My generation.
I'm talking about those in their 20s-30s. There is a huge age range on this site, so I could be talking about you, as a peer, or about your children, or your grandchildren.
What is my generation? Like any generation, it's one filled with hopes, and dreams, and love. We're a generation of geniuses, slackers, potheads, artists, writers, internet junkies, rebels and conformers. We are incredibly diverse, and have grown up at a time where the world has seen a paradigm shift. But, as I will explain, this has made us not a Lost Generation, but a Numb One, one still searching aimlessly to define itself.
We are the only modern generation without a war to shape us.
Our parents had Vietnam, our grandparents WWII, our great-grandparents WWI. But we haven't had a war to shape us during our formative years. We have yet to be defined by that life-changing, generation shaping event that informs our worldview and draws sacrifice from us.
We're clueless about sacrifice. We have not, as a generation, felt that loss...that Loss with a capital "L" when you see the best and brightest and most loving of your peers be taken away from you by a war so far away.
We haven't had to say goodbye to lovers and friends, hugging them tightly before they leave, not knowing if they'll ever come back. We haven't had to receive that telegram or those officers at the door to tell us that our best friend or brother has died in battle. We haven't had to attend funeral after funeral in our communities, looking down at the casket, at the youthful face, unetched by time, thinking "That could have been me." We haven't been widowed. We haven't been orphaned. War has not touched my generation in the way that magnifies and sharpens such abstract ideals as freedom, nation, and sacrifice.
War is not a concept we understand. To us, war is a game because it is literally a game...we play it on our Xbox, on our computers, with no concept of what it means to be a World at War.
Well, we had Desert Storm, right? Yet Desert Storm is but a distant recollection, a blurry grammar school memory of yellow ribbons tied around trees.
You speak of drafts. But we know not the concept. The only drafts we know are those at the local bar, where we spend most of our nights making memories with our childhood friends. We don't realize that a draft means that those childhood friends will fade away, be called up, and slowly, the bar stools will empty...one by one, forever.
Draft. It is an empty word for us. For our parents, they remember the agony of having classmates and family drafted, of wondering "Whose next?" For us, it is meaningless. It doesn't scare us, because we don't think it will happen. And even if we did think it would happen, we have no idea of the weight of its implications to care.
We are the most educated generation, yet are completely ignorant of the meaning of sacrifice. We are the richest generation, yet we haven't paid the ultimate price of giving ourselves up for the greater good of mankind. You have to realize our generation doesn't really have anything to fight for. The concept of "America" with a capital "A" doesn't resonate with us. We don't feel that intense loyalty and patriotism, that sense that when one goes to war, they are fighting for centuries old institutions and ideals. We don't honor or respect our government. We don't look at our Commander-in-Chief as a warrior worthy of battle. There is no "American Presidency" for us. Generations before us had FDR, JFK....Presidents who talked in theoretical, engaging discourse, who made Americans want to achieve that greater good.
What did my generation get in its formative years? Bill "Bubba" Clinton, getting blowjobs in the Oval Office, and George "I'm a Big Boy, Daddy" Bush, who commands no reverence or respect whatsoever. Thus, the concept of the American Institution is not something we feel compelled to fight for or uphold. It is not a part of us, so we do not feel like we have to defend it.
What are we? Just wandering around, like Lemmings, filing into order at our jobs, at our school, playing out the role society has doled out for us, all the while crying out inside for something more...for our chance to be the next Greatest Generation.
I am not saying I want my generation to fight a War. What I am saying is that War is the method by which previous generations have defined themselves, and yet, here we are, 20-something, undefined, having yet proven ourselves to the world.
The More Modern We Get, The More Isolated We Become
There is so much potential in us, so much unbridled enthusiasm to achieve....but what happens? We get our degree, ready to take on the world, but the world is not ready to take us. We spend two years looking for a job, which probably will have nothing to do with our degree anyway. Simply put, the American Dream is fading with my generation, and fading fast.
All the ideals our parents and grandparents lived for are non-existent for us. You fought in the 60's and 70's for a better world. With us, we don't have to. If we don't like the world, we don't feel compelled to change it....we can always escape, getting online, playing games or chatting for hours on end. If we don't like reality, we merely step into a virtual one, filled with fun chat rooms and websites so that notions of justice, poverty, and sacrifice are too distant to play a role in our isolated realm of manufactured existence. Heck, if we don't like the world, we don't even have to live it...we just build a whole new world online...we can create instead of fix, and that is always easier, is it not?
We're numb. Why did the Matrix resonate so much with my generation? Because that is how we feel...like we are living in a game, with no consequences, no real responsibly. Why do Linkin Park's songs, like Numb and Somehwere I Belong touch us so deeply? Because we feel empty, unproven, untested, unrecognized.
It saddens me when I think of what history will write about us. I don't want my generation to be remembered in history for the products it produces. I don't want to be remembered as the iPod generation, or the Internet generation. We are so much more than the technology we use. But it seems like we may be destined to be a splintered generation. Each person, each community-- self-insulated--with no overreaching duty to humanity to bind us or test us.
Well, time for me to unplug myself from this blog and get some work done. Hopefully, the rest of my generation will follow.