I keep meeting kids that have these labels, you know the ones: bi-polar, social anxiety, ADHD, autism, depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, and all of the blendings and flavors around and between. In fact, nearly every person under 35 that I have met in as long as I can remember has been diagnosed with some version of one or more of the above.
So what the ever-loving smeg is going on?
There are so many theories that one more isn’t going to hurt, though the camel’s back might be getting a little sore at this point. I have spent some time in meditation on this question, and have given it a lot of thought and done a fair bit of my own research, and so I can tell you without fanfare or apology that the kids are better than fine and are reacting to the world around them with the only sane response there is.
If I was plunged into a world where each day more and more of my illusions were heartlessly trampled while I was forced to watch, I’d probably find a way to protect myself, too. Retreating inward is a perfectly valid option. Nearly every sensitive person of any age that I know tends to barricade themselves in on an all-too regular basis. Hell, I don’t even see most of the people I know for months at a time because we’re all frickin’ hiding in our blanket forts with our ears plugged singing la-la-la-la I can’t hear you at the top of our lungs.
I grew up with rampant out-of-control capitalism, so I guess I got used to it. You really do sort of go numb after a while. And trying to make a living in the modern method of working like an under-appreciated dog for some corporate asshat who truly doesn’t give a rats ass about you and doesn’t want you having anything like a life nearly broke me. The last “real” job I had, I was fired from and I never looked back, because, honestly, I can’t if I want to keep wearing my underpants in the traditional and socially accepted manner and not on my head.
It hurts me to even contemplate going back to work at a regular job. I am extremely unsure that I would survive with my sanity intact if I tried. And, as I said, I grew up with this shit, and entered the workforce at a time when the world was just shifting hard to this new paradigm of union busting, employee abuse and wages that don’t even make a dent. Now think for a minute about somebody just starting out in life and seeing all around them that this is what they have to contend with. No hope. No promise.
No matter how smart or how good or how talented they are, their entire life is going to be a struggle to keep jumping from rock to rock across a dangerous river while the rocks bob up and down with no warning.
Yep, that’s the “better life” we have created for them. Ha, you’re welcome, guys, don’t mention it . . . No, really, don’t. It hurts to think about it. And here we are again.
This past two weeks I have watched some amazing young humans as they have marched, protested, visited lawmakers, been interviewed, given speeches and press conferences, and started the long hard work of trying to bring uncommon sense into a bizarro-world government. My heart has swelled to overflowing over and over as button-bursting pride in their intelligence, unflappable poise, and directness, has vied with sorrow, worry, regret and fear for their futures, and for their lives.
It’s time for us to start inviting those who will have to live with the consequences of decisions that get made now to take a seat at the table, and for us to shut the fuck up and listen. And then, help them take their ideas and turn them into policy, and then just get out of their way and let them do it. It’s long past time.
And so help me gods, the next idiot to tell me that they “aren’t about to discuss gun-control with a bunch of Tide Pod eating twerps” is going to be doing lot of lily-pad hopping. A handful of kids desperate to alter their consciousness to make the reality we have created for them a little less painful does not an entire generation make. And maybe if this country wasn’t so fucking painful to live in nobody would have any reason to want to eat Tide Pods. We’ve taken away every natural or harmless alternative in the insane War on Drugs. Let them smoke pot and they’ll ditch the soap right now.
Our kids aren’t a bunch of fragile morons who can’t find their asses with both hands. No, those are our current lawmakers, with few exceptions.
Here’s the takeaway: Change in government doesn’t happen overnight. It can take years for sweeping changes to be fully implemented and take effect in the real world. If they don’t start right now creating the government they want to live with when they are starting families and living the chewiest and hopefully richest years of their lives, they will be looking at retirement before the changes that will allow them to actually survive to retire at all will take effect. That’s unfair and short-sighted in the extreme.
Why are the majority of us, who are under 60 years old, letting the governmental equivalent of our senile old uncles run things? And in twenty years? Yeah, we’ll be the senile old uncles! Yes, oh yes we will. And we say, “But we’ll be different, we’re not a bunch of rabidly terrified and hateful schmucks who want to siphon as much money out of the economy as humanly possible; we’re nice, tolerant, loving, good people.” Sure we are–now. But so were the current batch of suspects–I mean lawmakers–once. Well, some of them. Probably.
Point is, greed is a disease and apparently it’s more catching than influenza in a daycare. Our kids are disgusted with our government, as well they should be. I think they are just in the mood to go full-Buffy on that nest of bloodsucking vampires and Bring On the Light.