Social change is something that has been happening in our country at an exponential rate recently. Younger generations are seeing the importance of change in the world, specifically changing old policies that no longer apply to our modern world. For example, the legalization on equal marriage rights has kickstarted a movement of social change for equality. All over the world people are now able to publicly identify themselves how they want to identify, not how society tells them they should identify. But this seems to only occur for younger generations. Older generations are still not on board with discussing the direction younger generations of our society seems to be taking things.
The reason it is important to have social change is because it starts conversations among younger generations which spreads to older generations. These older generations tend to be the people making all of the decisions for the younger generations, like in politics. In Hallward’s Ted Talk, she discusses the change for equal marriage rights; “What we know is that as gay and lesbian couples have been coming out of the closet for decades now, it becomes a larger political force.” As people began accepting others who were coming out as gay, lesbian, etc., it caught the attention of our politicians which led to the legalization of equal marriage.
Another place where we have recently seen this split in effect was with president Donald Trump. During former president Barack Obama’s turn in office, he set up a path for conservation of our environment. After Donald Trump became president, he decided that those changes were not necessary for our country and essentially reversed their effect. These statements are not meant to critique either president’s political agendas, but rather to show how Barack Obama, fifteen years younger than Donald Trump, was pushing for change while Donald Trump aims for conservation. If we begin having more of these discussions with older generations, social change can become even more widespread than it is today.
Through Epstein’s findings in Uganda and South Africa, it became apparent that, not only is the division between generations affecting us directly, but other countries as well. In her article she talks about how large-scale foundations and programs are overlooking smaller, more useful AIDS prevention and treatment organizations and giving their money to over-commercialized organizations. “The problem with some large foreign-aid programs was that distributing the funds often involved negotiating with governments with a poor record of dealing with AIDS.” Epstein notes that these governments don’t know how to deal with the AIDS epidemic; throwing money at these organizations is the way to solve the problem instead of sitting down and discussing things that can actually be done to help. The government, law, and politics are all fields where these older generations have control and seem to be causing hesitation toward social change. If we begin the conversations that involve change, then we begin putting down a foundation for future generations.
Very interesting perspective. There are, however, some older people who embrace change and difference.