It used to be that when a man was born, he lived in pretty much the same world his grandfather lived in and told him about. And before he died, he talked to his grandchildren who he knew would live in a world not that different from his own. There was a continuity to things.

Oh sure, times changed. The King might die and a new one succeed him, or there might be a war, or a plague, or an earthquake or flood; a good harvest or a bad one. But the world essentially remained unchanged. The trade you learned from your father was the same one you taught to your children.

A world where people live in a different culture than than the one their parents were brought up in is relatively new, and a social universe where the old cannot speak meaningfully to the young because their formative experience is totally alien is something we have never experienced before.

Oh sure, you can repeat platitudes like "change is nothing new", or "old people are always complaining about the younger generation". But you and I have lived long enough to know the world HAS changed, we've seen it change profoundly in just our own lifetimes. People now talk differently, act differently, think differently than they did when I was a young man. And if you take a sabbatical of a few years you run the risk of even losing your profession.

Those who have convinced themselves that "the more things change the more they remain the same", obviously haven't lived long enough, or they haven't been paying attention.