Zadie Smith

Generational discourse is nonsense, really.

That's kind of what I'm trying to write about.

What amused me about it recently is how vicious it's become.

And I wanted to try and think about the reasons why.

And I think they're perfectly valid.

But when I think of myself as a child and my mother's generation and my father's, you know, obviously there are things in both that as a teenager you find absurd or you roll your eyes up.

But I think the absolutely key difference is structural and economic in that I did not think of them as eating up my resources necessarily.

ending the planet or making my future impossible.

So that made it possible to look on their foibles, you know, whether it was, you know, free love in the 60s or a certain kind of patriotism or whatever.

with a gentle eye because it wasn't existential.

So to me, it makes complete sense that the discussions feel more angry or violent now because they should do.

If you are young and feel like you cannot rent an apartment, you cannot make your life, you cannot buy a house, you cannot start an apprenticeship, you cannot get a job, why would you not look above you and say, you know, f*** you?

That makes complete sense to me.

I mean, again, just as a structural fact, you know, other discourses, gender discourses, racial discourses, make way more sense because you are on the side of an almost absolute division.

Of course, in gender, it's not absolute.

In race, more or less.

If you are black, you're not going to become white.

If you're white, you're not going to become black, barring some miracle.

But if you are young, you are absolutely going to become old.

So it would seem to me...