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Question 5

OSHO, WHY IS THE NEW GENERATION SUCH A PROBLEM TO THE PARENTS?

Narayana,

BECAUSE THE NEW GENERATION IS MORE INTELLIGENT. Intelligence brings problems. And it is natural that the new generation should be more intelligent. That's how evolution happens. Each new generation is going to be more intelligent than the preceding one. Your children will be more intelligent than you, and your children's children will be more intelligent than your children.

It is a momentum, a gathering momentum. You are standing on the shoulders of the Buddhas -- the whole part is yours. For example, in my being Buddha is a part,Jesus is a part, Abraham is a part, Krishna is a part, Mohammed is a part... in that way Buddha was poorer than me, Jesus was poorer than me. And some future enlightened person will be richer than me, because I will be part of his being but he cannot be part of my being. Evolution goes on gathering momentum.

Each child should be more intelligent than the parents -- but that brings trouble, because that is what offends the parents. Parents would like to pretend that they are all-knowing. In the past it was easy to pretend because there was no other way to impart knowledge to the children than by the oral communication from the parents.

For example, a carpenter's son would learn all that he would ever learn through the father. The father would not only be the father but the teacher also. And the son would always be in awe and respect of him, because the father knew so much -- he knew everything about all kinds of trees and wood and this and that, and the son knew nothing. He would have tremendous respect.

Age used to be respected: the older a man was in the ancient days, the more wise, of course, because of his experiences. But now we have invented better means of communication. The father is no more the teacher; now the teaching profession is a totally different profession. The child goes to the school. The father had gone to the school thirty or forty years before. In these thirty, forty years there has happened a knowledge explosion. The child will learn something which the father is not aware of, and when the child comes home, how can he feel any awe? -- because he knows more than the father, he is more up to date than the father. The father seems to be out-moded.

This is the problem, and this is going to be so more and more, because our expectations are old and we still want the child to respect the parents as he used to respect them in the past -- but the whole situation has changed. You will have to learn something new now: start respecting the child. Now, the new has to be respected more than the old. Start learning from the child because he knows better than you. When your son comes from the university, he certainly knows better than you.

That has been my experience at university. One of my philosophy professors used to talk such nonsense, and the reason was that he had been to university thirty years before. In those days, when he was a student, Hegel and Bradley, they were the most important figures in the world of philosophy. Now nobody cares about Hegel and Bradley. Now Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore have taken their place.

This professor had no idea of Wittgenstein, no idea of G.E. Moore. He was so outmoded that I had to tell him. "You are so old, so useless, that either you start reading what is happening now in philosophy or you stop teaching!"

Naturally, he was angry -- I was expelled from the university. He wrote a letter to the vice chancellor and said, "Either I am going to teach or this student is to remain in the university. but we cannot both remain together -- he is trouble."

He was not ready to read Wittgenstein. In fact, I can understand his problem: even if he had read he would not have understood. Wittgenstein is a totally different world from Hegel. And he used to talk about Hume and Berkeley... which are rotten names, no more of any significance -- part of history, part of footnotes.

This is the problem. You ask me, Narayana:

WHY IS THE NEW GENERATION SUCH A PROBLEM TO THE PARENTS?

They are not really a problem: your expectation that they should respect you, that they should respect you as children have always respected their parents -- it is impossible. You start respecting them. You start respecting the new. Age in itself cannot now be any reason for respect. Intelligence, consciousness, they should be respected. And if you respect your children, they will respect you. But only if you respect your children will they respect you. The old way was that you go on humiliating the children, you go on insulting them in every possible way, and they have to respect you -- now this cannot be so any more.

The preacher's wife, while shopping, noticed a sign in the butcher's shop: "Dam Ham on Sale." Slightly taken aback by such a name, she confronted the butcher about the use of profanity, but was reassured when he explained that this was a new breed of hogs being raised up by Hoover Dam, hence the name 'Dam Ham'. She decided to take some home and fix it for her family that evening.

When her husband arrived home, she was cooking and he asked, "What's for dinner? '

"Dam ham," she replied.

The minister, who had never heard such language in his house, began to reproach her, but after she explained he felt a little embarrassed for doubting his wife.

That evening as they sat down to dinner with their six-year-old son, the minister said grace and then asked, "Pass the dam ham, please."