Debating with Generation Z: a Ranch Anecdote

July 24, 2024.

It has been a very hot day at the ranch, and the children have spent the balance of the afternoon in the pool. I have heated up a storebought lasagna in the oven and thrown some balsamic dressing and a can of artichoke hearts onto mixed greens. It is widely known that I am not a chef, but I am in charge of dinner for Heloise, David, and their cousins Edward, Sophia, and Matthew. These last three are my brother’s children, ranging in age from 26 to 17, and they are here on their annual visit from England.

The marvelous thing about cousins, if you are lucky enough to have a few, is that you can go years without speaking to them – and then, when occasion throws you together, pick up more or less where you left off.  If it is not so in your family, I am sorry, as it is a joy. My children adore their British relations, and two whole relaxing days at the rancho together is absolute paradise.

My brother and sister-in-law are visiting with my mother in the cool fog of Carmel, so I am the lone representative of my generation. As a result, I cannot resist playing the foil. When the six of us sit down, I make a remark of the sort that was perfectly acceptable when I was a boy – but which is considered offensive by Gen Z. It is the responsibility of the shark boat captain to ladle chum into the water – and what greater pleasure can young cousins have than rising in generational solidarity against a clueless and bigoted elder?

We make it through the lasagna, the salad is consumed to the lees, and we move on to the vestiges of the homemade ice creams leftover from the Fourth of July. And all the while, my daughter, my niece, my son and my nephews take very polite but very firm turns educating their troglodytic uncle. At one point, David (who is 12), gives up and goes to play with the dogs. The others stay on task, though I can see that the children are shrewd enough to know that I’m partly “doing a bit” for the sake of discussion.

We spend the bulk of the argument on the question of standpoint theory, or epistemic privilege. The children do not use those terms, but they understand the principle. “Standpoint theory” says that certain voices should carry more weight than others because of the identity of the speaker. BIPOC and LGBTQ people (the long initialisms just flow off the tongues of my well-trained young loved ones!) should have special standing, because their experiences give them an insight that more privileged people do not have.

“So, the less privilege you have,” I query, “The more insight?”

“Yes,” comes the reply. My daughter gives a very fine summary of intersectionality, not bad at all for a rising sophomore. I grin at her happily, proud of her capacity to defend her position and pleased that she’s willing to take me on like this. Perhaps it’s the presence of her cousins that encourages her, but whatever the reason, I’ll take it.

I am a father, and I am an uncle, and I was also – for a very long time – a teacher. I may have disgraced myself and my profession, but if the ice cream is good and a Diet Coke is at hand and young people I adore are seated near me, I can still deploy the Socratic method pretty dang well. 

I bait a little, concede much, ask questions, and generally advance a straightforward classical liberal argument that relies a lot on what I can remember of my heroes like John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and that pugnacious late libertarian, Bob Nozick.  I try not to be professorial or patronizing. I am genuinely curious about this generation to which my children and “niblings” belong; they are so earnest, so keen for justice, so beholden to what seem to me to be extremely puritanical theories about sex, gender, power, and race.

At one point, we debate censorship. The children think that we need much more regulation of social media to stop racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia and various other social ills. I tell them that when I was their age, I sat at this very table and argued passionately in favor of free speech, defending the rights of Nazis to march in the streets and the rights of pornographers to peddle their wares at the local liquor store.  The youngsters are scandalized that I would defend the swastika and pornography on civil liberties grounds. I resist the urge to remark that when I see the disapproval pulsing behind my daughter’s eyes, my firstborn looks very much like her great-grandmother, who also disagreed with me. 

We clear the table, wash the dishes together. Matthew and Sophia peel off, and it is only Heloise and Edward left to carry on the discussion.  As the last dish is dried and returned to the cabinet, my daughter sighs. “Papa,” she says, “You just don’t understand.”

There is only one possible reply to that, which is to admit that it is likely true. Children often grow to discover their parents were correct about all sorts of things, and they are more likely to arrive at that conclusion if the parents don’t spend too much time loudly insisting that they are right. 

Heloise and I agree that we love each other anyway, and I am given a kiss on the cheek. I am off for a twilight walk by myself, while the cousins are eager to gather alone to discuss all sorts of things that their parents couldn’t possibly comprehend.  Before he goes, my nephew Edward asks a question in his splendid West Country accent.  “Uncle Hugo, have you changed your mind about anything? I mean as a result of tonight?”

I tell him that I’ve been given much to consider, but it’s too soon to tell whether I’ll come to change my mind. That is the polite answer, but also the honest one. I add one thing, because I’m still that classical liberal. “I don’t think we always discuss in order to change minds. I think sometimes it’s worth debating just so we can have the pleasure of having our views heard and respected.”

Edward considers this. “I’m not sure that’s enough, given the state of the world.”  And with that, he gives a hearty wave and leaves the kitchen.

That night, before I fall asleep, I play “The Times They Are a-Changing” on my earbuds. I think that Bob Dylan wrote that song when he was 22, and how difficult it is for me to hear it now as anything other than the desperately earnest indignation of a very young (but admittedly very clever) person. You probably know the fourth verse:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

I think that Joe Biden was 21, a year younger than Dylan, when that song came out. I think of Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, legislative leaders whom we now deride as dinosaurs but who are, of course, also just about Dylan’s exact age. I wonder if they heard the song when they were in college and thrilled to it. I wonder how old they were when they figured out that the times are always a-changin, that the old road is always rapidly agin,’ and that every generation going back to the Sumerians has lamented that their sons and their daughters are just about always beyond their command.

“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand,” shout the young, but the hubris of youth is to imagine that their youth and idealism is alien and foreign to their elders. The young are happy to condemn the aging for their selfishness, their absence of imagination, courage, empathy. The young think they understand their parents all too well, and that the call not to criticize should flow in only one direction.

The young are very certain of things that may not be true.

I think of Bob Dylan, who seems to have at least eight grandchildren, and I wonder what he thinks when he sings the song now, aged 83.

The lines from the song that I return to over and over again are in the second verse:

And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win…

That’s where the wisdom lies. In a song that deploys far too many metaphors (but hey, he’s trying to sound like an Old Testament prophet), “the wheel is still in spin” is surely the most honest and the most helpful. I guess the editor in me isn’t sure if spinning wheels actually name things, Bob, but I ‘spose in songs they can, and what I appreciate here is the warning to be modest, to be uncertain, to be open to surprise and transformation. Maybe even at 22, Dylan was mature enough to lace his late-adolescent defiance with at least one image of humility and doubt.

Before sleep, I prayed that Heloise and David, Edward, Sophia and Matthew each have the chance to live long, full, interesting lives. And if it is their desire and the will of the God in whom I’m not sure they believe, perhaps they will have children of their own. I hope they ask those children questions and accept the zealous certainties of their own offspring with humor and delight.

“The present now will later be past,” Dylan wrote in the song’s final verse, “the order is rapidly fading.” Fun fact for writers: “rapidly” is the only adverb in the song, and Dylan uses it twice. I wonder, did he already know at 22 what older folks know so well – that it is so much rapider than we thought when we were young, and that wheel still in spin just keeps going faster and faster?

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My favorite version of the song is by Bryan Ferry, off his 2007 album of Dylan covers. I grew up thinking that it was Ferry, not David Bowie or Prince, who was the rock star who occupied the absolute summit of elegant, sexy sophistication. This is a minority view, and you may not share my sense that this is the definitive Dylan cover, but you should give it at least one listen anyway.