Youth....how young our minds really are.

I was just having a little thought to myself. I am working on an issue in a big class action suit going on way away on the other side of the nation, and it got me thinking about a movie that I not too recently saw. North Country. That movie still amazes me at its recounting of history, and unfortunately, how representative it is of society.

To think that the first sexual discrimination class action suit was filed in 1988 (it became an actual class action suit in 1991). This gives us a whole 20 years since courts looked at sexual harassment as a class or group issue, and not dealing with specific instances. That isn't a whole lot of time for something of this magnitude to really sink in and change society. Let's not forget that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's is still trying to permeate society in any real lasting effects.

I'm not even talking about how this has affected the issues we regularly have to deal with in regards to interaction between the genders in the work place, or even out of the work place. It just isn't that long of a time frame.

With this all being said, it makes me think about our minds and how young they really are. After all, a mind is only as mature as the thoughts entertained inside of it. Some young persons are extremely mature for their age, because of the depth and insight they have of seemingly "mature" calculations. In the 1920's no one would have thought that people thinking a women's place was only in the home baking bread was immature, sexist, or in any relation unacceptable, yet, here we are, applying the principles of agency to more and more of an individuals identity, yet I am sure that we are not applying it to many other facets.

I wonder what we will be thinking in 20, 30 or 40 years? Will we have expanded our notions of applicability of agency, or will we have regressed (my opinion of regression here deals only with the applicability of agency, not the choices made in that application). I am sure there are millions of things that I do that are demoralizing, minimizing or in some way confining of another individuals application of agency, yet am unaware or purposefully ignorant. What things do you think we are mentally immature about?