the new kids, gen y commonly referred to as are, don’t
get me wrong, an astounding generation. very intelligent and clever in their
ways, but i venture a few warning lights or points for their coming of age
process. a few clues give me worries at night about how they are going to fit
in or actualize their power in the society of the world. the aspects of worry
are : the creativity or originality issue, authority issues and recklessness
issues. the last thing i want to accomplish is to preach and bore these three
sensitive topics. so i’m going to make this article as entertaining to read as
possible. lets start with the originality issue. i come from gen x, so labeled
by many a academic voice, we arguably had the most successful identity crisis
struggle so far in modern history. our own little generational unofficial
renaissance.
originality happened very easily in the cold war
falling, apartheid falling, global segregation falling planet atmosphere which
was happening at the time, so creative inspiration was rich and all around. the
gen y kids have in my opinion the same value of challenges and struggles, but
what has happened in the aftermath of the nineties revolution in rock &
roll as well as media, is that the bar has been set as high as it possibly can
be with modern tech society already. gen x, as the first generation to
experience using the internet, cell phones and digital film media, proved to be
quite original with it. delivering quality in quantity for fifteen odd years
from 1990 to lets say 2005, when w. bush got his second term. those fifteen
years belong to gen x in history i believe. i never thought i’d be able to call
an end to that snowball’s success down the hill, but the tree has been hit at
the bottom since w. bush went on to ruin the planet psyche and terrain for
another term. rock & roll also effectively died around then, with audioslaves
appearance which is like a band saying good bye to rock as we know it. we also
remember lenny kravitz’s famous song, ‘rock & roll is dead’. there is truth
to it but i’m not afraid nor ashamed of it mainly because it will revive
itself, greater than before and find consistent permanent feet in our
entertainment lives as well.
take the band mumford & sons for example, in
comparison with the new coined insult phrase, ‘the hipster’. many have hastily
labeled them a hipster band due to their young ages and folk rock throwback
music. i find the entire hipster label incredibly sad. what’s wrong with
finding inspiration from the most successful cultural revolution of the modern
era to form new original ideas, like their music is for the new generation. why
is the expectation to beat or better the gen x cultural achievements so high
that gen y feels that they have to come up with something completely original
otherwise they haven’t proven their worth. the truth of the contemporary times
are harsh, an actual compliment, if the size and difficulty nature of your
obstacles can be seen as a compliment, to the gen y kids in terms of what they
face.
with a recession on since 2008, it’s a very financially dry
time to invest in the arts, so the creative pool in the world is experiencing a
sincere severe drought currently. the death of imagination which the post
modernists correctly spoke of. this death isn’t permanent in my opinion as we
are constantly moving and movement is always, consistently original. few generations
have been moving at the learning pace of gen y. their actually growing up too
fast. i find myself wanting to tell them to slow down, smell the flowers
growing out of the dumpster for a second. they are overshooting their maturity
level with too much information and in my opinion, not spending enough on
digesting the knowledge they have now. i think its like missing important bits
along the way which makes the whole make sense eventually.
gen y is, similarly to gen x, very apathetic commonly.
this is rooted in gen x as the lack of answers and solutions in the wake of the
cultural rebellions against traditional world views vs new age world views with
the hippy’s and the beatles gen. the eighties also clearly identified itself
apart from the other gens before and after. the eighties was like making fun of
culture whilst having fun doing it. the hairstyles and clothing was ridiculously
outlandish.
whereas in the nineties, even though ‘anything
goes’ applied and is to be accepted as inherited from the hippies, there was a
common return to simpler forms of self decoration and creative expression. now,
with gen y, its as if life and media is becoming more categorized, ordered and
streamlined to fit into genre’s, basically of favoritism options. which is probably
the key driving flaw of the organically developed shades of media entertainment
products. the obsessed nature of picking favorites, the band you’re listening
to never mattered before as much as to which group you belonged to. the
collective one cool group of the gen x cultural phenomenon has disappeared and
has been replaced by the standard of its cool to be in a group, and the groups
have become many and separate at some level. even though a collective
generational identity and signature still exists, the groups become very clicky
and quick to choose its kind of members whom fit and don’t.
the effect on the traditionally ‘outcasted’ by society, is
that they are either absorbed by one of the many groups and they find
themselves successfully conforming, or they become severely outcasted to the
point of certain suicide or other act of regret. the tragic void which the
answerless existence of modernity brings seems larger in gen y as in gen x, as
their drug abuse level and complacency in it, is immense. they’re trying to
find something in the ether of all the hallucinations and emotional rushes
experienced on the vast amount of drugs available to them on the black market.
instead of hipsters being the cultural embarrassment
of their generation, i believe it is actually the solution to all their
problems. the hipster represents attempts within the culture of the generation
to reinvent itself. looking at the nearest past in the nineties, where grunge
music dominated styles of torn old jeans, old jerseys and hooded tops inspired
by the hip hop explosion of the nineties. if people want to go buy their
wardrobes at hospice, i have no objection to it. stranger things have happened
to social generational subcultures.
its like ‘the hipster’ is the group which all the other gen
y groups reject. the same issue which gen x had and is still battling. the
accept or reject ‘habit’ which we all criticize in deep discussion, but which we
all still do daily. as a humanity, we still haven’t, connected our inner, quite
passionate, opposition to judgment with our inner habit of judging. i think we
don’t know how to stop judging yet. once a habit, it’s a very powerful and
convincing one. to think that one can analyze life, without finding certain
things offensive and therefore judging it, hasn’t culminated into a societal
practical, logical and applicable solution yet. i do think we’re close though and
gen y is going to stumble upon it. don’t believe me, just watch.
if i can humbly venture a start to this very
needed discovery. it must have to do with forgetting criminality as an
explanation for the wrong in the world. hear me out, if we are all, perpetrator
and victim of crime alike, in some form or way always a victim of being a
product of a very long time of indoctrination, which was in the first place
created to kill the originality in our souls and then build up and create
similar patterned individuals whom would conform and obey the power hungry
system of control manipulating all societies. our schools aimed to create
soldiers of men and warfare supporting women through splitting tasks like
knitting and home education for girls with woodwork and metal work for boys.
defining gender roles to easier control the two genders, not even considering
leaving room or option for homosexual, bisexual or transgender individuals.
so in this militant schooling perspective, where
math was king and art or creative endeavors were seen as the alien or useless,
the originally and classically outcasted i can bet you, are the naturally
alternative thinking minds which society actually needs to make sense of the
boundary between the original and the unknown of reality. those two elements
share a relationship which has been broken and raped in our psychological civil
commitment to each other. over time, desperation and state caused trauma drove
more and more otherwise good people to criminal acts against each other and
against the authority of the global states as well, but what all the outcasted
have in common, are that they all have a history or significant experience of
trauma inflicted upon them in their now, or what i would include to consider,
former lives.
being a reincarnationist but not otherwise
religious, i find the element of reincarnations elusive factual contribution to
the worlds problems needs mention at least every now and then to fulfill the argument.
a person whom comes from a seemingly well raised background with a well
adjusted life, whom suddenly commits a severe crime, must in my opinion, have been
exposed to severe trauma in a former life.
authoritative testing and challenging is very
healthy and highly needed in modern society as state corruption is very high
currently. this needs to be opposed and successfully not only criticized, but
brought to the engines of justice. being too ready to despise all that is
authority also throws away powerful potential allies on and in the laws side.
good authority figures whom try to do the good and correct thing in life
desperately also want to see marijuana legalized everywhere, also want to see a
solution for the suffering of the sex working industry.
i guarantee you there are many cops, angry every
time they have to waste time policing marijuana traffic when they could be
teaming together to focus on tic, cocaine, cat and all the other severely life
ruining hard drugs. the amount of clean or good cops are so few and far between
and conspired against by the corrupt cops, that they are constantly fighting a
retreating line of defense against the gangs, drugs and internal institution
corruption covering up for and informing all those gangsters.
this brings me to the culminative effect of
whatever’s wrong in gen y. its definitely the result or closing sign of gen y’s
mystery trauma, but its intense recklessness on all levels. speed and drunk
driving, drugs and heavy jealousy games during a severe morally ambiguous
promiscuity trend. social culture cash spending is also a major reckless factor
of gen y. they’re not saving money and making debt young. which is practically
and factually the worst thing you could be doing during a economic recession
with so far no end in sight.
this recklessness is from the same trauma
source, of having been lied to by the states of our times since school level,
than gen x’s. it’s greater in intensity as well. as if gen y is trying to beat
gen x at all its bad ideas. the music, media, entertainment and art of the
nineties wasn’t because of the drugs, it was probably in hindsight in spite of
it.
it was the recovery out of drug abuse which
inspired johnny cash’s late life comeback with his beautiful cover of the nine
inch nails song ‘hurt’. the thirty to older generations of the world are
failing effectively, gen y’s coming of age revolution, and they are left to
fend for themselves on the books, tv and internet sources scattered out there
for them. free information and self education is awesome, but we’re living in a
very vulnerable time between primitive traditions and high tech equipment which
isn’t harmonizing successfully. so hipsters are the least of our problems
aren’t they.
just a generational reach out to bridge with the generation after
them. listen to nirvana, pearl jam, stone temple pilots, soundgarden, presidents
of the usa, red hot chilli peppers early albums and do what you’re intuition is
trying to get out of you. reinvention inspired by the past. rooting a place for
your generational identity to ‘come from’ so to speak.
as positive note, inspiration and compliment to gen y
so far, are elements like being very quick to learn information which was very
scary and difficult to come to terms with a very short twenty to forty years
ago. gender and racial oppression has disappeared from most of gen y’s psyche
and i believe that the two extremes of right and left wing are collectively the
strong minority in the entire generation. the most are ‘the hoped for moderates’
whom are likeliest in my opinion to figure out how to run and fix the world at
the same time. the left and right wing irreconcilably fight over everything
about every topic. they simply waste time and sabotage progress itself blindly
to their own long term detriment if they’re distracting fighting succeeds in
dominating the world much longer. gen y is very open to original, abstract and
alternative ideas like continuing space exploration, holistic healing
recognition and a spiritual and/or philosophical revolution of break away from
the traditional on earth. renewable energy seems popular as well.
i believe the potential for a spiritual fire in gen y is
itching to explode, but hasn’t lit yet. and its overdue. gen y is steadily
reaching the thirties and as all over thirties at least know, everything
changes after thirty. your still young enough to athletically enjoy your body
but you can pick up clearly on the effects of times wear and tear on your body.
so reality is literally forced closer in your daily world than in the twenties
irrelevant of how close you’ve been to reality all your life. after thirty it
starts to slot in to physical effects.
this easy attitude about learning and kind of strange
enthusiasm which gen y has for knowledge is something different to gen x whose
enthusiasm was more based on escapism through things like music, media and
drugs. gen y seems to love the information access of the internet at their
fingertips which is very good and very appropriately useful to all the current
problems facing our world.
maybe gen x’s escapism need was its reason for
being significantly original for its time frame. still gen y doesn’t have a
weaker creativity, just one that seems to be waiting for the right manner of
being utilized or tapped for solutions. mumford & sons are one of the few
gen y bands to make waves enough to be historically noted for a contribution to
rock & roll which i still hold true as being the backbone of every
successfully healthy society, good band and hand played instrument driven
music.
music which becomes too processed removes originality from
it. one must remember at all times, originality is what we’re starving for
because it’s the one thing which promotes individual thought and concepts like
individual liberation from collective binds. a free mind is an original mind.
the powers still manipulating the world events don’t want you to think
independently for yourself, so they are not going to invest in your creative
expression of your individuality.
maybe gen x’s escapism need was its reason for
being significantly original for its time frame. still gen y doesn’t have a
weaker creativity, just one that seems to be waiting for the right manner of
being utilized or tapped for solutions. mumford & sons are one of the few
gen y bands to make waves enough to be historically noted for a contribution to
rock & roll which i still hold true as being the backbone of every
successfully healthy society, good band and hand played instrument driven
music.
