Redoing my mindset list
“BAGETS” – to refer to young people – is actually an old term and its antonym “FORGETS” – to mean old people – has long been forgotten. Using these terms as reference points when talking to the youth today, could be a bad judgment call.
Anyone who teaches, writes or public-speaks finds reference points essential when connecting with students, readers or an audience. But in using reference points, one must proceed with caution. This is a generation where words and realities evolve faster than Webster or mainstream culture catching up. An audience-disconnect results when the listener or reader fails to understand the speaker or writer, due to obsolete reference points.
When talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder before a group of college students today, I may be tempted to allude to the Vietnam War where the affliction rose to prominence. I may find “USA for Africa” a perfect example to illustrate an effective musical campaign for human kindness. But to a college kid born after 1985 these examples could easily fly over the head, in the same way that I failed to appreciate Woodstock as the biggest outpouring of songs, love and sex as told to me by the Baby Boomers (today’s senior citizens) of my not so recent past.
The youth of today may find it unthinkable that my parents spoke in low voices when criticizing the Marcos government in the 1970’s for fear of retribution via warrantless arrests and torture. Today’s people woke up to an era where criticizing the government inches below the belt is still survivable. They may find outrageous the fact that one could smoke on board a PAL plane in the 1980’s as they traveled in an age where smoking in flight is non negotiable – even criminal in its offensiveness.
I’d also lay off the term “Banana Republic” which loosely refers to a small impoverished country ran by multinationals (as the Philippines once was) when to young people it really is just a fashion brand. Neither can I brag about my “disco” days which my young audience may find “jologs” although I am tempted to argue that their “House Mixes” and my good old disco are one and the same.
Things of the past such as telephone party lines (sharing the telephone line with another household due to the PLDT backlog) or how my MTV-deprived generation looked forward to “filler film” on IBC channel 13 for music video are “dead reference points” that would baffle a generation that can obtain a telephone line (land or mobile) at whim and can view music video on their phones on demand.
Today’s kids can even enjoy unlimited calls as far as their piso can take them when it used to be so costly to say in touch at 75 centavos per 3 minutes. And need I say this is perhaps the dream of their Manong Johnny (gusto ko happy ka) whom to me will always be Prime Minister Juan Ponce Enrile?
And don’t get me started on carbon paper, bomba stars, or how communist Russians (capable of wholesale nuclear kill) were more feared during the Cold War (what war?) than the sporadic murderer, Al Qaeda of today. These are just some of the realities that must be carefully considered, reviewed or revalidated on one’s mindset list.
A mindset list is a collection of moments, historical snippets, geopolitical changes, fads, and realities in mainstream culture that form good reference points but only to certain age groups. A university in the US had spearheaded a mindset list for its faculty, as a reminder that references quickly become dated and the constant need to purge that list. It also gives teachers an idea of how things have changed and chronicles key cultural and political events that helped shape a generation.
There are reference points I could easily use on myself if I were only talking to my peers.
I can say I am a Martial Law baby and peers will understand what I am talking about. We grew up under a repressive, despotic leader. If one lived through the socially and politically turbulent Martial Law years he would appreciate why my generation is very vigilant to the point of paranoia.
A college intern once asked me why I protest with intense resolve, any move to grant President Gloria Arroyo emergency powers. When “Martial Law baby” would have sufficed as an explanation I had to expound on how such powers can be abused and that it has happened before.
A mindset list is highly volatile and evolves at a much faster pace towards irrelevance.
Today teachers face college freshmen who consider Ninoy Aquino as just another dead hero whose face is on the 500 peso bill just as Jose Rizal was when I first met him on my childhood peso. They wouldn’t know Lifebuoy was a leading soap brand or that Far East Bank was the country’s biggest financial institution before it was gobbled up by BPI.
That same generation would find it incredulous that apples cost P25 a piece in the early 80’s (when importation was cut by Ferdinand Marcos the president and not Ferdinand Marcos the incumbent senator). They vaguely remember a certain Nora-“something” as big a star as Vilma Santos-Recto whom to them, is just the governor of Batangas – or worse – just Luis Manzano’s mom.
That’s Luis’, not even Lucky’s.*
