We experience cultural continuity with our parents' and our children's generations. Even when we don't see eye to eye with our parents on political questions or we sigh in despair about our kids' fashion sense or taste in music, we generally have a handle on what makes them tick. But a human lifetime seldom spans more than three generations, and the sliding window of one's generation screens out that which came before and that which comes after; they lie outside our personal experience. We fool ourselves into thinking that our national culture is static and slow-moving, that we are the inheritors of a rich tradition. But if we could go back three or four generations, we would find ourselves surrounded by aliens -- people for whom a North Atlantic crossing by sail was as slow and risky as a mission to Mars, people who took it for granted that some races were naturally inferior and that women were too emotionally unstable to be allowed to vote. The bedrock of our cultural tradition is actually quicksand. We reject many of our ancestors' cherished beliefs and conveniently forget others, not realizing that, in turn, our grandchildren may do the same to ours.

 

Let's focus on the next three generations and try to discern some patterns.