Young people always think they are prettier and smarter - and that's a good thing

The anthem of my generation comes from "The Who": The old people only do boring things, but they bitch at us because we have fun, it says in "My Generation". And that's why: "Hope I die before I get old." Hopefully I die before I get old.

Well, most baby boomers aren't dead yet, The Who is touring again next year, and in his analysis of their classic song, Bob Dylan sneers that it might be the demented dream of the retirement home inmate who still thinks he is something special.

If you're a little younger, you're probably already grimacing: those baby boomers! They're always talking about Dylan and Co., when will they stop boring us!

It's like this: every generation stands on the shoulders of the previous one, but that's not enough for them. You have to trample on them. In Germany, the baby boomers despised their parents because of their involvement in the Third Reich. In Great Britain and the USA, where the fathers and mothers who fought the world war and created the welfare state were honored as the "greatest generation", this very size was unbearable: "Do what you want, but don't step on my blue ones." Suede shoes.” THEY are important, not your war stories or your suburban cottage.

That's not discrimination, that's self-assertion. And never was it more important than against the huge cohort of post-war babies who marched through the institutions and took over them yesterday and who today face the not-so-long march through the retirement homes. For those who are already there, I sometimes play rock 'n' roll with a friend.

The young must assert themselves against the old; And yet the Federal Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Ferda Ataman, commissioned a study: “Ageism: Images of Age and Age Discrimination in Germany”. We don't learn anything from it that we don't already know.

The younger you are, the lower you set the age limit. For 16- to 24-year-olds, 57 is considered old. The situation is similar when it comes to the question of the political influence of the elderly: 80 percent of 16 to 24 year olds and more than 60 percent of 25 to 44 year olds believe that old people have more political influence than young people. which is the case. The march through the institutions takes time.

And the insight gained from the study? "It is important to counteract the culturally deeply rooted deficit-oriented image of old age with a potential-oriented one," says gerontologist Eva-Marie Kessler, one of the authors of the study. Nonsense. sorry

Worship of the elderly is something for societies that maintain a standstill. In a dynamic society, the young must believe that they are not only prettier and healthier, which is true, but also smarter and morally better than the old, which is not true. Otherwise they lacked the courage and anger to clean up our mess. The "deficit-oriented" images are okay. One can only try not to conform to them for as long as possible. There's this Dylan song, "Forever Young..." Alright, I'll stop now.