Focus on the Message, Not the Messenger

Facts are facts no matter who lays them out.

Many of the hard lessons learned in life come from failure. At least half of those lessons were already handed to me on a silver platter but I often ignored them until my ass was handed to me. “Oh. Shit. My mom told me this would happen.” Hard truths about the world through the sickness of experience from my mother, father, grandfather, a whole series of older guys I glommed onto into college and my first few years in Chicago. Some dismissed, others taken to heart.

The wisdom of the elders.

On a recent podcast recording for the Literate ApeCast, David (a late stage GenXer) tossed out the now tried and true insult used to shut those elders up—”You sound like an old man yelling at clouds, gays, and women!” {paraphrased}

I paraphrase it because he’s leveled that accusation my way a few too many times and I suddenly saw it for what it was: kin to calling someone who questions the statistical data about bad cops killing black men a racist or someone who wonders if gender transition might be better after kids are old enough to vote a transphobe. “OK Boomer” is simply a method of dismissing any point made that doesn’t align with the perspective of the kids. Rather than listen to the point being made the assumptions based on an identity conceived of stereotypically are followed and the point is lost in the fog of hypothetical supposition.

In the early days of the internet, before smartphones and social media, I loved few things more than arguing with strangers online via message boards and blog comments. I recall one months-long debate with a kid named William. For some reason I decided (assumed) I was arguing with a teenager. I can’t say why but something in his perspective felt juvenile to me and I treated him in the discourse as if he were far less experienced than myself. Much later into our back and forth, he dropped that he was a tenured professor at Stanford who was celebrating his 55th birthday that year. I was shocked and went back to re-read some of missives. I concluded that had I known he was twenty years my senior and educated, I would’ve taken his points a bit more seriously.

Sure, there are always the cases when someone my age or older waves their fist in the air and complains about “these kids who are _____ need to get with the program!” or “The music these days isn’t like the music when I was a kid!” Concern about Tik Tok or OnlyFans is not the concern of someone out of touch but of someone who has, perhaps, lived enough life to understand the obvious perils of the online world and its effect on society. To have seen the world before such contrivances and after. To be fair to David, sometimes I like to come off as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (“Get off my lawn.”) because it’s funny to me.

I caught Old Dads on Netflix the other night. Written and directed by Bill Burr, it provides a slice of three older (re: fifties) fathers of small children, married to very modern younger wives and their journey through the vegans, hipsters, and easily triggered is a hoot. Burr’s frustration with the nonsense spouted by the kids that is then without question adopted by their parents and teachers feels both logical and familiar. If being older can’t provide at least the common sense to see through much of the noise of what is or is not in, there isn’t much point in growing past thirty-five and living a Logan’s Run existence.

A paradox of old age is that older people, generally speaking, have a greater sense of well-being than younger ones—not because they’re unreservedly blissful or brimming with optimism, but because they accept a mixture of happiness and sadness in their lives, and leverage this mixture when devastating events come their way. They waste less time on anger, stress and worry. At least the ones who have reflected enough to attain a certain amount of wisdom about such things do.

When it comes to wholly subjective topics—taste in music, art, film, television—then the age of the messenger comes into play. When discussing events, both past and present, facts are facts with no regard to the age, skin color, culture, or ideological belief. One who ignores basic reality in favor of personal opinion will inevitably steer themselves into a brick wall. The concept that a person’s lived experience has some value but he who has lived the longest has the most experience and, thus, his lived experience has more value than someone with less life.

This does not mean that with age comes wisdom. Not all of our elders are wise. Some are just as childish and unreflective as their much younger counterparts. Another paradox of aging is just that—if one doesn’t make an effort to learn the lessons of failure, he will merely keep failing. Funny that this is true for pretty much any self proclaimed identity—some women are in tune with “women’s issues” while others are completely clueless, some black Americans bring substance to the ongoing work toward civil rights and combating the bigotry of soft expectations while others are merely exemplars of the other side of the debate.

It is the message—the facts, the logical thought, the rational explanation—that is to be heeded (not necessarily agreed with) rather than the identity of the messenger.