SOAP BOX: Generations seem to exist in alternate realities

I WAS sitting around the other day thinking about string theory. It’s not that I understand string theory. I don’t.

I WAS sitting around the other day thinking about string theory.

It's not that I understand string theory. I don't. Not even a little bit. However, one of the bits I don't understand is all about alternate universes.

There are lots of theories about alternate dimensions and universes.

There's the idea of fifth, sixth, seventh, etc dimensions inhabiting the same reality as us but just a bit outside our comprehension; there's the DC Comics version where alternate dimensions are the places you warehouse old super heroes until it's time for a team-up with their younger selves; there's the one that suggests all things that can happen do happen and each event creates a new reality (I'm quite fond of this one because it means there is a universe where I live in a fancy house and the kids each get to have ponies).

Now I've started to wonder if there's not another kind of alternate reality and if it's generational.

I've recently learned the phrase, to the amusement of some of my younger colleagues, "Netflix and chill". It's a lot ruder than it sounds.

About the same time I read something somewhere about young folk these days moving to the, ahem, "intimate" phase of their relationships faster than previous generations.

I've no idea whether this is a real thing or just some of the old "kids today" guff.

But then I got to thinking, each generation tends to have a slightly different take on the rules of the world.

That is not in itself a bad thing but it can make communication between generations a little awkward sometimes, because we're all operating on slightly different assumptions.

Almost like inhabiting alternate realities in the same universe.

Originally published as SOAP BOX: Generations seem to exist in alternate realities