Shikasta

ADDITIONAL EXPLANATORY INFORMATION. I.

The Generation Gap: to employ a Shikastan phrase in constant use at this time, and in every context and by every type of "expert."

A phenomenon known in every animal is exaggerated and distorted during these last days of Shikasta. There is always a moment when a female pushes away an overgrown youngster coming to suckle, or a bird tips a fledgling out of the nest. The moment when a child is considered adult has been made into public and private ceremonial in every culture: in that sense "the generation gap" is to be considered an i

There have been civilisations on Shikasta that were stable for hundreds, even thousands, of years: stable of course within the limits of the wars, epidemics, natural disasters that are the Shikastan lot. Most of these civilisations were within the time when Shikastans lived much longer than they do now, sometimes ten, twenty times as long, though the life-span has always dwindled, faster or slower. A youngster coming to adult consciousness looked forward to a very long span of life compared with later times. Every youngster knew the moment when he or she had to fight for personal psychological independence, and this might lead to a short period of insecurity, and perhaps some readjustments on the part of the parents. But the norm was for offspring to live very long adult lives alongside their parents. Childhood was a short preparation for a life. Parents giving birth to their allotted number of one, two, three children were adding to the population of people with whom they expected to enjoy perhaps several hundred years of a special affection.

As the life-span so dramatically and tragically shortened, there remained in what Shikastans call the "race memory" the same expectation as was appropriate for when people lived a thousand years - or even, sometimes, the two thousand or three thousand years of the earlier originating species: the hybrid. Every young person looks forward to an immensely long life. Its end is so far off that very few indeed are capable of really believing he or she will die. An individual who will live, if very lucky indeed, eighty years, has in his bones and blood the knowledge that he will live eight hundred. Or perhaps three thousand.

It is this fact, not suspected by Shikastans, who have relegated their former long lives to the region of myth, which is the cause of so many of their psychological maladjustments. But here I am considering only one of these, the effect on the relation between the generations.

It is known among Shikastans that "time" has a different movement for the young and for the old. Subjective appreciation of the passing of "time" is, for the child, very slow, never-ending, almost eternal. A child can scarcely see the end of a day from its begi

A unit of "time" for a child is, then, different from that of a young adult, and different again from that of a middle-aged person, and an old one. As a generalisation one may say that a Shikastan life at the present has a curve peaking in middle age, in about the fifth decade. Before that an individual will be in the "I will live for a thousand years" dispensation, but after it is as if veils have been torn away, and very quickly indeed each one of them understands that when young they lived in an illusion.

An individual of middle age looks back over half of his life, of his "allotted span," which after such expectations of endlessness seems like a very short, vivid, but slippery dream. And he or she knows by then that all that can be expected is another short, illusive dream. That when he, or she, comes to die - and it will be soon - they will look back on experiences no more substantial than what they wake up from each morning: events and atmospheres exciting or pleasant or horrifying that have slid away and are already half-forgotten.

They look hopefully towards their children, their offspring, their continuance - but these heirs are regarding them with disappointment or worse.

One reason is that the parent is identified with the horrible condition of Shikasta: the previous generation represents the chaos and terror everywhere visible. This is an emotional fact, not an intellectual one, for most young people, asked something like, Surely you don't believe your parents are personally responsible for the Century of Destruction? would reply, Of course not! But this is what is often felt: a sullen rebellious dislike of the parents for what they have allowed to happen.

Another reason is that the people of Shikasta, being as they are now, at this time, the children of technology, of materialism, have been taught they are entitled to everything, can have everything, must have everything. Each young person - I am talking of the generality, not of the rare individual - confronts parents in antagonism because, having been promised everything, he soon understands that this will not happen: and the balk, the disappointment, is felt as a promise that has been broken - and is added to the reproof directed towards the parents.

They do not know what their own history is, as a species, nor what are the real reasons for their condition: they know nothing, understand nothing, but are convinced because of the arrogance of their education that they are the intellectual heirs to all understanding and knowledge. Yet the culture has broken down, and is loathed by the young. They reject it while they grab it, demand it, wring everything they can from it. And because of this loathing, even what is good and wholesome and useful left in traditional values is rejected. So each young person suddenly finds himself facing life as if alone, without rules, or laws, or even information he can trust. How can they possibly believe that anything good can come from the brutal anarchy they see around them? Yet they are equipped to make judgements, and use their minds in certain ways - so they have been taught. They are equipped for self-sufficiency and individual judgement, and they proceed to carve out their emotional territories with the total ruthlessness and self-interest that characterised the Northwest fringes when these animals overran the world grabbing and destroying - but now it is no longer only people from the Northwest fringes, but everyone and everywhere. For in front of them stretches this long life, without an end, without bounds - there will be time to put right mistakes, take different turnings, change wrongs into rights...

And they are watched by the adults who are in despair.

Nothing that the adults can say will be heard by these infants wandering in their highly tinted deceiving mists.

Most of the adults, and particularly those of the northern hemisphere, or the affluent classes anywhere, have lived their lives on the principle that there will be nothing to pay, and are washed up, stranded on various bitter shores, surrounded by the results of their piratage when young. Most would undo what they have done, would "do thirigs differently if I had my time over again." They long to communicate this to their young. "For God's sake, don't do that, be careful, you have so little time left, if you do that then this and this and this is bound to happen."

But the young "have to learn for themselves." This is their right, their way of self-definition, an essential for them. (Just as it was for their parents who know how futile it is to suggest they may be wrong.) To relinquish this right, their self-development, self-expression, self-discovery, means succumbing to pressures felt as intolerable, corrupted, bogus.

The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid, the consequences and results of actions. But their own lives have been useless, because nothing they have learned can be passed on. What is the point of learning so much, so painfully, at such a cost to themselves and to others (often the offspring in question) if the next generation ca