The Undecided Generation Conflict

Abstract

When two people start a family, they bring along their own set of concepts. They work out specific arrangements. Either they are in a position to develop a living relationship with each other, thereby establishing a lot of trust by developing mutually held concepts that represent a compromise, or their individual loyalties to their respective families can determine the scenario (Boszormenyi-Nagy and Spark, Sperling, and Sperling, 1976). One or both partners clings to his and/or her family’s concepts and finds only a few areas of common ground where the relationship can gain a foothold. A child growing up in a such a situation will have difficulties. If he identifies with the mother’s concepts, he repudiates the father. If he adopts the father’s ideas, he opposed the mother. Regardless of whose values the child accepts, this decision is always accompanied by guilt, by the feeling of having hurt the parents. And with this guilt there is a need to correct the wrong as quickly as possible. This occurs again when one goes beyond the family and establishes ties to other people and groups. The parental arrangement will be repeated. But here, instead of a having to make a choice, the individual finds a seat between two chairs.

The Golden Mean is to love this world, to do good in life, and to aspire to the world to come.

—Saadia Gaon