the problem here, but the speed of those changes. Change used to be slow, taking generations to notice it. Now we can expect several changes in a lifetime, so we're immediately aware of it.
anthonynorth ~~ That's true, AN.
And the internet offers an opportunity which has never existed before, where we can inform, discuss it or argue about it...news of change travels faster than ever now. :-)
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