Between milléniaux, born at the beginning of the years 2000, and baby boomers, spoiled children of consumerism, and the cloth burns. The containment, forcing the young assets to a forced retirement, have saved lives, but aggravated the economic situation on all fronts. What do a youth précarisée, eager for changes. On the side of the third age, we regret the recklessness of these young people, ill-treated, came out too fast from the forbidden of the containment with the risk of the epidemic set out again of more beautiful. Repeatedly announced, repeatedly theorized, the conflict of generations does it take place in 2020, the year of all dangers ? Serge Guérin, sociologist, specialist in aging, is returning to The Point on a notion that is fluctuating in insisting on the strength of the intergenerational link.
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The Point : The containment has-t-he exacerbated the resentment between the age categories up to the point of no return ?
The sociologist Serge Guérin poses prior to the holding of a meeting in the presence of the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and other personalities in the local elections of 2014, on October 1, 2012 in Paris. © JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP Serge Guérin : This is pretty fun, but with the crisis of the Covid-19 appeared a pronounced desire of protection that is almost the infantilisation. This is particularly visible for the elderly. At the exit of the confinement, we were almost to forbid the elders to get out of the house, past 65 or 70 years : “Don’t go out of your home. “This moralization of the uses of the containment has occurred primarily in the direction of more mature because most vulnerable. At the same time, people themselves are relatively old, may be poorly known, intervened in the media to explain that this confinement was the subject of the future of the young because old.
there is something regressive to be told to the people such or such behavior as a function of age category.
The cult of youth, the disease of the third age ?
This small, smell, smelling, coming from people who already hold the top keypad for media, sought to wear the hat of the crisis that the elderly, their speech is summarizing : “It is not necessary to sacrifice the young to save some of the old that would be, in any way, the parties at one time or another. “We would have taken on the color of the skin, for example, this would be called apartheid. There is something regressive to be told to the people such or such behavior as a function of age category. We went from “all that to save a few old “” decidedly, these young people, they are not serious “. I believe that there has especially been a willingness of society to protect the weakest as well as the whole of the population.
Fête de la musique, canal Saint-Martin crowded… After the old, which would have caused the confinement, young people are the scapegoats of the déconfinement ?
Do not turn a blind eye on the behaviour incivils, but it is also disregarding that a lot of young people were supportive of older people. It is the student in the corner who asks his neighbor on the landing, to which she never spoke before, if it is in need of help for the races, for example. These are very simple things, but simply to make society. These micro-solidarity have been very important during the containment. To return to the déconfinement, which was predictable, is that the 70 years were not going to go to a nightclub. People are not idiots, approximately 80% of the French have played the game, and then others, about 20 %, for a variety of reasons, refuse the common. We must not confuse the legitimate need to get some fresh air, go out, find his friends with a certain contempt, poisoned to the standards. This is what we saw with the rave party illegal in Lozère.
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health crises, economic and ecological add up. In the end, it is the young who pay the bill ?
there must have been about 20 % of young people who have real convictions and environmentally friendly. Even among those who participate in the marches for the climate, often young, urban, how many have a lifestyle that is more polluting than their grandparents ? They travel, move, consume more often… Young, old, it does strictly nothing more to say. In an earlier work, I developed the idea of the “quinquados” to explain that the fifty-year olds of today are not those of a few years ago. Between a young graduate from a business school and his comrade without diplomas, it is the young non-graduate, who will be most affected by the crisis that is looming. Although there is a discourse on a generation that was sacrificed, but, again, it seeks to simplify so that the situations are not comparable. Don’t forget that these are seniors who have more difficulties to find the path back to employment.
times are hard. The solidarity born of the containment will exist-does it again in a few years ?
I would like to remind you that one of the areas that have the wind in their sails will be precisely that of the health and support to older people. Today, instead of the bad, including among people in low-qualified, to find the right staff to work or take care of the elderly in situation of dependency. When it is said that there is no employment, it is fair, but there are also a lot of trades that people don’t want to do. Issue of low self-esteem, image, salary,… but it is interesting to know that in the name of health, it has jeopardised the economy. In the same movement, the health is one of the major poles of employment creation.
The elderly continue to pay attention. Our old, would they have more memory ?
The old man were, above all, more story. You can’t ask someone of 20 years of thinking the same way. This is normal. But there is something that has already occurred at the time of the attacks, and that makes me think of the famous phrase of Raymond Aron : “The story is tragic. “It is true that our societies prefer the notion of progress according to the principle that the new one would be preferable to the former. And yet, the story is tragic. It is made of round-trips. Finally, this epidemic has nothing to incredible. Think of the black plague, or typhus… The look on our history, especially by the older, should we invite them to a little more modesty. Despite all of our technology and tablets in the world, it is ultimately a tiny virus that manages to destabilize entire economies. Keep in mind, we were almost as poor a century ago, even if the number of deaths had nothing comparable.
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If you are followed, the war of generations is more of the fantasy than the real confrontation…
indeed, older people – I’m not talking about people in long-term care-or very old – has generally held up well, while expressing concern for the youngest among us. For me, this returns to a concept that I refer to very often : the intergenerational solidarity. When you say old, do you often think your own parents or grandparents depending on your age and vice versa. For their part, the old, as you say, think a lot of their grandchildren. These are things we incarnated, that we consider ours. This is why I think that there is no war of the generations, in contrast to the discourse maintained by some policy makers that would love to see it burst. Such a war would not talk about other issues that annoy, the social issue or cultural issue, for example. The difference, compared to before, is that there is an echo in the media.
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Last book published : The Quincados, Calmann-Lévy, 2019
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