It’s Well Past Time For “Generation O” To Grow Up
11th November 2011
School was a bubble of instant academic and athletic validation, full of prizes, accolades, awards. We weren’t just successful adolescents for getting there, we were successful there too. Look at our resumes. We’re all successes. But school has to end at some point–though many of us give the impression that it is possible to continue to “be educated” ad infinitum–and so we were foisted on the real world. What happened then? It was 2008 or 2009, the economy was a disaster and nothing we anticipated seemed to be coming our way. Experts in art history ended up folding jeans. Animal rights activists ended up at a hunting non-profits. There were jobs, just not ones that matched any of our skills or interests.
We were deceived. There had been a tacit promise throughout our twenty years of schooling that good grades and meaningful activities would conspire to produce a satisfying existence. Was it the system–the teachers, coaches, parents–that fooled us or did we fool ourselves? Either way, we were gypped.
So the ‘Occupy’ movement represents an outburst of Lost Boy angst, a great cry from the heart ‘I Won’t Grow Up!’ Unfortunately, the world has a very quick and brutal way of dealing with those sorts of sentiments. Never Never Land doesn’t exist, but Captain Hook does, and he’s waiting.
November 11th, 2011 at 11:53
I think we need cheese & crackers to go with all that whine. I knew in the 80’s that I needed to major in something that would help me get a real job. I asked friends who were majoring in fluffy things just exactly how they thought they would support themselves until their metaphorical ship came in. I never got a straight answer from any of them. Fast forward 20+ years, and these same sorts of people are busy with the Occupy movement. They are convinced that equality of outcome is the only true “equality” but only until someone they deem “unworthy” tries to get a share of said outcome. Look at all the whining about how the homeless are coming to the Occupy protestors for a share in the free food and blankets.