Being on the edge of extinction definitely alters your thought patterns. Think about it. At age 76, one definitely has a past that greatly exceeds ones' probable future in terms of length. At this age, a whole year constitutes just 1.3% of my whole life. By comparison, when I was in grade 2 at age 7, one year represented 14.3% of my life at that point in it. That is why summer vacations, when I got a new pair of tennis shoes seemed to last forever, and why at my present age, the years flash by at an alarming rate. 11 times faster, in fact.

So I find myself thinking more about events of the past, than I do thinking about what is going to happen next year. That’s the old man syndrome – when the old geezer sits on the porch telling whoever will listen (even if they don’t want to listen) what it was like, back when… I have friends that tend to do that.

I was 9 years old when we entered WWII in 1941, so I was not a participant in it. But I have vivid memories of the war years, and how the American people were united in a way that I have never seen since. (For an earlier article on this, go to http:/mikingery.blogster.com/seattle_war_years) No one demonstrated in favor of Japan, or Germany. We didn’t wring our hands over collateral damage when we bombed the enemy in Europe, or eventually in Japan. The attitude then was, "you are either with us or against us" (sound familiar?) If you are not with us, get the hell out of the way, we are going to win this war. And we did. Decisively. What would happen today if we killed 100,000 civilians in Baghdad in a bombing raid as we did in a single raid on Hamburg, Germany in 1945? (And we had a Democrat as President.) That war time experience shaped my thinking so that to this day, I am shocked and dismayed by the discord and divisiveness that is so characteristic of our society today. We haul our soldiers into court and prosecute them for doing the job that we sent them to do for us.

I don’t know how many people think about this. It might help if they would do so, with an open mind. What we have been exposed to in the prior years of our life shaped our thought processes so that now, we subconsciously think, and operate within those parameters. And that can seem strange to those that are of a younger generation, who have been subjected to a different environment, and therefore think differently.

So what Barack Obama is now was formed by his generational social experiences of his past. It is also what makes him “different” from John McCain who was formed by his different generational social experiences, and why John McCain seems so “strange” to the generation of Obama voters. If they cannot understand the generational effect I’m trying to describe, they may be turned off by that older man and vote for the smooth talking, glib, self-assured, younger man that they can more comfortably relate to.

Three, maybe four generations exist at the same time at today’s life expectancies. As we slide the scale along, the older generation becomes smaller and smaller, loses more and more relevance and finally is gone, replaced by a totally unique, new one at the front end of the scale. This generational spectrum of thought processes and attitudes is very dynamic. If we are willing to make the intellectual effort, it also helps us understand why we so often repeat the mistakes of the past. The living history, memory of events we participate in dies with us, and society loses the perspective of mistakes we made when we were the dominant generation (by then society doesn't care). The old geezer on the front porch is gone (sigh of relief?).

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