My views on boys and young men today
 

I'm just going to ramble about something that's been on my mind for years. I don't know what the past was like, but young men today, including teens, seem to be wandering aimlessly with no direction and a lack of discipline. Obviously I'm talking about a general trend, and not about all men. I feel as if they lack a father figure and a "higher calling," as cheesy as that may sound. I've seen the stark difference between a mature man and one who still doesn't have things together. I see how these boys think about and treat women and minorities. Most of them are white and suburban and come from decent homes. They have little sense of empathy for other people, and that disturbs me very much.

It's something that I have seen little interest in except when a troubled boy goes out and shoots a dozen people. Unfortunately, the media tends to blame it on a single factor such as violent video games or music. This problem in our society needs to be addressed. I don't believe that boys in the past were so confused as they are today. They were forced to conform to standards set by others with little leeway. I've read accounts of problems with Japanese society, such as the hikikomori, and usually it is attributed to rapid changes in the economy, society, and how young men are no longer promised a stable job as they were in the past. Could perhaps Westerners be experiencing the same problems?

My biggest issue is with the lack of empathy among boys today. Most dislike, seemingly vehemently hate, other people who are not like them. It's not something they notice outright about themselves, and sometimes they brush it off as nothing but "Internet humor." But this type of behavior online is not healthy or normal: a truly healthy person would not find much of this misogynist, homophobic, racist, hateful humor "funny" or even have it cross their mind. There's one example that pops up in my mind of a guy who fits into this age bracket... he used to hate me, but we're now friends. He hated me for a long time, but I always treated him kindly and fairly. Eventually, I think he came to notice this and warm up to me. He told me that he used to hate me, and for no particular reason at all. This wasn't the only time I've met men who experienced that kind of odd and unwarranted hatred. Perhaps they don't believe that kindness truly exists, or that not everyone has ulterior motives.

Anyway... I hope that my message gets across decently here. I left out things that I feel should be obvious to the reader of an Internet forum geared towards young men, such as what type of behavior I was referring to. This wasn't well-written, but I guess my mind is kind of in a cloud right now.

This attitude about the "younger generation" I bet was documented on a cave wall at some point. It will never change yet we'll continue on I suppose.

Fuck the establishment man...


I'm gonna go do mind expanding drugs and have mad amounts of sex with random partners with no remorse or care for anyone's well being. (And try to change the minds of others by using pointless marches, protests, letter writing campaigns, dressing different, talking different, listening to different music, basically trying to be different at all cost.)




Oh wait it's 2007 not 1968... oh wait... still doesn't matter.




Yep, kids rebel. The older you get the less you understand what's going on in the generations under you.


Thanks for playing the game of life. And enjoy the ear hair.

Well, first off, I think you're talking about many things here.

in terms of higher calling, what kind of higher calling did people in the 60's have? They finished high school (maybe), got a unionized job, and continue to work at it now until retirement. Higher calling is a very vague term. Should the younger generation go out and save the whales? Stop genocide? Save the cheerleader?

As for conformity, what's so great about conformity? Some of the greatest minds of all time were ill fitting. If we all conformed, we'd think the earth was still flat.

I don't think people nowadays hate as much as you are claiming, but a general complacency seems to be growing among todays youth. Every internet argument between teens degenerates into calling the other person a homosexual. Even the word gay has somehow become synonymous with stupid among many young people.

There are a number of people in the world that I don't like, and I know there are plenty of people who don't like me. Other people like me, and other people like the people i don't like, so i'd say it's safe to say that all of us aren't so bad. Unfortunately, many people do get off on the wrong foot.

Same shit different day.

There is a sense of entitlement and overvaluing themselves that this generation of precious snowflakes seem to have but that will be smacked down by reality soon enough.

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1158/hip1xf4.jpg
1960's

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/5298/hip2sn9.jpg
2000's

Plus I don't think you understand young males, thats how most are.

I think it is extremely well-written and thoughtful and I agree with you. And I think it is definitely attributed to changes in our society - expectations of respectful and mature behavior are diminishing and our culture doesn't value intelligence and thoughtfulness like it once did. At least, the expectations of attempting to be intelligent and thoughtful in one's interactions with people are, again, diminishing.

I think this can be seen in both genders to an extent, but seems to be most pronounced in young men as they are prone to conducting themselves in a more extroverted way - IN GENERAL.

But overall, I find this trend to be very disheartening and it is one of the hardest attitudes for me to deal with on this site. Not that I have hard feelings against anyone for it, in particular, it's just the way things are...but it both irritates me and makes me anxious about where all this is headed.

Really the only difference is that women shave their pussy's now.



Most of them.

I suppose this isn't the place for my "crisis of masculinity" rant?

I don't think I was clear enough. My gripe is with the attitude I see among many boys today. I don't know what the cause is, though some of you suggest entitlement issues or rebelling. But is the vehement hatred I see spewed all over some message boards really just this generation's form of rebelling? It's sick and disturbing. I also don't think young men feel entitled... but they seem to say to the rest of the world: "Nobody deserves anything. Not love, not friendship, and certainly not my respect." There are a lot of other people who have entitlement issues of course, see Montel Williams for more on that... LOL.

I agree with Mixedmedia. Respectful and mature behavior isn't expected with boys. There was always a period of lapsed good behavior for that age group throughout time, but since when did they start allowing such atrocious behavior amongst themselves? The most bitter, spiteful, malicious behavior is considered humorous. I doubt any of us here doesn't know about this, though this website isn't anywhere near as bad as others. Maybe the trend has been occurring since the 70s or 80s. Degradation of women and minorities, disabled people, religion, just about anything that isn't white, suburban, and male is the norm. And they hate each other and won't stop at "just" insulting your dead parents and raping your little sister.

"Our youth love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, and disrespect for their people. Children nowadays are tyrants. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers". - Socrates 5th century B.C.

Everyone has always had these thoughts.

They just didn't have the internet to make them public.

It's not a matter of change in attitude or perception, it's a change in communication. Now you can be a completely anonymous handle and say whatever you want about whoever you want and be almost completely without recourse (short of making a specific enough threat that they track your IP and arrest you).

I think YOU PERSONALLY notice it more because there are more places for you to see it, but I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that it's been going on for a very very long time. I've read minutes from meetings of my fraternity that are almost two hundred years old. The syntax and diction are a little different, but the substance from 1826 is astonishingly similar to the substance from 2004.

Also, keep in mind who has easy access to the internet and who tends to use it more for forum posting: white, suburban males-particularly if you're looking at any sort of pop-culture, technology, gaming or sex related forums. The internet (shockingly to some of us) is still a fairly narrow slice of the whole.

I think you're making some fairly gross generalizations about an enormous swath of the population, and I'm not sure why.

I think that saying "wow boys are really hateful and mean now in a way they weren't before" because of how people post on forums is analogous to saying "wow girls are huge sluts now in a way they weren't before" because of how many girls post nude pictures of themselves on the internet.

Is there an element of truth to both statements? Sure. But I think the difference between "then" and "now" is how easy it is for you and me and anyone else to find it and see it, not how much it actually goes (or went) on.

Future doctors and lawyers. Most probably drive BMWs and have expensive houses in suburbia now.

Yeah, the Baby Boomers had it easy....

Still I've only seen one or two posts that seem to reply to the exact subject that I am discussing. Others are either misunderstanding the subject matter or twisting it to fit into what they wish to speak about, or seemingly-discredit me about. I'm not oblivious to the problems of the "age gap" and the two sides of it warring with each other. I don't consider that issue the same. And Internet anonymity is a different issue that would take up its own topic, and then some. Have you ever been to a forum where the majority of its occupants aren't teenage boys? You'll see that they're far more congenial. Anonymity (which it really isn't) isn't an excuse. But let's not go there, please.

i just don't see this on a wide scale as you do. I think I recall more of it when I was in my teens rather than my 20's. Perhaps I'm dealing with a different demographic (I am surrounded by hard-core academia). I'll occasionally run into someone who is as you describe - without discipline, hating the world... but not often.

Lack of discipline comes from poor parenting coupled with substandard educational expectations. Lack of direction comes from their needs being met without effort of their own. If they need a career to get by, they'll have one. If their parents provide, or they find a way to work a system to scrape by - they will. I'm not sure how a father figure would change this trend. A mother could just as easily enforce standards and provide a reasonable level of discipline to encourage personal growth and goals.

I hope this is an understandable response.

No, I think you're not seeing that people are agreeing with you.




Yes, there is a problem with the youth of today. They are the youth of today. And the youth of tomorrow with be the problem when it's their turn... And so on and so on...

*sigh* After reading the first few posts, I had a pretty good reply but it all went out the window as soon as the OP decided that those who disagreed with her simply didn't understand what she was saying. I'll just move along now... :(

No desire to add some clarification, x?

I'm in the "same shit, different day" camp. A surface study of social and developmental psychology will tell you that "problems" exist in society that have existed since the dawn of time, but they were never determined to be "problems" until they were given a name. A real simple example is sibling rivalry. This is something that has existed since MAMMALS started popping up, but hadn't been mentioned in any published child-rearing manual until the early 1900's. What happened after the phrase "sibling rivalry" was coined? You guessed it! Sibling rivalry was blamed for all of society's problems.

Same shit, different day.

But, just because it's the same shit, different day doesn't preclude it from being commented on.

Me? I am old enough and informed enough to see that it is not exactly the same shit, different day...it is an escalation of the same shit, different day and the fast-paced nature of everything today means it is escalating exponentially.

Plus, another thing I've observed, is that the idealistic phase of young adulthood is gone. People these days pretty much go from self-centered teenager to conservative cynic without a 'I want to change the world phase' in the middle. Unless, of course, that 'I want to change the world phase' includes pocketing a lot of money.

So just because something is normal means that it should be ignored and brushed off? I certainly agree that this attitude has been around for all of human history, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I will not tolerate it in my own children, when that time comes.

And after spending the weekend with 3 single men in their late 20s and 30s, listening to joke after joke after joke about gay people, ugly women, fat women, immigrants, people who like BDSM, religious people, disabled people, and pretty much anyone who's "different," I have to say that I'm pretty annoyed with that attitude as well. These aren't young people I'm talking about. They're adults with graduate degrees and good incomes.

I'm not saying that women are altogether different, but I don't understand the pattern among men to joke joke joke, har har har, about people who are not mainstream. I mean, get over it, for chrissake. Isn't there something else to joke about?

MM, so what about me? I'm in that "I want to change the world" phase.

As a particularly well-behaved individual and what may be the exception to all of this hysteria, I would like to point out that I'm not the only person like me. We're only aware of what we can see, and the sensationalist agenda of holding attention includes making it so people only focus on the things that the majority of society will find remarkable. Thus I am not a particularly special individual and my actions and intentions will only be paid attention to when I am big and popular. Now, if I were part of the disaffected youth, I would be in the spotlight... along with everyone else - because that is what the LCD is. People acting selfishly.

In English: Because you are not a part of it anymore, your perception of the world's youth is determined by the general opinion on it.

Like, high school kids.. I'm going to admit that I don't understand them anymore, and I'm only 8 years removed.

But I like the notion of caring about the future. Its touching. Gotta care about the present too though.

First, to comment on the supposed threadjacks, I think it's interesting that the first thing people thought of was the late 1960's. My initial reaction was "gee, this is one of the central themes of War and Peace, at least as the evolution of Pierre goes".

In my book, this attitude is simply a part of the aging process. And it's partially true. The young are in the midst of their voyages of self-discovery. Older people have mostly arrived. Most of the young have no idea what they want from life or how to get it.

I don't think that it's escalated at all, MM. High school kids always stay the same age; the individuals age out of it, but there are always high school kids. Us older folks just notice it more because the differences between us and them grow more pronounced every day.

Well, to be honest, I didn't understand it when I was a part of it. Which is why at 15 I was scratching and crawling my way out of it as fast as I could.

What I am observing is not a wholly new phenomena...I've met people my own age who are alarmingly immature, insensitive and out of touch with the world outside their circuit of modern-age suburbia. But, we are talking now about their kids...and, much of the time, they are even worse.

And what do you mean, you aren't special? Of course, you are special and if you know other people like yourself that is because you attract other people like yourself, not because people like yourself are abundant.

I think there are factors at work in our society, including but not limited to the internet, that have caused this naturally occurring phenomena to funnel a bit. This is my own impression, but I have concurred it with other people...like my mother, who has witnessed three generations - her own, mine and now her grandchildren's. She has commented very often about the remarkable difference in attitudes, in values and in the sense of entitlement between her children and her children's children.

A good example of how fast things are changing is this: I have three daughters - 21, 18, and 8. A couple of months ago my eight year old came home from school and told me she was concerned about her weight because some of her friends were on diets. She is not overweight even in the slightest and neither are her friends. This is 2nd grade I'm talking about. I decided to ask her sisters about it and they were horrified. The first they remembered girls becoming truly self-conscious about their looks was in the 5th and 6th grades when they were getting ready to go to middle school. And this is in less than one generation. I know this isn't an isolated incident because there had been a discussion about it here on TFP months before my daughter came home and told me this.

I again purport that it is escalating. Granted, this isn't the scenario purported in the OP, but I think these things are rooted in the same causal phenomena.

Racism, misogyny, homophobia, and classism are the norm, not the exception. The human race is one big bunch of fucked up people, but it's just now that we can really see how bad it gets when war and genocide aren't going on. On top of that, with so many people connected by modern communication, the lowest common denominator is really low.

We used to hate people, now we just make fun of them. It's easier to be ignorant than admit you're wrong, so people continue being ignorant. Pop culture and the media are driving a wedge between races, religions, genders, etc. because it gets ratings. On top of the ignorance, everyone has a persecution complex. Are you a minority? the man is keeping you down (the system is still heavily biased, but not to the extent that people want you to believe.) White? those damn minorities are using affirmative action to take your jobs; while we're at it, why can black people use a word that embodies hundreds of years of hate and violence we perpetrated against them and we can't? the black man is keeping us down! Christian? Those damn atheists and Muslims are taking over the country; what? you're 76.5% of the population? you sure have the right to impose your will on the rest. Atheist? we had better take God out of everything public and private and tell everyone who believes in God that they're idiots, because that's the way to convince them that 5% of the population are the sane ones; most of you are no better than the fundamentalists you hate.

I could go on and on, but you get my point by now. People need to shut the fuck up, think about someone other than themselves, and try to get along better.

There were problems in the past, and they were addressed. These days, everyone knows there's a problem, but they refuse to admit that they're part of it, so it gets worse. Blaming the parents is a big step in the right direction, but nobody will do it because the majority of people are, or will be, parents, and that means taking personal responsibility. Correlation is equal to causation because the media says so, and we eat it up because it's easier than trying to say otherwise to the legions of idiots zombified by Fox News and CNN.
Back to the white suburban upper-middle class kids, they've had everything handed to them and can't adapt to real life because it doesn't work that way. Nobody is promised anything, you have to work to earn it, and in our culture where talentless hack musicians, pro athletes, and slimy businessmen are the rich, who the fuck wants to do it the honest way?
It's entirely possible to make jokes about people without meaning it. At school, we have the kind of colorblind society that everyone says we need to strive for. Race is literally a joke, and nothing more. Our old student government preisdent was nicknamed "el spic presidente." Our friend Usamah and his friends were "the terror squad." There there's Cracka Mike, Negro Tony, Gay Dave, the list can go on and on, but the point is that nobody takes race more seriously than a skin color, so we can joke about it without being hurtful.

I don't believe that kindness and altruism are inherent parts of the human psyche. Back to the parenting issue, this is one of the things that parents should be teaching their kids instead of parking them in front of the TV for hours and giving them a few hundred bucks a month allowance. A lot of people do have ulterior motives, and all you have to do is take a look at the Ladder Theory thread to see that people assume that nobody else is genuine.

I've got one... in case it is.

Being a good father is difficult, but that doesn't mean that men should be afraid to ask for help. I myself have always loved kids and I decided early on that I was going to be a father. I lived my life with that goal in mind and continue to.

Being a good father:
1) Never be afraid to listen: Kids older than 2 will talk your ear off until they realize how much of a dork you are. Enjoy it.
2) Never be afraid to not know the answer to questions: you can explore the answers with them and you can both become more enlightened. This teaches them that it's good to explore in order to find truth.
3) Study: There aren't any manuals in the placenta, so get some books. Not sure where to start? Ask your pediatrician, psychologist, or a teacher.
4) Don't pass on your failings; fix them. If your little scrapper sees that you are always trying to improve yourself, they will pick up on that.
ETC.

The problem with today, as always, is prioritization. If you're a parent, your kids must always come first. If you can't commit to that, keep it in your pants and get a dog. Actually, get a dog anyway. They're awesome.

!!! Why would they do such a thing???

Take a deep breath and relax. As you said, it's a joke. Perhaps the real problem are the people who seemingly take everything to heart >_>

I have to wonder.

Was there a time when people weren't complaining about the youth being the worst generation ever?

Does anyone ever say 'Hey you know these kids are jerks, but so much better than my generation, we were total wankers!'?

Are there issues kids have today that are different than in the past? Yes, they have access to a lot more information they are too inexperienced to put into perspective, and they have an exaggerated sense of self worth due to some poor education policies.

But over all they will muddle threw like we did. Some will sink, some will swim, and some will fuck up royally before figuring it out, just like we did.

You nailed it. Anyone who thinks entropy only applies to physics needs to take a look at societies. Societies as a whole tend to fail eventually. Why? People stop working for the betterment of society and start working for the betterment of their personal lifestyle, ignoring the needs of everyone around them. Pirsig called it "this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country."

That pretty much sums us up in a nutshell. It was written back in the 70's and is more true now than it was then.

I don't think so, no. lol

Thank you, IL. I agree with you 100%. I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote a reply before I finally opted for "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." It sounds like Cyborg is upset that people were using the word pussy incorrectly, and that some 13 year old kid called his friend gay. If the last thread is any indicator, she won't be back to justify her sweeping claims, particularly with anything more than ANECDOTAL experience.

The reason for the behavior described at length in this post (each generation thinks their children are the worst) is that it is based on individual experiences with certain children. If a longitudinal study were actually done on the differences between children now and children of the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, I'd lend credence to the argument. As is, it's just another feminist rant about those crude boys, much akin to the 'pussy' post.

It must be because chivalry is dead. The feminists killed it. :lol:

p.s. this post not to be taken seriously

Hell, I take it seriously. Mostly true. So many head games.

Social progress! Now that's the kinda "stickin' it to the man" that I like to see.

As a teen I hated every one that was different. Communist, French, blacks, Democrats, country music singers and the people that listened to the music. The worst thing you could do to someone was to call them gay. I hung out with others with the same opinions. We objectified women. The only thing we respected was a nice of tits and a good pair of legs.

We were cruel to each other and worse to outsiders. We went out of our way to be trouble makers. We were mostly aimless with no thought for the future. We did not know where we fit into society.

We changed. Most of my old buddies are fathers. Many are very conservative and are pro-police. Most I would call good citizens. In other words we grew up.

All that being said, I do think teens are more aggressive today. I think the speed of life today is also much greater.

Well, I didn't want it to become a personal attack, but I think I can skirt the fringe a bit. Much like the Pussy != Vagina thread and at least one other that I cannot find at the moment, as soon as people start disagreeing with her, she goes on about how we just don't understand what she's saying. It's hard to have constructive or interesting conversation that way. Either 1) CN just doesn't like to be disagreed with, or 2) CN just cannot convey her ideas in a way that most people on the TFP can actually understand what she means.

Cyborg Ninja, I am not trying to be a dick. I think you bring up some interesting thread topics. So, truly, I enjoy having you here. It just seems that you get far more defensive or bent out of shape than most other regulars over misunderstandings and disagreements. It frustrates me.

I'm pretty sure I understand your OP, at least verbatim to what you actually typed into it. I still disagree with you and am in the "same shit different day" camp. Every generation or two has a large enough subcultural gap that this same exact topic comes up. It's not that I don't understand that you feel many young men are rude and aimless. I agree. But compared to the young men of the 40s, the young men of the 60s were the same. Compared to those of the 1800s, those of the 1900s were especially lazy and crude. Sure, that's a much larger than one or two generation gap, I'm just over-illustrating.

Hopefully you understand where I'm coming from on the first part of my post, even if you grossly disagree with the latter part.

I think its pretty late in the game to be introducing social entropy. Like my example stated above, it only becomes a problem once there's a name for it. This society has been going along for a while and all of a sudden entropy is kicking in? If you can define a noticeable difference between your generation and today's generation, wouldn't it mean that the generation before you had seen at least a fractional change from theirs to yours? Mathematically speaking, we're envisioning one exceedingly tight society at the dawn of our modern civilization.

Semantics monster hungry!

I feel that there is a big difference between "boys" and "young men" as far as this thread goes. Teenagers have an overwhelmingly high amount of idiocy per brain cell versus someone my age, who might still make fart jokes or call his girlfriend a cow but has an IRA to contribute to and a job that doesn't involve a nametag or funny hat.

On a long enough time line... nobody is safe from being a douchebag.

Speaking only for myself, I am not saying that entropy is happening all of a sudden because it just occurred to me or because we are talking about it. I am saying that it is accelerating - and I'm not sure how or why anyone can argue that point being that everything is accelerating.

It's just an observation, no one should take it personally.

An office job and an IRA do not necessarily denote a heightened maturity.

I saw this segment on 60 minutes last weekend I think it was.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3475200.shtml

maybe there are differences between young women and more mature women too?

HOW DARE YOU!

Young girls NEVER say anything that is offensive to men, minorities, or homosexuals. Young girls could NEVER be described this way:

Or this..

HOW DARE YOU MAKE SUCH CLAIMS. ONLY YOUNG BOYS ARE CAPABLE OF SUCH THINGS.

Great article, thanks for the link. :)

In fact, this is a comment someone left on that site, regarding the article, and I think it makes a series of great points. Bolding is mine.

For my part, I haven't excluded women from my assessments.

What I did say was that women are, in general, less extroverted than men when it comes to this kind of frivolity. IN GENERAL...and when they are sober, lol.

It does make some relevant points. Very relevant points. But I think over-indulgence still plays into the phenomena.

Oh, definitely. It's definitely still a generation rife with "gimme" attitudes and "all about me" selfishness. It's dead-on-accurate that these kids have been coddled their whole lives and are now facing the existing establishment, which does not favor or even want to allow any sort of employee reward system. They want their work-hard-until-I-give-you-permission-to-die boomers, the people who will take a heaping helping of bullshit from bosses and others, and smile.

Separate thought, for all:

Does the fact that this new generation won't take that sort of treatment, and markets themselves as valuable employees to be appreciated, not taken for granted, make them worse? Certainly there are many bad portions of their behavior/attitude, but I don't think the overall "work is not my entire life, and you WILL appreciate my loyalty and hard work" business model is a change for the worse. See Google, among many others, for examples of such.

How can you say you're reading the OP if you think this is "normal" teen rebellion?

I totally agree with her post. I was a rebellious teen and that kind of hatred didn't exist in my world.

Why? IMO: poor parenting, technology, and the general pace of everything today.

I think many of them take this to the extreme. They're less likely to take crap from their employers, but they're also less likely to pay their dues; many of them think that it's beneath them to do the shit work that everyone has to do.

Our crotch-mounted toolbox isn't as big as deciding factor on the Assholeness Meter as we'd all like to believe.

I read the first dozen or so posts in this thread. What I can't get past is the level of generalization expressed by the OP and some of the responders.

simple fact: not all young men/boys are like this. I'd venture to suggest that not even a simple majority (51%) are.

and I'd also suggest that most of it is normal adolescent behavior, which will be grown out of in due time. as well, it seems a reaction to the insanity of political correctness here in America.

as the saying goes: this too shall pass.

I detest this guy but i force myself to listen to his radio show during my commute from work. This is a recurrent theme of his. It will come off as partisan, it's unavoidable....but much of halx's description of deficient attitude and behavior seems to be about intolerance and lack of empathy.

Could conservatism, circa 2007, a "movement" grown astoundingly out of proportion to what I, as a high school student observing the "Woodstock weekend" that took place in August, 1969, could ever have imagined emerging, and growing, just ten years later, be a culprit?

It is acceptable to be openly negative towards gays and just about anything else that is not affluent white protestant in America. Forgive me, but the Ron Paul "movement" seems to be the rallying point for the more political of the older range of the young men and boys you've described, halx.

I do conceed, though, that boys have become more feminized, less able to enjoy a "Tom Sawyer" boyhood. A sign was when their toy guns were mandated to have orange highlights. Suburban development cleared and built on the woods boys used to role play in. They went inside, permanently, and played video games, instead. I see lifeless suburban cul de sacs in my environment, no kids out riding their bikes, playing basketball, or drawing hopskotch squares in the driveway with chalk.

i watched "we jam econo" last night---a documentary about the minutemen (you know, d. boon, mike watt, george hurley).
it was made in 2005.
d. boon was killed in 1985. december 22, actually.
i came late to the minutemen, but double nickels on the dime is still an amazing record.
anyway, i mention this for a couple reasons, which i am making up as i go.

turns out that these gentlemen are the same age as i am so watching the film was also kinda like watching a generational piece.

mike watt said something on the order of having been listening to captain beefheart and the stooges in high school, so in 1976--when uk punk broke--he wondered about the punk "rebellion"---"what's the big deal?--these others guys did it already..."

later, watt went on at some length about the effect that d. boone's mom had on the band in her insistence that they invent their own activites, make their own music, not copy, learn for themselves.

you provide too much structure, he said, you create a generation of robots.

and he talked about just going your own way, doing it, and continuing to do it, fuck what other people think---which made sense in a new way (to me at least) of the minutemen's politics. and the difficulties of going your own way--little symbolic moments like opening for black flag and getting spit on by the audience of punk "rebels" because they weren't "punk enough" or "punk" in the right way...

so argument number one: we operate in a smothering culture of copies.
if there's a problem with "the kids" it's servility, the willingness to subordinate themselves to models, to conflate copying and thinking.
trick is that there's nothing in itself problematic about copying---keeping with "we jam econo"--the minutemen covered blue oyster cult and creedence tunes for example---its the relation that you imagine obtains between what you are doing and what is. if you do more inventive stuff and then cover something, it's not the same as making yourself into a copy of what already is.

thing is---linking this to the op--that the culture of consumer servility isn't new--it's what in the main americans confuse with freedom.

and there's an interesting segment in "we jam econo" during which watt and d. boone talk briefly about an imaginary alternate future in which minutemen music was mainstream and so was the ur-copy of a host of sub-minutemen.

kids are not encouraged to take chances. they aren't given the tools to think independently. creative work has to be safe. it has to be "normal"--it has to fit somewhere. but this fitting somewhere enables folk to slot what they are doing straight into something that already is, and to use that framework to simplify the process of considering what you do, why you do it. it truncates process. to my mind, the major result is a strange inflexibility in thinking. it gets paradoxical when groups of the inflexible band around a style and understand themselves as being "in revolt"...


in an interview, d. boone said that he felt that there should be bands in every apartment block, clubs on every corner where musicians could play, record labels in every neighborhood--cultural production should be radically decentralized, kids (and everyone else) encouraged to go their own way, get the chance to play, acquire discipline on their own terms---and not to think in terms of being "stars"-----but do what you love in your way. do something that seems new to you. fuck what other people think. if they like it, cool. it they dont, it doesnt matter. ultimately, it's not for them.

i graduated high school in 1976.
it was already like this.
i teach in universities and see lots of good kids. good smart kids, kids who contradict every last generalization that has run through this thread about "the youth of today"....but i also see that their modes of expression--and worse of thinking--are off the rack, chosen like jackets from a range of pre-fabricated alternatives, and that they have trouble getting their heads around the fact of this and imagining how they--or anyone--could be otherwise.

i think that it is wrong to imagine that revolt happens amongst 18 year-olds.
my experience teaching...and being in the world myself--showed me that working your way out from under the smothering effects of a culture of copying takes time, and that more radical stuff happens as folk figure their way out. i also think that there is no particular time-line nor is there a particular way to move through to get to a different relation to process.

hell, the minutemen were collectively there when i was still foundering about in new hampshire. they were there in their early 20s and i think in many ways i'm only just figuring out what they already knew and i'm--well--older. and i think that's the case because the way out is in the doing--you can't sit around watching fucking television or consuming shit and wait for someone to hand you a template.

the most efficient form of domination is convincing people--particularly without ever having to say as much--that they should dominate themselves.

folk dont take themselves seriously, they dont take their process seriously, they dont see thinking as a basic activity that opens up options for how you are in the world--they think it's work, something imposed on them from outside--and when they figure out that this is auto-lobotomy time, often they dont have the tools to do much about it. this simply because they dont understand how much is in the doing, how much is in projects---they miss the simple fact that thinking is a form of creative work (it must not be confined, as it is in academicworld, to generating commentary on texts by legitimate Authorities)--they---no we----undervalue creative work and overvalue it at the same time--they think the idea of doing such work is to be a star and quit your day gig----when its an end in itself. it's the process that matters. it's the doing that is important.

if there's a single cause, i think it's in the simple fact that education is social reproduction.
we have an educational system that at every point de facto imposes an image of a dysfunctional social order--in the widest sense---as an image of a natural order.
we allow a system that is geared around fear of change to stamp us.
we look to that system to legitimate us.

and we collectively reap what we sow.

i dont think there is particular drift amongst "the youth of today" into any heightened state of mediocrity--we're already there and if we stumble across a path that seems to lead us out from under it, we are working our way along that path. same as it ever was. but to the extent that the servility of auto-emulation runs deeper, glen brown has it right:

you better watch out
you better watch out
the youth of today
will be the youth of tomorrow

except it applies to ourselves as much as to "kids these days."

it's easy peasy to pass general judgments on others.
there's some line that jesus said about the mote in your eye.
it's a good line.

We would assume your account was hacked if you weren't.

Seriously...

Anyways, thats nice and all, but no, welcome to humanity. Just because a portion of the 60's generation decided to do a lot of recreational drugs and sex before becoming normal middle class citizens didn't change anything, nor did having Bush president suddenly turn people into mean homophobes.

You might be closer on your second point, but again, the pussification of America hasn't changed basic human natures.

OK I've read most of the post here, so if I plagiarize someone, well...oops

Our youth have become jaded
they are exposed to more than we were. They have to deal with stuff we didn't and they are doing it under circumstances that are more difficult than our's were.

We grew up in communities, neighborhoods and towns. Everybody knew everybody. Families were accountable to those communities, children included. If you f-ed up, someone told you parents. And your parents were expected to address the issue.
Also parents stayed together, marriage wasn't as disposable as it is today.
Family is way important.
It's Feminism. I support women doing whatever they want or can, as good or better than a guy. But the other side of that is the sacrifice she makes in her family
It's the modern man. We have become soft. Fathers are afraid to take their position in their families for fear of being labeled domineering or abusive.
It's work being more important than home.

It's so much more but apparently I'm rambling too, so I'll stop it there

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2016/penny2ds5.jpg

This sums up about 3/4ths of it right here ;)

This community aspect is something that I had not considered. Yes, this is an aspect that is lacking in urban/suburban America. In French polynesia there's still this community discipline. I imagine every region has varying levels of degregation in this regard. It'd be interesting to conduct a study on this.

Family is still important. Marriage does appear disposable in some sense - but is it not possible that broken marriages are less of an issue than simply not putting family first? I do not like the idea of making divorce difficult. There are far too many women in abusive situations. Divorce must remian simple for this reason alone. Poorly-educated women with domineering husbands, women that do not have any concept of their rights - if divorce were not easy, these women would never gain the courage to work their way out.

I agree that femminism on the whole is moving in a direction that could be negative. But a woman who has rights, knows her rights, votes, speaks out in the community, and still looks out for her famly is not a bad thing.

Without at least a portion of the femminist movement, I do not know that a woman's place in society could have progressed to a healthy level.

Er... well, there are still domineering and abusive men in the world.

There are soft men. There are also not-soft men.

What position in the family do you mean? My father always worked, provided, disciplined when necessary, taught me to ride a bicycle and went riding with me often, taught my sister to rebuild an engine and other classic car tinkerings.

My mother balanced the books, kept track of the kids' schedules, did the bulk of day-to-day enforcing of rules and only called in father when she needed the big guns. She did the shopping, the raising, the everything consequential. Not to say that my father wasn't important to me - he was - but Mother really wore the pants. Father's income just made it possible for her to take such an active role.

I see no reason why this could not have worked just as well with reversed roles.

This I'll agree to. Definitely a contributing factor. Again, when children are involved, the home should be the top priority.

I wasn't swinging at the femminist movement. What I meant that in a very practical way, if Mom is working the same hours as Dad, that is how many hours the kids are alone.



What position in the family do you mean?



the big guns
father always worked, provided, disciplined when necessary, taught me to ride a bicycle and went riding with me often, taught my sister to rebuild an engine and other classic car tinkerings.
Father's income just made it possible for her to take such an active role.

Yes, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the clarification!