When you were young, didn’t you feel a “generation gap” between yourself and your parents or other older people? I certainly did. In high school, just as I was beginning to understand the world, my elders would tell me stories about prewar Japan and their wartime experiences. I was deeply unsettled by how different their worldview was from mine.

Now, 60 years later — and having become one of the “older people” myself — I find myself stunned almost daily to realize that I’m now on the other side of an even wider generation gap. That shouldn’t be surprising, perhaps, but what is surprising is how global the phenomenon seems to be. Young people everywhere view the world very differently from my postwar generation.

Objectively speaking, this simply reflects the continuous generational transitions that shape society. Each generation’s “common sense” is challenged — and often rejected — by the next, signaling the beginning of a new era. While every generation likes to imagine it is unique, this pattern has repeated throughout human history, across cultures and ages.