Why are Australians struggling with the concept of staying at home?

For many, the Coronavirus pandemic seemingly ‘came out of nowhere’, despite years of warnings from scientists that it was inevitable. And it was inevitable. The history of pandemics goes back thousands of years, the first recorded, the Antonine plague, accounting for 5 million deaths including, quite possibly, Marcus Aurelius, then Roman emperor, towards the end of its ravages in the year 180 BCE. In the modern era, with the advent of globalisation and the explosion of international travel, it was only a matter of time before a localised outbreak spread with deadly speed beyond its borders out into the whole world.

I remember a Year 8 student once groaning before a HUMS class about the need for the lesson. “Just why do we have to learn about history- who cares?” Well I can sympathise with his youthful ignorance concerning seemingly irrelevant events long before his parents stepped upon the earth, but there is actually a very good reason beyond the initial fascination in finding out about how others have lived their lives before us. And that is to determine just why we’re here, at this place, in this way and why we behave in the current circumstances, the way we do.

I was lamenting our topic on a group call yesterday about how the Gen X’ers in particular are constantly harping on about when the current restrictions to our freedom will be over. It’s only been a couple of weeks, yet you’d think we’d been incarcerated for several months. And I think their lack of resilience lies in our past.

My dear friend whose 80th birthday celebrations I was meant to attend in England in March, calls herself a ‘war baby’. She has already been in self isolation for a month due to her age (and she lives alone). She has taken the extraordinary step of cutting up an old sheet to make toilet tissues which she bleaches and washes daily. It’s her ‘little bit’ she attests, to keeping down the run on toilet paper. I can hear the howls of protest already about it ‘being disgusting’ etc. (not aware that many generations were raised with cloth nappies). But the point, my dear reader, is that my friend is familiar with deprivations and instead of howling in protest at life’s unfairness, she is simply getting on with it and doing her little bit. Quite simply, because she has experienced this before; enforced deprivation. This pandemic while heartbreaking, has not ‘rocked her world’ or sent her into a paroxysm of shocked disbelief.

Baby Boomers are products of a generation of war babies who had experienced the First World War, the Great Depression (to that date) and World War II. They lived through bombings in their home towns, strict rationing of foods, calls to engage in labour in support of the war effort, curfews, deaths and trauma. And you must remember that this state of deprivation went on for YEARS, not weeks. Given their experiences, what sort of parents would they make?

Post war 50’s saw in the Western world in particular, an affluence that grew the middle classes and unemployment rates plummet. Many people could now afford a car and a house and a television. These parents wanted their children to be educated (my dad had never gone beyond Year 8) and get a secure job. Security was everything. Some form of control over an unknown future was everything. They pushed their kids to study hard and ‘make something of themselves’ in order to cushion them from the ills that these parents knew could so easily and ‘out of nowhere’ hit you.

They wanted their kids to have things they’d never had. My mum remembered that for the Christmases of her youth, she always received an orange and some walnuts and perhaps a small toy if the year was going well. One year she received a doll and she never forgot it.  And then I think of the numerous gifts they lavished on my brother and I each Christmas- wanting us to have ‘everything they never had’. My father worked two jobs (a day clerical position and a night time cleaning job) for years to keep the family afloat. He worked hard. And when my brother was old enough, my mum went to work too and she worked hard as well. So with that background, what sort of parents would we make?

You reap what you sow. There’s no damned getting away from it. Baby Boomers are responsible for the current state of the world, already in the grip of the consequences of the climate crisis. The spoilt generation who had always got most of what they wanted and gotten it quickly. The generation who were better educated, inheriting some form of assets from frugal parents to add to their share portfolios. The generation who lived as their parents wanted them to; as if there were no tomorrow. So, their parenting style? Well, the answer is the Millennials and the Gen X’ers. So what sort of people are they?

When the pandemic hit Australia, the response was disbelief- a little bit of Trump’s “Chinese virus” slipping into the rhetoric- a bit of denial that it’s got anything to do with our proud nation. A bit of the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude into the mix and you’ve got Bondi Beach full of patrons the day a lockdown is called for. I think what concerned me most was the attitude of the Gen X’ers (not all obviously) - that it was an ‘old people’ disease and they wouldn’t be affected, so let’s party. Let’s all pretend it’s a Zombie Apocalypse and we’re characters out of the Walking Dead. It’s a bit of a laugh. There was no immediate concern for the elderly and vulnerable in our society. There was just ridicule and conspiracy theories and attitudes that almost sounded like “we don’t care if old people die”. Have we really raised our children to not have an immediate empathetic reaction? Is that the true picture?

Are we so far removed from the notion of community that we literally revert to me and mine only? The toilet paper run and hoarding seems to indicate that might be the case. There was a strongly selfish reaction to the threat of the disease. Fear and panic ran riot among conspiracy theories and fear mongering and fake news. I am grateful that that seems to have calmed, that people are realising that Australia in particular is not at threat of insufficient food resources. Or toilet paper for that matter. We just have to be patient as the supply chains catch up.

It’s the uncertainty that seems to be upsetting people. I heard an ad for The Feed where a young woman was saying she was not the type of person who coped well with uncertainty. I’m sorry young lady, none of us are. It’s called being human. We don’t like change and we don’t like not being in control, even though that is almost always an illusion. We are in fact, in control of nothing much except ourselves. What comes out of our mouths and what goes into it. And even that is fraught with social conditioning, media manipulation and psychological predispositions.

This generation conditioned to immediate gratification is becoming undone by the lack of that old virtue, patience. They don’t have any. They have no idea of the history that taught their grandparents that life is indeed fragile and fickle. They have no idea of sacrificing for the good of your nation for YEARS without complaint. They have no idea of the concept of the painful but excited wait – saving for a year for that bicycle- because for them it came regular as clockwork at the next birthday or Christmas or even the weekend following the mention of a desire for a bicycle.

As a teacher of teenagers, I hear it all the time- “I’m bored”. When I was at school as a student, the rolling in of the video machine and the tv was such a treat we could hardly contain ourselves. Yet when introducing a film clip to a Year 12 class I was asked how long it would go for- “20 minutes! Are you joking?” It was more than a soundbite and they couldn’t cope. They lost attention and got ‘bored’. They are a generation unused to not being entertained every minute of the day. They are unused to the concept of sitting with themselves and their own thoughts. They are unused to the idea of wandering around in nature just to wander around in nature. They are a generation who do not see the value in being bored and therefore pushed to creativity. They are a generation who do not see the value in lessons from the past, of seeing the value in suffering, in seeing the value in patience… the lessons that only come through pain and discomfort. The only lessons that grow you beyond yourself. And until you grow beyond yourself and your needs for immediate gratification, you are incapable of sacrificing for your community, being patient for months to come. Incapable of refraining from asking “when will this be over?” But just knuckling down and doing your little bit.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some amazing Gen X’ers who are compassionate and empathic and who work hard for their community volunteering and mentoring. And I know there is a plethora of Aussies who as always, have come, hearts to the fore, with that generosity which earnt us an international reputation following the fires.  And I know too, that much of the malaise of this young generation is more to do with their youthful age and inexperience than their character. So I do wonder what lessons will be learnt through the sacrifice that these young people are going to be asked to endure for much longer than they yet realise. I don’t believe it will break them. I believe they are being forged in the fire and will come out of this resilient and like generations before them, a lot wiser.

They will learn their lessons, just as my own father did and me after him. He was frugal to the point of ascetism. He recycled and upcycled before it was a thing. He kept hold of all sorts of strange contraptions and bits of metal and wood and screws and bolts and washers… because you just never knew when you’d need it. He’d seen the long lines at soup kitchens, the wandering swagmen in search of work in the thirties and a world of scarcity during the Second World War in the forties. He’d lived through cancer and his wife’s death. And he knew if you just got on with it and hung in there, it would be ok. I know if dad had lived to see this time, he would have been out in the shed hammering together some bird boxes to hang around the garden. He would have ‘kept busy’ as he always did, pottering around doing the little things he enjoyed. He would have quoted, Ecclesiastes 3, and said everything passes, there is a time for all things. Because he had lived through the lessons of history.