Pessimistic futures generation for pessimistic future generations? The youth has the future but the older has the authority

Abstract

In this paper the German-Hungarian international representative comparative youth surveys have been used as basic reference points (15–24 years old youth, 1984/1985). The social changes in the last decade have had a dramatic effect on both the Hungarian and German societies, which are represented by university students’ opinion as well (1985–2000). The civilization theory of Margaret Mead proved to be a useful principle in interpretation of the common European youth cultural style. At the radical social changes, common high pessimistic characteristics can be found in the relation of the future-orientation and generations’ attitude scale of German and Hungarian youth. In the 10–15 year period after the political system change significant difference can be observed in the future-orientation of German and Hungarian youth attitude. In this paper we discuss in detail the connection between the pessimistic youth attitude and its effect on sustainable development. We argue that sustainable development can be imagined only if the optimistic youth attitude has effect on the negative demographical changes in Europe. Our goal was to discover new life sentiments which can be detected from the opinions of today's Hungarian youth. According to our hypothesis, young people experience the enlarging process of EU as peripheral participants representing that both the optimistic and pessimistic youth attitudes equally refuse to grow up more children in family, which suggest that the sustainable development is not in the focus of their future orientation.