We are too free. Our generation has choices, options, knowledge, access, and freedom galore. We are (generally) not predestined for any specific future (no arranged marriages or farms to inherit for us), and have been told since childhood that we can be/do whatever we want when we get older. The internet has opened our eyes to possibility, travel has allowed us to explore the world, education is available for everyone and gives us the opportunity to study any single thing we want. Literally ANYTHING, just think about those Gallatin kids studying puppies!
Our parents envy our freedom. Grandma bemoans our opportunities compared to what they were "back in her day." We have the chance to do this, to not do that, to do everything and nothing, and that is the problem: we are frozen in possibility. How are we ever supposed to choose anything? Especially knowing that whatever comes as a result of our choices, we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves. We can never say that we couldn't do something, only that we didn't do it.
Our freedom has taken away our purpose. We have nothing and everything to fight for. We have the luxury of thinking about everything, debating and discussing the world as a whole, and do not have to be preoccupied with ensuring our own survival and interests—after all, we don't really have to worry about starving to death or being shipped off to war. While our parents were united in protesting Vietnam, we have the option of protesting any one of the 30 wars that, according to Wikipedia, are currently taking place. We can click those little blue links and read up on all of them (drug wars in Mexico, civil war in Somalia, etc), but once again we're faced with the same issue: which one do we choose? Not one, even the one we're fighting, really effects us anyway.
So here we are: life is too good, and we’re left, like Xaté said, Jihad-less and lost in possibilities.
-Penamé
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5 comments:
I completely agree. The world today lends itself so much to a generalized state that it has become nearly impossible to fully commit yourself and become specialized. How many of us really have the drive to settle down on that one option and shut out the rest? And if we do have that drive is it really for the better? With the vast amount information at your finger tips you are ridiculed for not knowing "basic" things, but how basic can they be if they multiply at the rate of jack rabbits?
-Soma
what do we do now, now that we are happy?
(asked samuel beckett...)
we're happy right? we have food in our bellies, we go to good cooleges, we live int he richest country in the world. now what?
i think this might be a huge development as to explaining the times in which we live. all we've known are options...how can we think of anything else? how can we know for sure what we want if everything around us is constantly changing? and why the hell do we even get to choose what we wan...who do we think we are?
we are judged so much, too, on the decisions we choose to make based on the information and options we are given. do we use our money to buy diamonds? or to give it to charity? do we use our education to make huge piles of money? or do we share it with as many as possible.
maybe opportunities should be replaced with "morals."
It's funny that everything our forefathers and foremothers "fought for" has produced a nation of self-loathing, directionless idiots. Sara, I think that what you write about here is both the symptom and the cause of the decline of the American (Western?) empire.
we're fat and happy and completely taken care of. the irony is that we make up less than half the world's population.. everyone else isn't so fat or happy. it's the haves v. the have nots, except the haves don't care.
.els
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