Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
~Author : Eleanor Roosevelt
For generations science fiction has always portrayed the future as a place where older people become expendable. The younger you are the better. Older people are isolated or killed off(Logan’s Run 1976 movie, 1960’s book)? Even the current Justin Timberlake film (In Time, 2011) advocates getting rid of people by 25 years old.
In contrast to this the current Hollywood blockbuster Hunger Games is enjoying an astounding run. 130 million to open with no end in sight. But the kids get eliminated not the adults. What’s the deal?
Maybe a change of tide here? In a bad economy mixed with a 25 year digital technology boom, the world has flipped the script.
“Don’t trust anyone over 30,” was the battle cry of Timothy Leary and a generation. Today the opposite is true. Can you really trust anybody under 30? Other than social networking what industry do youth really dominate? Leary also said, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
These days if you turn on you get drug tested. If you tune in you are morally obligated to not drop out. You can no longer criticize the world and then walk away and go live in a tent on public property (insert your Occupy protester here).
The point is not that old people know everything and young people know nothing, the point is experience wins the day in this new age. How can you ever expect to understand the bad economy, war, environmental issues, the racial divide, alternative lifestyle and politics unless you have miles on the meter.
The answers to these problems are not found in statistics or the internet, they are found in conversations with humankind.
Suddenly the old person sitting next to you on the plane, bus or train does not seem so crotchety. How did this great divide ever happen? One word people and that word is sex!
Yes sex. It is no coincidence that the the sexual revolution coincided with the civil and political revolution in America in the 1960’s and 70’s. People sexualized everything; walking, talking, dancing, dressing and social interaction. Being hot has been the norm since the mini skirt met teen dance show and the Kennedy era. With Studio 54, Madonna, The Spice Girls, The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and JWOW, there is no end in sight.
Society now gives us permission to get with whoever we want when we want it, we actually need more. Young people are sexy, old people are not. Hence, only a young person you can trust because the messenger of the truth must be good looking (Insert Tim Tebow here). In the age of the disingenuous celebrity that tune has been played out like a Spice Girls tune. What good is hot when Aston and Demi can’t stay together and they were supporters of ending sex trafficking. The issues are now bigger than a good look. We need help and it is older people.
Older people live longer now, have more money and though exercise and diet have a greater and more sustainable lifestyle.
Things are not over at 40. They are just beginning. At 40 you get a clue. If not the wheels will come off at 50. Pressure makes people get things done in an industrialized society. Young people in America literally have too much time and too many choices. If you don’t believe me ask the stoner rock generation of the early 70’s or the disco drug fueled dance freaks of the late 70’s. Hmmm, maybe the poorly dressed synth pop generation of the 80’s. Now don’t forget the dissidents of alternative rock and hip hop of the 90’s. For good measure throw the ecstasy taking ravers of the 2000’s and toss them in the party too.
These days the hipsters are those who were wearing retro clothes when they were the latest fashion craze and new. Today there is more collective insight into, “What’s Next Culture,” on CBS rather than MTV. Ironically they are owned by the same company. So some really old guy is making a fortune off the chaos between the middle aged and youth culture.
Yikes! The bad guy is not your parents it’s your grand parents? The Svengali is geriatric, has hair in their ears and is 70? The enemy is some greaser or beatnik who listened to Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis, Motown and the Beatles. No way!!!
Youth is being put to death by the ruling viagra taking, plastic surgery class. Bad uninspired pop music, The Jersey Shore, endless reality series and movies about movies and TV shows that have already been made. The constant focus on one dead teen rather than the hundreds and thousands that die month to month and year to year.
The mass death scene in The Hunger Games says it all about the year 2012. We get our young to kill our young for entertainment. “If you give them a little hope people will operate under your will. If you give them too much hope they will rebel.”
We no longer have enough hope because we have too many options and answers via the internet.
Little resources + hope = rebellion
Many resources + hope = Complaining
Youth does not speculate, they fact find and google. As a result they never get curious enough to experience the answer for ourselves. Want to know about Native Americans? Google it. Gone are the days of actually paying a visit to a reservation. What do you miss? The emotional experience. It was not until you go to a Native American reservation that you can truly understand the tragedy of their genocide. Tears can not be downloaded and until you have cried for yourself and others you have not lived.
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
-Charles Dickens
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep.
-William Shakespeare
Youth may be the victim of its own advanced intelligence. Does youth smell the roses? Sure they do but they just may spend too much time in their own garden. Youth no longer concerns itself with what people look like but they over emphasize the dynamic of everyone who thinks, walks, talks and acts like them. In the future it is easier to round up people based on content of characteristics rather than color of skin. In the computer content driven age hipsters may just be playing right into the hands of the establishment.
Word to the wise. To know is to ask somebody who has been there.