Why Don't the Young Learn from the Old?

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." -- Mark Twain

Robin Hanson writes:

One of the essential tragedies of the human condition is that each generation must relearn so much about how to be human. Sure, life is too complicated for each generation to teach the next one about all the details we face, and many things change from generation to generation. But you might think each generation could at least make clear to the next the big timeless insights and strategies of life. You know, how to manage a career, when to leave town, how to be a good lover, friend, parent, spouse, employee, boss, etc. or what to watch out for when choosing such relations.

We do spend a lot of time teaching our young skills like how to dress and hunt and drive and write. And adults do sometimes pontificate on the big strategies of life. But such sermons are mostly ignored, and honestly they aren't often phrased very practically. So the young seem to have to relearn how to manage a career, be a good lover and friend, etc. Many learn the facts of life the hard way, and later wish they had understood such things sooner. Why?

It seems to me that a big part of the story is that a naive innocence is attractive in many ways to people forming relationships. Young people who act like they know a lot about the ways of the world are suspected, perhaps correctly, of being more self-centered and likely to defect when it is to their advantage. And the sermons of the old often seem more devoted to reaffirming their ideals than to transferring practical advice.

Dr. Hanson brings up some great questions. There seems to be two things going on at once:

1. The old don't seem to communicate reasons behind their advice very well, leading them to overestimate the quality of their advice to the young. ("That's just the way it is!")
2. The young tend to think they know much more than they do and often think they know more than the old. Both propensities lead them to underestimate the quality of the advice they receive, particularly if it's given with no rationale.

I was talking to a friend about this the other day and we both agreed we got a lot of advice from our elders and mentors that seems good in retrospect, but that was never offered to us in a well-reasoned way. We didn't understand it at the time and it made it less impactful than it might have been otherwise. We remain confused why more rationale wasn't given to us?

The older I get, the more I appreciate hanging out with older people and learning from them. I love it every time I visit or talk to my 91-year-old Aunt Ruth. The wisdom she and people of her generation have is practical, insightful, and more often than not really, really good!