Have you ever met someone you haven’t seen in a long time and wondered to yourself, “What happened to you?”
It’s not that this person isn’t the same person. They most likely have the same personality and similar appearance, albeit with less hair and more wrinkles. But when you hear them speak about an issue, you wonder, how did we ever share anything in common?
Maybe this is a middle-age thing, when people start to veer down interesting new paths. Maybe I was just naive? People do in fact change??
For the most part, I would say that people rarely change their most fundamental beliefs. Once they get solidified in our 20s, it’s unlikely we’ll change our views significantly. But our beliefs do evolve. We’re influenced by the people closest to us and those we choose to listen to. This becomes evident after spending years in a different society or, in today’s world, of being fed different algorithms.
Societies as a whole change over time. Watch a TV show from a different era to see how values have changed. The sitcom Friends, as a rather innocent example, frequently mocked one of its stars, Monica, for being overweight in high school. The flashbacks of how foolish she looked as “fat Monica” now strike most people, myself included, as rather cruel.
There’s change that's also generational. I’m sure we all have stories of our grandparents saying something blatantly racist that was perfectly acceptable when they were growing up. (I could share some quotes, but it might get me cancelled.) As someone in his forties, even I get called out by my Gen Z daughter for things like using the term “Aboriginal” instead of “Indigenous”. C’mon, I don’t have a racist bone in my body! (I’m kidding, by the way. None of us are free of racist attitudes, as much as we cling to the fact that we have friends of other races.)
This is not to say that we can’t change as we grow older. We might soften our political beliefs, for example. I’ve become more conservative as I grow older, but to some of my conservative friends, I’m still left of Bernie Sanders. It’s the younger generation who might call me a capitalist crank (I just can't win!)
I’ve become much more open to LGBTQ issues, particularly as my daughter goes to school in a much more tolerant environment than when I grew up. This generally follows the evolution of our society, which has become more tolerant of people with different sexual orientations. One of the biggest social changes we’ve experienced in the last few decades is the acceptance and legalization of gay marriage.
Sometimes social changes can happen so quickly that it overwhelms us. We’re experiencing that today with issues of transgender youth. A very small, vulnerable segment of the population is having to deal with an issue that has been politicized by those who understand the public’s fear of change. It’s not easy to live in a world of grey, especially when it involves children – many of whom are simply figuring things out.
No matter what side of the political spectrum, we all use coping mechanisms to understand the world and reduce our own anxiety. This is natural. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories also take root in an uncertain world. An intelligent person like Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who clings to the belief that vaccines cause autism and that chemicals in our environment are causing youth to become gay and transgender, can convince many others of the same thing because of his status, charisma and intelligence. He’ll have even more sway as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (gulp).
Setting America’s craziness aside, I think I could still talk to most people who hold such diverging views... So long as they don’t start lecturing me and are open to listen to my views, I think I could get through a five-minute conversation.
For the most part, I would hope we can agree to disagree, even if we get our information from different sources, whether through the CBC, TikTok or (sigh) Joe Rogan.
Because I'm sure we've all taken the occasional trip down the internet rabbit hole.
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