The article about my family from Brand Eins, the german magazine, is out in their June issue. You can find it online in the original german, or read my touched-up google translation. The translation is pretty darn funny, due to its occasional lapses into incoherence. I'm reasonably happy with it, as media goes its a relatively fair portrayal. Its mostly focused on the contrasts agreements, and disagreements in philosophies and beliefs among the family.
I was impressed with the parallel the author drew between the three generations feelings about my hairstyle and our politics, I think its accurate. My grandparents thought my long hair (natural colored) was weird and rebellious and marked me as an outcast, to which my dad said "No, mother, he can't be rebelling with it, because that's what *my* generation did to rebel, so now its normal". He didn't think it looked good on me, but he didn't think it mattered. When my hair became purple, my grandparents thought that was utterly bizarre. Again, while my dad thought it looked bad, and was a bit strange, he didn't think it was bizarre. And of course, I found it surprising that anyone took either length or color seriously. Its just hair - who cares? Its part of my identity, sure, but compared to my loves, hates, passions, politics, and philosophy, such minor aesthetic decisions seem so utterly unimportant.
Politics are somewhat similar. My dad thinks seasteading is interesting, but his passion is with political and economic ideas, not implementation. He understands that its difficult, but certainly doesn't see it as impossible. My grandfather thinks its foolishly idealistic and totally doomed, and we see the relevant historical precedents in an opposite manner. (He thinks about anarchist utopian communities which failed, I think about how the Puritan search for religious freedom helped produce the United States of America.)
This theme, of course, is far from unique to my family. We are archetypes - the young, the middle-aged, and the old. The young are obsessed with change, they are the most creative and original, yet they repeat the mistakes of history (and must, in order to learn). The old are static, fixed in their ways, and unwilling to take risks, yet possessed of the wisdom of experience. The middle-aged are in-between dynamism and stasis, still creating, yet in familiar territory, willing to listen to sober experience as well as enthusiastic new ideas.
I wonder whether this progression is endemic to intelligence, or an artifact of our biological hardware?
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