The Freedom Fighters versus the Technological Innovators
Do you think that your generation is better than the generation of your parents? Most people would agree that this is true. The younger generation can pride itself with new advanced technology which provides us with more opportunities than the previous generation could ever have imagined. Do the new advances make us more special than our mothers and fathers? We can see, there are visible differences between both generations. But we should at least try to understand the differences between them before we condemn the previous generation as a generation of unexperienced or uneducated people.
We are the Millennial Generation. Our members were born at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. If we could name one thing that Millennials enrich the world with, it would be the advancement of technology. Thanks to technology, we are aware of our possibilities because we have a constant source of information in the form of internet, social networks, and uncensored online newspapers.
In my country, the Czech Republic, my mother and father´s generation did not know keyboards or internet banking, but we need to realize that without my mother and father´s generation there would be no such things. Life was so much harder for them because they lived in the time of Communism where human rights were violated and any progress was seen as a threat to the political regime. Democracy, which our parents fought for, opened our gates to the rest of the world and helped my generation enjoy what had been denied to our parents. The great differences between the conditions we grew in and the conditions our parents grew in determined our generation´s contribution to society.
Our generation has created a whole new system of communication. Our parents did not know the internet as young adults. They did not send any text messages, and they did not use Notebooks in their every day lives. Their lives were harder whereas the development of new machines and computer systems made our lives easier. Our generation "Skypes, Googles, Likes, and Friends". We can simply get in touch with our friends from abroad, enjoy the benefits of internet banking, and find any information needed for school without having to spend countless hours in a library. We created a new vocabulary so that we could talk about our passion for technology.
Use of anglicisms in non English-speaking countries is common among the present-day youth; therefore, older generations begin to worry whether their native language will disappear as a result of this phenomenon. Some words are unknown to our parents and they often have the feeling that they do not understand their children anymore. Words such as to mail, to check something out, to like, and much more are now used on a daily basis. English swear words are gradually replacing the Czech ones. Maybe the reason for this is a certain distance one feels between the native language swear words and the swear words in English. The use of anglicisms makes us think globally, not locally. We feel that speaking English is "cool," "trendy," and "badass." It encourages us to explore English and to travel abroad as well.
The Czech Millennials are aware of the preciousness of the time each human has, and they are determined to not to waste it. My parents´ generation under Soviet Rule did not experience studies abroad because the political regime did not want them to get new ideas which could be a threat to the communists´ power. People from my parents´ generation were – if at all– allowed to travel only to the countries of the Eastern Block. Now, the Czech Republic is a member of the European Union which greatly supports the students who are interested in studying abroad to broaden their knowledge. We can travel freely to the European Union countries and buy their goods which is something our parents were forbidden to do.
Not only are we allowed to travel, but we are also experiencing a time of aboundance. While our parents had to stand in lines to get oranges, meat, or clothes, we can simply go to any city and buy as much as we want. And if we do not like the offerings in stores, we can easily order the desired goods from the Internet. Children of my parents´ generation can hardly believe the stories our parents tell us, like my mother told about how the best present was not a cell phone, as it would probably be for me, but a pair of nylons. She was incredible grateful for nylons because they were rare at that time. Now, children get terribly disappointed when they do not get a new Notebook or Tablet. Can you imagine their faces if you only gave them a pair of nylons?
It is true that our generation achieved a lot, but we need to also ask ourselves if we were able to do that without the support of our parents. Our parents should not be made fun of just because they are not able to use anglicisms. How could they use anglicisms when they were not allowed to travel to the West? How could they enrich our society with new technology when the collaboration with more developed countries was forbidden? But they did change the world in their own way, or at least in the Czech Republic. Czechs demonstrated in January 1989 on the day of 20th anniversary of the death of Jan Palach who died protesting against Soviet invasion. The students of universities demonstrated again on November 17, the day which commemorates the closing of Czechoslovak universities during Gernam occupation in 1939. Our government was replaced and the Eastern Block fell. Czechoslovakia became past and the two new republics were established: the Czech Republic and the Slovac Republic. Both of them are since then democratic. Can we compare the importance of democracy to the importance of technical inovations?
Every generation thinks of the previous generation with disrespect and considers itself better and more advanced. In spite of this, we need to realize that without the older generation there would be no new one. The generations are in mutual interaction influencing each other greatly. Because of the education we received from the older generation we are able to continue striving to make new discoveries and to test our limits. We are constantly competing not only with our parents, but also with our peers to prove that we are better than them in order to earn their respect and recognition. While doing so, we are constantly developing, inovating, and creating numerous ways to make this world a better place to live. That is the reason why there is no such thing as a better or worse generation because each generation is unique and special in its own way.