In practice, people rarely if ever revise their mental model as the world around them changes. Which is why a younger generation without this baggage inevitably rises to supplant the older one.
The best people do, indeed. I'm still fairly young, but I'm starting to understand that "adapting to new information" is not something that happens by accident. "Continuous learning" is a lifestyle thing; I've never had to think about it. But forcing myself to re-evaluate things that I already thought I knew--that is a conscious and often difficult process.
The hardest part about this is accepting that you might be wrong. That your entire world view might be wrong, or one-sided. We humans have this uncanny ability to justify anything we just did, or said. It takes a lot of conscious effort to accept that the other person might be right.
But only if you truly realise that you are not infallible, can you learn new things, and continue to grow.
Perhaps this is the function of conflict (ideally nonviolent and hopefully led by smart people), to speed up the process of change by injecting humanity's shared model(s) with new ideas. When older models become problematic, people have a duty to overturn them, toppling them like tables outside a synagogue.
"The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concerns me. … It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity." Janet Yellen
I wouldn't say the younger generation doesn't have baggage.
As a young man I had a lot of fears I don't have now. I
think the biggest advantage to being young is taking on
risk, besides the obviousness of physical strength, stamina, truly original thought(which seems to evaporate in the end
of your twenties?). So yes, as young man I took on risk;
some out of naviete, some out dump luck, some because I
truly thought it was a good idea. As a poor youth, I realized I couldn't screw up too much/or be too risky. My friends who
had wealthy parents could afford to take on a lot more risk
than me, or my poor friends. There lies the rub--most wealthy kids have so many more opportunities than poor, or
middle class kids. I just can't leave the unseen advantage
wealth brings to a string of people and their spawn. In the
county I grew up in I can count on two hands the kids who
went on to be millionaires. They were all from wealthy families. So yes, the young do supplant the "older one", but they usually had a lot of help. An example is our current Luitentant Governer(you can guess which state). I saw his family pick up one
failure after another, and he just might be president of the
United States one day?
