Ahh, To Be Young Again
No thanks. Don't get me wrong for my youth was terrific and who wouldn't want to be back to flexible joints and carefree times where life just seemed to have no end (until work arrived and then life truly did seem to be a world without end). But as I grow older it is time for me to step aside and make way for the large crowd which is behind me for I've had my chance, and life holds another segment for me to consider. Time to let go, it's telling me. But the good news is that I am quite excited about the young coming up in the world...as it was when I had years and decades ahead of me, theirs is an exciting world of promise and you can almost feel that hope and enthusiasm as they become the next force of change. Okay, a few things have shifted since my early days as it would appear that marijuana is so passe since ayahuaca is here, and that computer programs are now composing music and creating art (the new Google program even analyzed 20,000 books over the past 30 years, all in its search for what makes a best-selling novel...the commonality that it found was the human connection). And I am beginning to see more clearly the puzzled world of my parents as they watched my own youth evolve, shaking their heads and hoping that all would turn out okay, not only for me but for the world in which I was entering. It was a world of protest, a world where governments were run by old people...a world I --and seemingly millions like me-- sought to change. A world rather like today's world.
In a few days the inauguration of the new U.S. President will occur, a person who talked about nuclear weapons over Christmas and allegedly told an interviewer off camera: Let it be an arms race — we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. Yikes. Same sort of stuff I heard way back when. Only here's how Esquire put it: Across the globe, autocrats are on the rise...It begins with a widespread fear of the future. Globalization gave rise to an international class of wealthy urban technocrats who look utterly out of touch with the rest of their respective populations. The populist pushback takes aim at anything that feels elite. Institutional experience becomes a liability. Qualifications take a backseat to passion. Skill itself becomes suspect. Next, bad information floods the void. Social media has laid waste to the informational monopoly that, even in the most democratic societies, had always --for better or worse-- been held by the ruling classes. Hundred-year-old news orgs and anonymous Twitter eggs are now locked in a codependent death embrace. The patronizing drone of the professional media drives people to the fringe, at which point the mainstream co-opts the fringe in order to get the eyeballs back. Facts are replaced by a basic fear of the Other -- be it gays or immigrants or a global Jewish conspiracy. They thrill to the baroque dangers of swarthy job-stealers and banker cabals. And then the inevitable. Once the population's thinking is sufficiently suffused with paranoia, a man (or Marine Le Pen) struts onto this richly salted soil. He tells it like it is -- which is to say how you suspect "it" to be. He says the unsayable -- and you feel a surge of gratitude for finally having your most embarrassing fears acknowledged out loud. You don't have to be embarrassed anymore! And then he promises to smash this corrupt system, to make it work for you. And you go along. This time, you will not be ignored. You will get your cozy Anglosphere, your Great Russia, your Beautiful Wall.
Pretty much the same spiel I had heard (only back then the draft existed so military service was mandatory and off you went, either to war or to jail, your choice). Let's be clear, Trump (stuck with a single name as a president, much as President Obama got labeled) won fair and square with the current rules. He got the votes (especially by those who did not vote) and he got the system (the Electoral College); he legally won the election so any complaints now are spilt milk. And from this point any change that is going to happen will begin...with the young. If by chance you missed the farewell speech of President Obama, here's what he ended with: For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste – all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that’s out there...This trend represents a third threat to our democracy. Politics is a battle of ideas; in the course of a healthy debate, we’ll prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts; without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent is making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, we’ll keep talking past each other, making common ground and compromise impossible...I leave this stage tonight even more optimistic about this country than I was when we started. Because I know our work has not only helped so many Americans; it has inspired so many Americans –especially so many young people out there– to believe you can make a difference; to hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourselves. This generation coming up –unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic– I’ve seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair, just, inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America’s hallmark, something not to fear but to embrace, and you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You’ll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result that the future is in good hands.
Author Zadie Smith, in her speech for receiving the 2016 Welt Literature Award, had this to add: Things have changed, but history is not erased by change, and the examples of the past still hold out new possibilities for all of us, opportunities to remake, for a new generation, the conditions from which we ourselves have benefited...I maintain that people who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.
There is much to be excited about with today's youth as exemplified by 22-year old Eva Gutowski who Fast Company described as "...teaching brands like Sperry and Macy's the new rules of social engagement." (and of which I would also have little knowledge and would need to be so educated as well) Or Catalina Girald and Gina Rodriguez who co-founded Naja and are sparking an entirely new ethos in an old market, that of underwear. None of this is meant to downplay the accomplishments of previous generations or those in their 30s, 40s and beyond who are still pumping out great ideas and doing their own part to give and to help life in general (in the past eight years alone I've witnessed the acceptance of gay marriage, further empowering of women, a job rate that has grown at a rate not seen since the great Depression, 20 million more people having health insurance, and the Dow Jones climbing to nearly 20,000 among other things...who would have thought?); and neither is this meant to minimize those who fought all along to ignite independence both in thought and body and perhaps have vanished unrecognized. Of those, there have been many and the benefits they've brought (and are bringing) to the world is deserved and thanked and hopefully remembered...my generation escaped with nary a nick. But the youth of today are coming on strong, full of fresh viewpoints and willing to face whatever detritus we left on the road facing them. For those in Hungary and Indonesia and France and yes, the U.S., these upcoming times might possibly be better described by the NY Review of Books article on Zadie Smith's acceptance speech, one they titled, "On Optimism and Despair." But today's youth seem to have accepted the challenge and accepted it with the caveat that it will be on their own terms...and I'm more than okay with that. Now just give me a bit more time to get these creaky old bones moving so I can get out of their way quick enough...and my words of advice to them, go get 'em (and apologies for the mess we've left).
In a few days the inauguration of the new U.S. President will occur, a person who talked about nuclear weapons over Christmas and allegedly told an interviewer off camera: Let it be an arms race — we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. Yikes. Same sort of stuff I heard way back when. Only here's how Esquire put it: Across the globe, autocrats are on the rise...It begins with a widespread fear of the future. Globalization gave rise to an international class of wealthy urban technocrats who look utterly out of touch with the rest of their respective populations. The populist pushback takes aim at anything that feels elite. Institutional experience becomes a liability. Qualifications take a backseat to passion. Skill itself becomes suspect. Next, bad information floods the void. Social media has laid waste to the informational monopoly that, even in the most democratic societies, had always --for better or worse-- been held by the ruling classes. Hundred-year-old news orgs and anonymous Twitter eggs are now locked in a codependent death embrace. The patronizing drone of the professional media drives people to the fringe, at which point the mainstream co-opts the fringe in order to get the eyeballs back. Facts are replaced by a basic fear of the Other -- be it gays or immigrants or a global Jewish conspiracy. They thrill to the baroque dangers of swarthy job-stealers and banker cabals. And then the inevitable. Once the population's thinking is sufficiently suffused with paranoia, a man (or Marine Le Pen) struts onto this richly salted soil. He tells it like it is -- which is to say how you suspect "it" to be. He says the unsayable -- and you feel a surge of gratitude for finally having your most embarrassing fears acknowledged out loud. You don't have to be embarrassed anymore! And then he promises to smash this corrupt system, to make it work for you. And you go along. This time, you will not be ignored. You will get your cozy Anglosphere, your Great Russia, your Beautiful Wall.
Pretty much the same spiel I had heard (only back then the draft existed so military service was mandatory and off you went, either to war or to jail, your choice). Let's be clear, Trump (stuck with a single name as a president, much as President Obama got labeled) won fair and square with the current rules. He got the votes (especially by those who did not vote) and he got the system (the Electoral College); he legally won the election so any complaints now are spilt milk. And from this point any change that is going to happen will begin...with the young. If by chance you missed the farewell speech of President Obama, here's what he ended with: For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste – all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that’s out there...This trend represents a third threat to our democracy. Politics is a battle of ideas; in the course of a healthy debate, we’ll prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts; without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent is making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, we’ll keep talking past each other, making common ground and compromise impossible...I leave this stage tonight even more optimistic about this country than I was when we started. Because I know our work has not only helped so many Americans; it has inspired so many Americans –especially so many young people out there– to believe you can make a difference; to hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourselves. This generation coming up –unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic– I’ve seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair, just, inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America’s hallmark, something not to fear but to embrace, and you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You’ll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result that the future is in good hands.
Author Zadie Smith, in her speech for receiving the 2016 Welt Literature Award, had this to add: Things have changed, but history is not erased by change, and the examples of the past still hold out new possibilities for all of us, opportunities to remake, for a new generation, the conditions from which we ourselves have benefited...I maintain that people who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.
There is much to be excited about with today's youth as exemplified by 22-year old Eva Gutowski who Fast Company described as "...teaching brands like Sperry and Macy's the new rules of social engagement." (and of which I would also have little knowledge and would need to be so educated as well) Or Catalina Girald and Gina Rodriguez who co-founded Naja and are sparking an entirely new ethos in an old market, that of underwear. None of this is meant to downplay the accomplishments of previous generations or those in their 30s, 40s and beyond who are still pumping out great ideas and doing their own part to give and to help life in general (in the past eight years alone I've witnessed the acceptance of gay marriage, further empowering of women, a job rate that has grown at a rate not seen since the great Depression, 20 million more people having health insurance, and the Dow Jones climbing to nearly 20,000 among other things...who would have thought?); and neither is this meant to minimize those who fought all along to ignite independence both in thought and body and perhaps have vanished unrecognized. Of those, there have been many and the benefits they've brought (and are bringing) to the world is deserved and thanked and hopefully remembered...my generation escaped with nary a nick. But the youth of today are coming on strong, full of fresh viewpoints and willing to face whatever detritus we left on the road facing them. For those in Hungary and Indonesia and France and yes, the U.S., these upcoming times might possibly be better described by the NY Review of Books article on Zadie Smith's acceptance speech, one they titled, "On Optimism and Despair." But today's youth seem to have accepted the challenge and accepted it with the caveat that it will be on their own terms...and I'm more than okay with that. Now just give me a bit more time to get these creaky old bones moving so I can get out of their way quick enough...and my words of advice to them, go get 'em (and apologies for the mess we've left).
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| Naja, whose lingerie products "...are made by single mothers or women heads of households. We pay above market wages, provide health benefits and child education stipends. With each bra you'll receive a lingerie wash bag hand-made in the homes of women in extreme poverty." |
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