Walden Elders

Henry David Thoreau, a transcendentalist who believes in self-reliance, in his famous book Walden argues that the advice offered by elders is useless by claiming “I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors”. His argumentation is over prejudiced and subjective that he didn’t consider the positive effect of the elder’s experiences at all. Although the wisdom of the elders isn’t adaptive to the society of young generation, their observation and principle of nature are the invaluable treasure. The accelerating changes of the society lead the obsolescence of old wisdom. For past years, civilization has undergone exponential growth. For example, it takes human thousands of years to evolve from agricultural civilization; however, human only uses three hundred years to step in the era of information. Similar to the advance of technologies, cognition and moral standard is changing very fast. For example, the elders and the young have different attitudes toward homosexuals. Homosexuals are considered as a mental illness by the

Compared to the young, the elders have more experience and knowledge, therefore they treasure their experience. However, their conventional wisdom is not applicable for the accelerated society. Even though they realize the obsolescence of their experience, they hate to be doubted and refuse to admit their weakness, in order to keep their authority. The harm of puppy love is taught from the early age of Chinese students. When students are in the relationship with others, they try to persuade their parents that the puppy love isn’t evil but natural. Even though their parents can’t rebuttal the students’ points, parents insist their experience and authority as adults. The elders’ prejudice against the new thought and changes and their vanity of keeping authority make their advice less than