It is above all in the city that the province of the optional is felt as dwindling away to nothing. At school, in the place of work, on the journey to and fro, even in the very equipment and provisioning of the home, many of the activities normally possible to human beings are either forbidden or enjoined. Special agencies, called Citizen's Advice Bureaus, are set up to steer the bewildered through the forest of rules, and to indicate to the persistent the rare clearings where a private person may still make a choice...[The town lad] is conditioned not to lift a finger without referring mentally to the book of words first. A time-budget of an ordinary city youth for an ordinary working day would show that he spends great stretches of his waking hours going through motions that have been predetermined for him by directives in whose framing he has had no part, whose precise intention he seldom understands, and whose appropriateness he cannot judge...The inference that what the city lad needs is more discipline and tighter control is too hasty. It would be nearer the mark to say that he is suffering from an overdose of control already...Surveying his parents and his older brothers or sisters he finds them as regulation bound as himself. He sees them so acclimatised to that state that they seldom plan and carry out under their own steam any new social excursion or enterprise. He thus looks forward to no period at which a sinewy faculty of responsibility is likely to be of service to himself and others...[The young people] are obliged to stomach so much external and, as it seems to them, meaningless control that they seek escape and recuperation in an absence of discipline as complete as they can make it.
This excerpt is from an English social report by L.J. Barnes published in 1945. It has been cited at various points over the last sixty years, more recently in Youth, the 'Underclass' and Social Exclusion by Robert MacDonald. It also appears in the foreward to the 1956 American Paperback Edition of F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and that is the source from which I draw it. Hayek, whose arguments focused on the problems behind excessive state control of markets, pulls the quote to draw attention to a younger generation that suffers an atrophy of the spirit in such a society.
Hayek asks us,"is it too pessimistic to fear that a generation grown up under these conditions is unlikely to throw off the fetters to which it has grown used?" He goes on to relate this to Alexis de Tocqueville's "new kind of servitude" from Democracy in America, but I'm not going to delve into that today because it requires a lot more citation and I'd like to use his first question and the quote from above as focal points for my thought.
I believe that in spite of the age of this report, the thoughts contained therein are more than applicable to the youth of America. By youth, I am talking about adults falling between the ages of 28 and 18. Conceptually I would count those under the age of 18, but as I am speaking more directly of younger professionals and students of voting age, I think it's best to keep things within that range for the time being.
This generation was born to either Baby Boomers or the younger Generation Jones and grew up in the heyday of the Internet Age, and as such is more than familiar with mass media exposure. We are the 'Net Generation, the Millennials, or the Echo Boomers. We are constantly referred to as the Future of America and paraded out as the generation that must be protected when a tragedy occurs, such as the shootings at Columbine High School. For much of our lives, whenever a politician or pundit has proclaimed that we must do something “for the children," they have meant us.
This attitude must stop. I fear the consequences of this view of the young. It is turning us into gentle, stupefied sheep, mindless media gluttons, inward-thinking, well-meaning Nowhere Men.
In the recent election, this generation was galvanized like never before to act. It could be said that through a mixture of happenstance, political opportunity, and perceived ability, Barack Obama became the first black President of the United States. Through the repression of the youth and and the absurdity of the Bush Administration a fire was lit, and this was a fire that Obama's circle noticed and fanned to epic proportions just prior to the election. When the votes were being counted, there were demonstrations, there was fear of civil unrest and riots should McCain have won. Why?
Because the youth of America latched onto Obama's message of "Hope" and "Change" like a lamprey eel. And it was done with Twitters, with Facebooks, with Myspaces, with blogs, Jon Stewart, and the whole mass of media upon which we feast daily.
I am not assigning moral blame to Obama, nor am I calling him a bad person. He is clearly a savvy and calculating individual, a dyed-in-the-wool politician, and I think he really believes that what he is doing is right and good. But I am not posting this to debate these things--this isn't about universal health care, the environment, the GM acquisition, the Chrysler sale to Fiat, or any of it. It's about something much bigger.
We hope, but we aren't questioning. American society is based upon questioning the government, and this generation is losing its drive to do just that. We are a country founded on revolution in both thought and deed, upon turning our backs on the decisions made by the rest of the world and forging ahead in our own way, and we are losing that part of ourselves.
What many of us need to realize is that "hope" is an abstraction, a concept, and as such can both be our salvation and our damnation. Hope is something that has no material form or logic, and that cannot be proven or disproven. But hope can be found, hope can be lost, and hope is a concept that is therefore inherently manipulable. But because so many of us agree with the social progressiveness of this new order and because we're so happy to finally feel listened to, we have turned off, tuned out, and shut down. We have found a pleasant dream and simply fallen asleep.
While we sleep, our country is moving, faster than I ever thought legally possible, faster than it has in years. Movement in life may be trusted, but movement in government must never be. In a very short period of time, the gears have been winding faster than ever before, and as the government taxes small tobacco, big tobacco wriggles through the net. As Mircosoft threatens to leave our shores for cheaper business opportunities, we happily clack away at our keyboards. On the eve of the death of the American tobacco industry, we are left to ponder the wonderous benefits of health care reform which will surely save the day! But where does this stop? How much will be sacrificed on the altar for "change" and "hope?" This generation like no other supports the legalization of marijuana, and in the midst of a recession, when the government is spending more and more money we do nothing, say nothing as Washington quietly allows Charlie Lynch to go to jail for following California state law. How many of us are asleep and dreaming?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should rave and burn at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I'm sure that enough of you are familiar with Dylan Thomas or are sufficiently Google-savvy that I don't need to quote the rest of this piece. Some might call me reactionary, paranoid, or any number of negative things for displaying worry about the habits of my own generation. I might be too conservative, too liberal, too philosophical, too neurotic, too brash, too crazy, too Libertarian, too pointless, but I also might be right.
Youth of America, wake up. Do not go gentle into that good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment