Without a Trace

We are the future (well, depending on the "we" who's reading this, that is.) The kids of the 90s are going to be the ones running the country one day. It makes me wonder, though. It seems to me that we've been robbed of a youth torn by conflict. Which is an odd thing to say, of course. And which isn't actually true, either. In fact, we're growing up in a time of some of the most fearful things imaginable, things like terrorist attacks and hopelessness in the face of the job markets and poverty, always poverty.

But it seems to me that although we daily encounter these terrible things, these horrible truths, we have lost all ability to be moved by them. That's what I mean when I say that we've been robbed of conflict; we've been robbed of the drama of it, the indignation that should stir our souls to action. Instead, we are reaction-less youth. As much as parents worried about their wayward teens in the 1960s, at least their kids were doing something. They were engaged enough with the world around them to be aware, to stand up. The trend continued, albeit perhaps in a degenerate form, into the 1970s and 80s. Maybe not as socially active,they funneled their anger and dissatisfaction through music.

But now we've come to this: a generation of kids who haven't done much. Again, that's not really true. We've done lots, maybe too much, with our own lives. Our parents' pro-active cultivation of our senses of self, through all of our extracurriculars, has left us experienced but disengaged members of society. Opportunities with no meaning because we've never had to fight for anything.

And then there's that little thing called the Internet which kind of sealed our fate. Gone was the need to communicate in person or to think for oneself or to spend time outdoors.

We're the kids of overprivilege, hyper-insulated and clueless. Will we know how to take the reins when the time comes?