Why Do I Blog At My Age? Part 2
In the first post of this series, I wrote about blogging whilst “just” 22. I suggested that there was a pretty much definite positive correlation between age/”life experience” and the “worth” of opinions. In this post, I am going to pick a few holes in that premise. As I mentioned in Part 1.5, Graachi and Matt Sinclair wrote posts replying to it, and picked on the main point I am going to write in this post: that age is not everything.
I started making this argument in the conclusion of the first post in this series, where I said:
Nevertheless, young people are the future of this country and of the world. Our opinions do deserve to be taken seriously, even with some adjustments. I blog, even though I am just 22, because I think that the voice of my age group does need to be heard. We see the world in a different way to generations before us.
Not only does the voice of my generation need to be heard, it needs to be taken seriously.
Even though I acknowledge that my opinions are likely to change as my circumstances and even my perception of myself does, I do not think that that really should count much against me or anyone else around my age. After all, does not everyone learn something new every day – as the saying goes?
We all spend our lives learning, in one way or another. We learn very fast from the day we are born – how to do everything, from crawling to walking to running, and speaking, reading, writing, and so on. The amount we learn – need to learn – decreases as we grow older, from how to do everything essential in order to be able to move and communicate and act as a human being, to learning to be a useful member of society, and then learning for the sake of learning. We learn faster the younger we are as well. First we learn to do, then we learn why we do, and then we learn just to know. It is the last part – learning for the sake of learning – that concerns us here.
“Youngsters” who have studied a subject such as physics into A-level are going to know more about it than me, who gave that up after GCSEs. Whilst they may not need to know any more than I do to explain why apples fall on your head to a group of 6 year olds, they have the knowledge to explain it far more, and probably better, than I do. Knowledge is important, and this is where age itself makes little difference.
I myself have a History and Politics degree from the University of Essex. I almost certainly know a great deal more about the history and political system of this country than the vast majority of adults. But is this enough to be able to claim that my voice and opinion should be equal to, or even greater than, those people? The only answer I can come to with this is ambiguous – yes, and no.
Yes it should be – I have more knowledge than most of them, I have a higher qualification than them most of them, I am responsible to the same laws and regulations as all of them, and I have the same rights and duties as them too. Yet, to a certain extent, no – my life experience, like the life experience of all of those my age, is limited. I have yet to really “fly the nest”, and in fact have recently just moved back into it.
Age and life experience is always going to be something used against the young and the old. The young have yet to have any, and the old have had too much. The young are yet to settle their opinions down, and the old are too stuck in their ways. And, presumably, the middle-aged are flexible enough without being too flexible. It’s almost too coincidental that “middle aged” would capture most politicians – except for Ming Campbell, of course.
Age and life experience are important in forming a political opinion. For example, it’s amazing how many kids supposedly support the Lib Dems. But most of them soon grow out of that. It is through living that one can develop real and intelligent opinions. I stand by my point that whilst the views of 18 year olds should not be ignored, that they should not be taken into account quite as much as those of an older person. But for those of a slightly older age [especially those who have a degree], such as myself, Matt, and Graachi, we should pretty much fully sit at the grown-up’s table.
In the next post in this series, I will be more into why I, personally, blog.
Article Series - Why Do I Blog?
- Why Do I Blog At My Age? Part 1
- Why Do I Blog At My Age? Part 1.5
- Why Do I Blog At My Age? Part 2
[...] post I wrote about the role of age and life experience in developed political opinions, and in the second post I added knowledge, both specifically political and general, into the mix. In this post I am going [...]
I’d suggest (and I’ll write a post if I have time) that we need to look at different experience in different areas of life.
Can many 22 (or 18) year olds comment meaningfully on the situation of men trained in a manual craft who ended up unemployed at 43 and have been rejected for more than 1500 job applications over 10 years?
Can many 22 year olds comment meaningfully on the experience or practice, or that of conscription for national service?
And what about (to take a ubiquitous example where British culture is in denial imho) whether there are benefits to laying out dead relatives for the neighbours to come and say good-bye? I went to visit my gran’s body and it was one of the best things I ever did. No one else from the family went. In Kilburn 50 years ago many people would have come. What are the pros and cons? How old do you have to be to say?
I’d suggest that “going round the block a few times” alerts us - perhaps above everything - to our own unimportance; and that in turn alerts us to sme of the things that actually matter. And we think those things are different every decade.
btw I am 41 going on 16 or 76 depending who you ask.
Matt
[...] Guest-blogging at the Wardman Wire, ThunderDragon writes an interesting series of why he blogs at his age - saying that he is ‘only’ 22. As another similarly fresh-faced - and who started [...]