A Gen-Z and elders alliance for an American renaissance

By Hector E. Garcia 

The United States Senate used to be considered the greatest deliberative body on Earth. Today, the once masterful legislative process of reasoning and discussion in the Senate, along with the process and norms of the rest of the U.S. government, is semi-paralyzed and incapable of effectively addressing the COVID pandemic, the effects of global climate change, the deterioration of a strong economy, the need for immigration reform and even the reliability of the electoral process — one of the most distinctive virtues of American democracy.

Not only the government but also a portion of the media and of the people have dedicated themselves to exchanging accusations instead of communicating and building alliances to address these dilemmas.

Extreme divisions, enmity and a sense of helplessness have evolved from groupthink, confirmation bias and the mindset of “winning-is-the-only-thing,” which pervade the American socioeconomic and political systems.

But, at their margins, are two groups who might lead society out of the tangled web woven over the past few decades.

The members of Generation Z (Gen Z) and retired Elders are less subject to the bias of vested interests than the rest of American voting citizens. These are free to see more objectively and broadly, via heart and mind, the perils beyond the cliff’s edge to which our society is rushing. Elders prioritize their legacy to the next generations and the dire consequences their own grandchildren will suffer. Gen Zs visualize with anxiety the future world to which they are being led to subsist.

These two unlikely allies are discovering that they are not helpless. Instead, they are identifying complementary resources to be harnessed in pursuit of a more auspicious future.

Gen Zs have the physical energy, emotional intensity, and skills to utilize modern technology. Elders have the — now rare — wisdom and knowledge of history along with a lifetime of experience in how the exceptional process of the American experiment really works. Some of them are members of the greatest American generation, which successfully overcame and matured from the Great Depression and World War II. The combination of these resources is unique in today’s society and their complementarity can generate the synergies required to pull the country out of its downward spiral.

Concrete samples of this developing bi-generational alliance have been cropping up here and in other nations.

One such Elder-Gen Z team was recently interviewed on television show “Amanpour & Co.” Former Sen. Harry Reid and the young California activist Alexandria Villasenor have joined efforts to protect the environment with “Fridays for Future Movement.” (A transcript of their interview can be accessed through the following link: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2009/22/ampr.01.html)

The Elders’ and Gen Zs’ clarity of vision, their thinking and acting in the context of future generations and other mentioned resources empower them to perceive human differences as building blocks in a grand project of renewal. This project could include an interdisciplinary think tank and laboratory, conceptual bridges and roads to harness the multitude of resources found among the current and new members of the national team towards an American Renaissance. Human beings are the greatest asset in society and the key toward improving civilization; many seem to have forgotten this in spite of the fact that the U.S. Constitution clearly points to “We the People” as the pivotal agent of self-government.

These aspirational projections of what the Elders-Gen Z alliance can produce are contingent on two factors.

One is that the struggle for truth be reinstated as the guiding priority for rebuilding the Union, for science, the economy and, on equal basis, for the humanities, in order to ground our work on reality instead of the shifting sands of fear, deception, blame and wishful thinking.

The other is that the members of this alliance pledge to fulfill their responsibilities to self-government — truth, wisdom, courage and accountability — bequeathed to us by the Founders as exemplified by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and many other servant-leaders.

Obviously, we cannot make the struggle contingent on perfection for we will not find that in the past, the present nor the future.

The human voyage of adventure has been and will continue to be guided by the stars of our ideals, not by the grandiose delusion that those stars can be colonized as exclusive property by any group on Earth.

Hector E. Garcia is a Mexican immigrant, American citizen and author of the higher-ed textbook “Clash or Complement of Cultures? Peace & Productivity in the New Global Reality.”

Originally published: https://www.twincities.com/2021/02/12/hector-garcia-a-gen-z-and-elders-alliance-for-an-american-renaissance/