Recent statistics on the consumption of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by Irish teenagers appear to show that, in this at least, we can more than hold our own with any of our European competitors. Which must inevitably provoke a range of muddled reactions, from puzzled parental self-criticism ("Where did we go wrong?") to casual tolerance ("Sure, they'll grow out of it") to sound, robust condemnation ("They're on the high road to hell").
What these, and a variety of other judgments, have in common is a baffled and usually angry lack of comprehension of the Younger Generation, and of what they're at. And this is, I would suggest, something that has been going on for a very long time. As far back, perhaps, as to what Adam and Eve thought of Cain and Abel.
The real problem about the Younger Generation is, of course, that it doesn't exist. There are usually several of them around at the same time. I certainly am aware, and have been aware, of a few in my lifetime since I was a kid in the 1920s. The main target then was "the flapper" (and her male equivalent). I had an older cousin whom I secretly adored, and I couldn't bear to have her criticised by my mother and her friends. (She later became a rather prudish matron.)
Since those days, the Younger Generation have come and (most of them) have gone. I belonged to at least two of them myself. As a teenager in the late 1930s, and again in the immediate post-War years - what an elderly pastor of my acquaintance called fear og smartaile (a "smart" young man). He didn't mean it as a compliment.
The Younger Generation of the 1960s I knew, and envied. Since then I've lost track, but there have been at least two, possibly three, distinct cohorts.
So, there has always been criticism. Sometimes, if the truth were told, fuelled by envy, and often, as I've suggested already, marked by a strong element of bewilderment and lack of comprehension. But we must face this question: is the situation now, in this end-of-century Ireland, just a logical development of what has gone before, or is there a serious qualitative difference? For good or ill, are, say, the 15-to-25 age group today radically different, special, in their outlook and behaviour? And, if so, why?
There are several questions there, stated and implied. And there's another which the serious Christian (Jew, or Muslim) must ask. To what extent are outlook and behaviours linked to religious faith - I mean actually, not just in devout theory - or its absence?
Clearly I'm not going to provide an answer here to any of these questions. But it is, I believe, important to consider some elements of the context in which we approach them. For they are, I fear, the kind of questions where over-simplification is most attractive and most dangerous.
There are, then, a number of points worth noting:
The extent and depth of the cultural revolution of the 1960s is not yet fully apparent, if only because it still continues. Its effects, ranging from the influence of TV, of new economic thinking and practice, the women's movement, the Northern Troubles, to the collapse of the cultural scaffolding which had so long sustained institutional religion (especially that of the majority), have been far-reaching.
New relationships with continental Europe, Britain, and the United States have provided the post-1960s generations with alternative standards of living and behaviour.
Drug consumption - including that of alcohol and tobacco - needs to be examined in two distinct categories, based on social class. The incidence and motivation of such consumption among the deprived, marginalised, and under-educated demand separate analysis from that among the more "privileged".
New attitudes to sexual activity, due to a variety of factors - including the wide availability of contraception and the erosion of the fear of the consequences of "mortal sin" - have started to create a new moral climate in other areas.
The transmission (handing down) of traditions, pieties, values, even bits of information, within families, has weakened very considerably over the past 50 years or so, in rural, but most notably, in urban society. (There is also the question of parental example, but that's another and a long story).
Clearly this last point is highly relevant to the apparently serious diminution in religious faith and practice in recent decades. As far as faith is concerned, I must stress the word apparently, since belief, as distinct from outward conformity, is an intensely personal matter.
And committed Christians must beware of an attitude, as old as religion itself and still common among moralisers who couldn't care less about real faith (let alone hope, or love), that religion is a useful thing for keeping society in order.
A final word. What I have written suffers from many defects and omissions. But the most serious by far is that it's all as seen from the outside. No attempt at answering any of the questions posed can be ever half-valuable, without the views and ideas of those immediately concerned.
That elusive generation must be caught on the wing.
Dr Sean Mac Reamoinn is the author of Laylines 1980-1996: Partial Views of Church and Society, recently published by Dominican Publications.
