CAFÉ PHILO AT THE START OF MAY
It was a Saturday morning in early May. We handed in our two pounds at the Institute's reception desk,
trudged up to the Salons at about half past ten, to discuss… a topic… the one chosen being the gulf
between the young and the old.
The moderator, Christian Michel, appeared rather like a tennis umpire, as debate, like a ball on court,
ricocheted from one speaker to the next.
For the first time in the year, there seemed to be some warmth in the weather. The not very useful
cliché would be that, if youth resembles Spring, then age is like winter.
The debate (done in French) commenced with the wearying platitude that youth is idealistic and
tolerant. But the talk soon veered into that unpredictable territory known as reality. The ‘idealism’ of
youth was dismissed as a myth and a lie. It was pointed out that Nazi Germany emphasized ‘youth’- in
the Hitlerjugend- in a brutal and aggressive manner. Christian Michel observed how a country might
export its obstreperous youth into wars abroad for fear of what they might do at home. The essential
violence of youth was emphasized, and this was linked with youth’s dangerous sexuality. The sorry
biological truth is that the young are built to be unsafe, chaotic. Society’s attitude to them is one of
control- and control can often be unpleasant and nasty. The very young- mere children- were exploited
by British Victorian capitalism as slave- workers in factories and mines.
Being an elderly man, I do fear the young. I meanwhile worked at, in my faltering way, a sketch of the
assembled audience, which I later converted into an- alas inevitably dubious- watercolour. The debate
ended, at around half past twelve, with the comment that time is a river into which we all must plunge.
The young will be old themselves one day. We should all ask that the young and old attempt to
understand one another.
People ambled downstairs. The heat of Spring turning into Summer hammered through the air.
ZEKRIA IBRAHIMI (AGED 57)