I came across this the other day:
The world is passing through troubling times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.
Sound familiar?
It was written by some dude named Peter the Hermit back in the year 700. Apparently Petey boy stopped being a hermit long enough to emerge from his lair, take one look at the skate boarders of the day, and throw up his hands in disgust. Peter the Hermit was probably the old, smelly guy who told the kids to get off his lawn.
The point is that every generation thinks they've got it worse than the generation before. Look, maybe we do. We certainly seem to be dreaming up new and increasingly more effective ways to exterminate the entire hu man race.
But the truth is that every successive generation seems to struggle with exactly the same basic issues when it comes to shaping the next generation.
I'm going to a three year old's birthday party on Sunday (I know, Saints preserve us) and as I was buying the birthday girl her very own Groovy Girl and plastic sushi set, it kind of struck me.
One hundred years from now, everyone alive on the planet today will already be dead.
Someone may well unearth the sushi set and hold it up as an example of the days when kids used to mind their elders.
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1 comment:
I hope you're right. I agree with the general outlook toward feckless youth (which exist in every generation), but I also feel a certain element of enviro-doom, which I feel is more serious than it has been in the past.
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