Youth is always angry. It was angry in Aristotle’s time, it is angry today.
Mainly because the older generation really is comprised of a huge number of
gutless old farts who spend far too much time pontificating and saying no.
Youth generally sees things as black and white and wants things now. A
sixteen-year-old boy will come 6 times in an hour and his girlfriend will
get to come once (if she's lucky). As you grow older you learn about
compromise; the more intelligent tend to see the world as a patchwork of
gray. And hopefully their girlfriends get a chance at coming too. There is
merit to both viewpoints, but they are undeniably different.
Quoted from another list... items in <...> replace to preserve anonymity.
[Start Quote]
From: <A.N. Other_Young_Man>
<Anonymous_Young_Man>...
I have an idea for fixing your fucked up world. You can come to my
school, no one here would try that shit, at my school the other
>
>From: <Anonymous_Young_Man>
>
>Alright, I'm fed up to the ass with this colorado shit, it's gone to
>far at my school. Some tight ass guy in the school system got this
>idea 'trench coat mafia....trench coats....bad clothes...bad people'
>so, he instructed all the other tightass` at the school and said 'You
>see anyone wearing black and/or trench coats....suspend them!' So
the
>other tightass control freaks agreed. So, they started giving psych
>evaluations, and anyone who 'failed' it was suspended. Oh, did I
>mention the only people given the psych evaluations were the people
>who wore trenchcoats or black clothes? They went out of the way with
>this, and suspended several people (some of my friends), and they
even
>went as far as calling someone's parent in <A_Town> (long distance
>from my place) and asking if they could search the child. Also, this
>psych evaluation consisted of a few quiestions.
>
>
>What is your religon?
>
>Do you roleplay?
>
>If so, how do you defeat an enemy? (most believed this quiestion
lured
>the person into saying 'you kill them, of course').
>
>I don't know most of the other quiestions, but this shit is getting
>ridiculous. So what? Some kids that always got beat up finally got
>pissed off and wiped out a few jocks, they were dumb, they had no
>right to kill anyone, but because of them, everyone has gone insane.
>You can't say I'm gonna kill someone because I wear a fucking
>trenchcoat. What if someone killed some people and was wearing some
>Nike` shoes. Would they kick everyone out and/or give them psych
>evaluations for wearing Nike's?
>
>
>
>We live in a fucked up society, someone's gotta fix it.
[End Quote]
Both of them are great people, smart and fun (even if they can't spell). I love the idealism. I also clearly remember when "Rock and Roll" was the devil's music, long hair was satanic, and denim was anarchist... I'd still dearly love to play NIN at a suitable volume for some arseholes from my youth :-)
I can remember planning and executing some pretty fearsome "getting even" practical jokes which would probably land me in jail if tried in the US today. I can clearly remember putting a soldering iron through a bully's hand, who chose to pick on me at precisely the wrong moment - and being greatly satisfied by the smell and the sizzle. I don’t recall being punished for that, everyone including the staff knew he had it coming. No doubt that this would have given me a record as a dangerous and violent offender here in the US, and my parents probably would have been sued into poverty although they were not present. Of course, I wasn't even as angry as most of the people here seem to be, I was getting laid from a much earlier age than most of the US considers "acceptable" (13 - and regretting that I had waited that long). Which would also probably land me in trouble here in the US.
I also took risks. Lots of them. Riding motorcycles at insane speeds through woods. Climbing mountains. Shooting. High diving. Building tree houses – really high up. Surfing and diving. Making fireworks, nitroglycerine, guncotton and blowing it off. Getting drunk. Getting stoned. Combining these activities. All the things that normal kids do. Ok, so I exaggerate. Not entirely normal. But not considered entirely insane either. At least when they are not in the US of today.
Maybe the sterile environment here has something to do with it. The idea that everyone needs to be protected from everything? The idea that there is no need to be responsible for your own actions. The idea that there is always somebody else to blame. And, or to sue... Or maybe it is just that life is boring when there are no frontiers, no risks. And the concept of keeping people in jail, err school, long after they were considered physically and mentally able to go out and rule countries not so very long ago. Without giving them any other challenges worthy of the name.
Meanwhile the USA is still trapped into attempting to live up to a Victorian morality that never existed in Europe except as a fantasy propagated by journals written for "ladies", yet Americans aspired to make it real and were consumed with guilt when they failed. In the 1870s, the Americans did not know that the prim and proper English they read about in their newspapers were out fucking prostitutes ages eight or so and up. And had 1 full time prostitute for every 8 men. And that one of the reasons English ladies didn't fuck their husbands was that syphilis or the "pox" was endemic. And so, while English fathers joked in their clubs, and then took their 14 year old sons to visit "reliable whores", the Americans tortured themselves and their sons with devices to prevent the sin of "nocturnal emissions" and took to mutilating (circumcising) them to "prevent masturbation and lascivious thoughts" in volumes that would be ludicrous if they were not so tragic.
The natural consequence was that religious passion and desperation rose to a level not seen elsewhere in the world since the dark ages, as almost every American was consumed with a guilt for not achieving the preposterous, ridiculous, non-existent, wholly imaginary standards that they thought others had achieved. Of course, to cover this up, they developed hypocrisy to an art form seldom observed in Europe. And the young were ever good at noticing the hypocrisy of their fathers.
I think I would have gone totally nuts as a kid, possibly even shot up a town or two if I had been trapped in the USA. As I said before, who is to say that these children are wrong?
It seems to me that they may be quite right. Their country is all fucked up. And the only ones who might correct it are the insane children of today.
TheHermit
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them." George Bernard Shaw
> -----Original Message-----
> From: KMO [mailto:kmo@c-realm.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 29, 1999 2:56 PM
> To: Virus List
> Subject: virus: alienated youth
>
>
>
> Any answers for Roni from the Virus crew?
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 11:49:48 -0700
> From: "Chapman, Rhonda" <RChapman@ESD.WA.GOV>
> To: "'kmo@c-realm.com'" <kmo@c-realm.com>
>
> Hi KMO -
>
> I've wondered for a long time and I'm curious if you have any
> answers.
> A
> close friend of mine has a 15 year-old son who didn't come home last
> night.
> Of course, she is frantic, depressed, frustrated, and confused. They
> actually have what I would call a good relationship. He's a terrific
> kid
> for the most part. I really like him.
>
> I'm sure some of what he feels is boredom and frustration.
> She says he
> is
> also very angry. That's what I just don't get. Why are so
> many kids so
> angry? What is society doing to them? The problem seems too wide
> spread to
> be anything other than some form of general social breakdown.
>
> You seem very in touch with this stuff. 'Wondered if you have some
> thoughts. We can't "fix" it if we can't understand the
> cause. Somehow
> I
> don't think this will get better if left alone.
>
> Thanks, R
>