OBEYdience Is Overrated

Do elders give good advice? Sometimes. Young’uns need to filter it through their own context

When Sam Altman told an auditorium full of IITians that “listening to old people is the biggest mistake young people make,” the applause was only to be expected. He seems to have been referring to traditional career advice in particular. And on that front, the man is bang on. Stock market jitters discussed in the edit above, are just one indicator of how AI-related technologies are upending different industry sectors. Conceptually, however, we have been here before. The explosion of Indians’ careers post-1991 liberalisation took a lot of saying ‘no, no, no’ to the fam, who were scared of every new-fangled choice. Parents who have lived a “just stick to this job and you’ll own a home” life, are forever trying to rein back their children’s career adventures. Even when economic reality has literally become unrecognisable from one gen to the next. 

There are uglier sides to this paternalism, as when elders try to drag the next generation inside the cage in which they have lived. “You are too old to play with boys now…You are age x now, you must get married…No, you can’t decide who you love…You have to treat your husband/wife x way…You don’t have anxiety, just stop overthinking.” And living by someone else’s code, a person never gets to discover what their own, true self is. This is a life lived incompletely. And it stops society from healing its open wounds.

What you wouldn’t be able to tell by the level of elder-veneration in India is that we only have 7% population above the age of 65, compared to US’s 17% and Europe’s 21%. As the critical role of mentors in Altman’s own life indicates, elders’ life experience, resilience, and practical wisdom can be invaluable. The real harm is when generational authority overrides individual agency. The real mistake is not listening to old people, it is listening uncritically.

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