One reason societies rise is multiple generations work and sacrifice to build technologies and infrastructure. Eventually generations are born knowing the world only as it is with the existing infrastructure. They do not grasp the decades or centuries of toil—the blood, sweat, and tears—that went into erecting what makes their lives so convenient. It’s like the little boy whose mother asks him how his clothes get cleaned. He responds, “I put them in that basket. Then in the morning, they’re just clean.” The boy has no inclination of the work that goes into cleaning the clothes or of all the progress through the years that’s taken laundry from a multi-day, labor intensive process to what it is today. This is akin to the new generations that comes along. Like they boy, they may have a lack of respect for what came before. But it is rooted in a lack of awareness. Problems arise when they start messing with foundational tenets—technologies if you will—which helped build or are supporting the very infrastructures being taken for granted.
For instance, the ability to express varying views and the capacity to disagree helped build the United States into what we know today. It is what allows people to speak against powerful people. Yet, what allows younger generations to speak out is exactly what they aim to destroy.
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