Maybe It’s Not Broken, It’s Just Not Mine: Rethinking the Next Generation’s World

 

I. Prelude: The Bitter Gift of Realization

In a previous essay titled "Societal Feedback Loops: Aged 25 Years in Oak Barrels of Neurosis," I traced the trajectory of social change from the mid-1990s to the present. I explored how a cocktail of digital disruption, cultural redefinitions, and institutional fatigue produced effects that many of us, especially those of us who remember a pre-internet, pre-fragmented world, consider troubling, even pathological. From reversed parenting roles to the collapse of authority and the rise of outrage economies, I painted a picture that was equal parts warning and lament. (Go read that one first, then come back.)

But something has shifted since then. Not in the world. In me.

At 56, I have begun to feel what every generation eventually should: this isn’t my world anymore. It’s theirs. And that realization, unsettling as it is, might be the key to understanding the very changes I once critiqued. Maybe the effects I labeled as "bad" weren’t malfunctions at all. Maybe they were just adaptations I didn’t understand. Maybe what I called collapse is merely evolution seen from the wrong angle.

So this essay is not a rebuttal of the previous one. It is its sequel. The first was written from a hilltop; this one from the valley. It does not take back the critique. But it questions whether the criteria of critique still hold.

II. Revisiting the Oak-Barrelled Feedback Loops

Let’s briefly recall what those loops were:

• Digital Anonymity → Collapse of real-life accountability
• Reversed Parenting → Children emotionally raising their parents
• Identity Tribalism → Fragmentation over unity
• Outrage Economies → Monetization of emotion over discourse
• Instant Gratification Culture → Erosion of patience and depth

All of these trends seemed, at first glance, like steps backward. Symptoms of societal neurosis. They still might be. But what if they also represent strategies of survival—evolutionary behaviors molded not by decadence, but by necessity?

III. Reframing the "Bad" Effects as Adaptive Strategies

Let us now revisit these apparent dysfunctions through a different lens.

1. Digital Anonymity → Fluid Identity, Safe Expression

The mask of the internet is easy to scorn. It allows for cruelty, deception, cowardice. But it also offers refuge, especially to those marginalized by gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, or trauma. For many, the digital self is not fake. It is the first true self they’ve ever been allowed to show. What we see as duplicity, they experience as freedom.

2. Reversed Parenting → Emotional Awareness, Mutual Growth

It is strange, even jarring, to see teenagers explaining emotional boundaries to their parents. But perhaps it’s not a symptom of decay. Perhaps it is the start of a generation less emotionally repressed, more attuned to mental health, and unafraid to ask for care. Yes, the pendulum may have swung far—but maybe the old center wasn’t balance; maybe it was neglect.

3. Identity Tribalism → Search for Belonging in a Rootless Age

The old flags of national unity and religious consensus have frayed. In their place, people gather under new banners: gender, fandoms, politics, aesthetic, trauma. What looks like Balkanization may simply be the psyche’s stubborn need for meaning and connection in an overconnected yet lonely world. A tribe isn’t necessarily warlike. Sometimes it’s just a family that understands your memes.

4. Outrage Culture → Hypervigilance Against Injustice

Yes, callout culture can be excessive, even cannibalistic. But behind the noise is a righteous hunger: not to destroy, but to protect. If the volume is unbearable, it may be because the silence before it was even worse. The outrage is not new. It is the amplification that is. And in a world where injustice was too long whispered, perhaps a shout is overdue.

5. Instant Gratification → Efficiency in a Saturated Economy

Attention is currency now. To demand patience in the digital realm is like demanding longhand letters in a battlefield. The young are not lazy. They are strategic. They scan fast, adapt fast, learn fast, because the world will not wait. They aren’t abandoning depth; they’re optimizing survival. A TikTok might seem shallow but it can also be an education, a manifesto, a cry for help.

IV. Evolution Isn’t About What You Like

In nature, survival favors the adaptable, not the admirable. This is an axiom. So what if these new norms are not moral failures, but Darwinian pivots?

Children today aren’t preparing for a world of factory lines and pensions. They are preparing for a world of climate disruption, AI labor shifts, and emotional isolation. The old virtues like stoicism, hierarchy, and deference might be obsolete gear in this new terrain. Adaptation always offends tradition.

V. Why It Hurts to Watch

It hurts because it displaces. It shatters your reflection in the culture you thought was home.

There’s a name for this discomfort: shifting baseline syndrome. What once seemed unthinkable becomes normal, and each generation recalibrates. When you compare their world to yours, the data never matches. But it’s not because the world is worse, it’s because your benchmark is fossilized.

And yet, the grief is real. To outlive your frame of reference is a kind of death. But it can also be a rebirth.

VI. The Moral Compass Isn’t Broken—It’s Recalibrated

Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory is useful here. He argues that human morality is based on a set of modular instincts:

• Care/Harm
• Fairness/Cheating
• Loyalty/Betrayal
• Authority/Subversion
• Sanctity/Degradation
• Liberty/Oppression

Older generations tend to value loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

Younger ones often prioritize care, fairness, and liberty.

"Morality binds and blinds," Haidt wrote. And that’s the problem. We’re using different compasses. We’re not immoral to each other. We’re incomprehensible.

So what looks like disrespect to one may look like emancipation to the other. The clash isn’t over whether morality matters, but which flavors of it do.

VII. The Final Gift: Letting Go of the Throne

And so I find myself saying, not without sorrow:

"I’m 56. And this isn’t my world anymore. It’s theirs. Who am I to evaluate and judge them by 30- or 40-year-old criteria that no longer apply? Maybe all these 'bad effects' are just their way to adapt. I don’t like this world. But that’s irrelevant. It’s not mine to like. It’s theirs. The world won’t change for me. All I can do is adapt."

It took decades to arrive at this sentence. It tastes like surrender. But it also tastes like peace.

VIII. Coda: From Witness to Companion

Maybe our role is not to scold or instruct. Maybe it’s to witness, to remember, to remind. Maybe we aren’t meant to lead anymore but to offer quiet wisdom, when asked.

There is dignity in stepping aside without bitterness. There is courage in loving a world that no longer mirrors you.

Maybe it’s not broken. Maybe it’s just not mine.

And maybe, just maybe, the kids are all right and they know what they’re doing.