Youth and moral values

Most of the young people are living in the future. Their values, attitudes and behavior are more in line with the way the world will work in future, than the way it works today. Their ideas are changing as we move from an industrial to a modern world. But, the final shape of the future is far from clear.
The generation which is now between the age of 18 and 30 were all born in 1980 or later. Their teens and adult life have occurred since 1980 and as a result their values and attitudes have been shaped and influenced by the events which have occurred since then. They lived in an age of many technological developments and economic changes. As a result, they live in a world which is more complex than at any earlier times.
The world in 1980 was a very different place: we had no PCs, mobile phones, Sony Walkmans, Cd's, satellite TV, or MTV not to mention the Internet. These and other technologies have become commonplace, bringing the world to them.

In the 1980s, assassinations and terrorism became more widespread and this brought violence and a sense of vulnerability and threat to our doorsteps. During the 1980s and 1990s a whole range of issues which cross boundaries between public and private domains, national and international spheres have become part of our daily lives engaging their hearts, minds and activities in new ways.
The youth have grown up with these changes. What is new to the older people is routine for the youth. They are starting from a very different baseline in almost any area of life.
Just as the world they have grown up in is fundamentally different, so are the values they have developed in response to it. We have moved from a world where everything was certain to a world where the unthinkable can happen. Because of all these changes the shift in moral values has taken place.

Young people's behavior, attitudes and approach to life regularly receive a lot of criticism from the elder people. The values gap and the resulting criticism and misunderstandings are the result of the shift in values and priorities from generation to generation, especially in this latest generation. The older generations, the organizations they have developed and the mental models they rely on are anchored in values which have been shaped by a very different world.
The younger generation is more aware of its own individuality. As a result of their own greater emphasis on individuality combined with the apparent failure of many of the traditional institutions of society - Temple, family, politics, the law, the nation state - young people are turning away from convention and finding new ways of expressing and acting on their beliefs and ideals. The result is a change from a society where an agreed single set of norms were adhered to and maintained through the auspices of core institutions, to one where the personal ethics of the individual and the rules of a whole host of smaller communities prevail.
Creativity and self expression are a way of life for this generation and enable them to combine and move between all aspects of their lives in a seamless transition. Music, art, video, film, VR, animation - all provide the opportunity to explore their own identity while also enabling them to be seen and heard. This generation have the confidence and the technology to liberate their creative .
The opportunities to form relationships and the resulting range and nature of those relationships are almost unlimited. Meeting and talking to friends across the world on the Net is rapidly taking over form talking to friends from school. With the new technologies come new possibilities to from a completely new perspective.
Developing new skills, new services and new approaches to old problems will be critical. Relying on tradition to define your life and make decisions requires much less effort than taking control of your own destiny. To make choices and thrive, not just survive, people will need new forms of stability. Stability that comes not from external structures and clearly defined routes forward, but from inner strength and awareness and moral values such as respecting elders, compassion, humanity, empathy, emotional stability.
The teachers should give a greater emphasis on life skills, the ability to form relationships, to communicate effectively, to negotiate and cope with transitions and change. Young people are already very good at these areas of skill. Their disaffection with the education system as it stands may in large part be the clash between old style emphasis on content and control, versus anew values emphasis on emotional intelligence. What we are witnessing is are definition of the knowledge base: a move away from the traditions of formal and explicit knowledge as the primary if not only focus of education, to the inclusion of and increasingly greater emphasis on the intangible in all its guises.
The ability to continue to develop a range of skills continuously is one of the essential characteristics of the future. Life long learning is necessary to maintain employability.
I'll do it my way - This is increasingly the byword of the younger generation. They are more likely to want to work for themselves, have their own company and be their own boss than previous generations. Young people are also more likely to look to their own age group for advice and help than go to conventional institutions. Whereas the older generations are talking about downshifting, the desire to find more time, a greater sense of meaning in their lives, more balance between living and working: the younger generation are doing it, and starting out with that in mind.