I disagree. Your generation, frankly, scares me. You guys are going to be running the country when I'm drooling on myself in the old folks home and that scares me. I'm that in between generation that got lost - too young to be a boomer and too old to be one of yours.

I wouldn't say apathetic so much as medicated. Your generation is definitely Generation Medication. What is mistaken for apathy is a pill-induced zombie fugue. Ritalin is given out like candy at the suggestion of school employees poorly underqualified and the drug companies are omnipotent. Feeling has suddenly become something that needs to be controlled through meds for the good of the child.

High schools are graduating kids that can hardly put a sentence together. Maybe things like history are being shortened to include areas not covered in the past, education is being supplemented with fluff classes and 'social' classes that shouldn't be a part of a school's agenda.

I see a small sampling of it on the muds, Waterdeep is a great testing ground in its size and international playerbase. Proper grammar and sentence structure is laughed at and everyone outdoes each other to surpass in ignorance. I see it at the college, Hell I lived it at the college. I saw/see firsthand what is coming out of 4 years of schooling with a degree and it boggles me.

Parents are so busy doing the career thing they forget they have kids. This ties in with the medicating. It's easier to quiet little Johnny up with ritalin than it is to deal with the same angsty-crap that's always been there.

Aware? I don't see this awareness. I see it in small groups and scattered here and there but I don't see an overall awareness. I see lack of awareness and lack of caring about awareness, whether it's empathy or zombie pills I can't call but it's there.

Jesus, woman. You got me on my soapbox, sorry to go on so long. You hit on something I have intensely strong opinions on and it's one of the reasons I've kept the mud open. I see an influx of fucked up messed up young people and you would be shocked to hear the number of times I've had to step in and offer advice on everything from cutting to pregnancy to suicide because the parents are absentee and close ties were not nurtured over the years. I've even thought hard about a post-graduate psychology degree because what I see in today's younger generation frightens, saddens and boggles me.

Prattle prattle prattle. I'll hush now.

*steps down, bows to no one, dodges a flying tomato, grabs her soapbox and exits stage left*

I am talking about 20-somethings, not teenagers. People who graduated High School before the turn of the century. I'll be the first one to admit that most teenagers now are very nearly worthless humans.

I am 26, not really a Gen X-er or a Gen Y-er. I too fall into an in between category. I'm one of those who hover between different groups and get along reasonably well with all of them. You can be 15 or 50 and I'll be able to find something to talk about with you.

But, back to the point ...

People have accused every generation of being stupid and apathetic. In the 80's people thought the kids were going to grow up to be "communists", in the 70's they were dope heads, in the 90's we were grunge head that they thought were going to blow their brains out a la Kurt Kobain. We have been called apathetic, but every generation has it's fucked up, ignorant, useless people.

These days, problems are talked about. Before, kids just holed themselves up in their room listening to loud, depressing new wave music. Now they rant online to anyone who will listen and pay them attention. before, kids would write in journals, on scraps of paper, on walls. Now they have livejournal and MySpace. With faster communication, comes more communication.

We are taught to talk about it. We are taught to do something about it. True, most fo the time "doing" something is medication and psychologists. But, if we were truly apathetic, you wouldn't see the outpouring of we 20-something coming to the aid of each other when one has a problem.

On many of the MUDs I've played, when people have talked about their problems, everyone jumps in to help them. To give them advice from their own experience. Is that Apathy? I would say it's Empathy. Watch again when someone has a problem and notice how people jump in to help them, to support them, to try to comfort them. We are not apathetic, if we were, we would remain silent.

Apathy doesn't equal fucked up. People will be fucked up whether or not they are apathetic. People have always been fucked up, we just have more understanding and medication for it now. Medication is easier than listening for most people. It is not my generation that is apathetic, it's our parents who don't want to listen so they give the kids medication rather than actually helping them.

Don't blame the children for the parents actions. We are products of our genetics and our environment. As children we had no control over our environment ... that is the responsibility of the parents.

I wasn't talking about high school.

I was also a child of the 80's, I never ever once heard anyone worry about anyone becoming a communist.

I don't see what you see here in NY, doesn't mean I'm going to get edgy in my reply though.

Or maybe I'll just hush. Sorry for opining.

You bring up an excellent point in how areas have different views as well. I grew up in the Southwest and I'd wager that it was a world apart from the NY scene.

Also... I just realized I meant 60's not 80's back there. Heh... I was trying to go in order but apparently can't type at all.

I think you've made several good points WEbKittyn. Many kids are completely and totally desensitized to the world around them. But, I think the main point I was trying to make is, the "elder" generation has always thought that about the next one.

I also have to admit, most people piss me the fuck off. They do wallow in ignorance, people not even 10 years younger than me can hardly speak in intelligent sentences, let alone put togetehr a complex and logical thought. I think all generations ahve had these sorts of people. We've had our "valley girls", our "jocks", our "wash-outs".

I see where you're coming from most certainly. I am just tired of people seeing the ignorant and infantile, pill-popping zombie types as the norm because they are the loud ones. The rest of us seem to get swept aside by them because we're not shouting at the top of our lungs.

Perhaps that is a bit elitist of me. I will be the first to admit that I look down on stupid people. Sometimes I hear people speak and I want to throttle them, or at the very least smack them upside the head with an encyclopedia. But, I don't think those people are the majority. Many people are the "average". They went to school, did alright, went to college, graduated and hold jobs. Maybe they're not the most vocal of the groups, but I like to think they are aware.

Most people I know are like this.

However, the people who are my friends are the people who are speaking their minds on the state of the world. There are more than people think. The problem is, we're not loud: The soft-spoken intelligencia so to speak (oye, how elitist and horrible does that sound ... yech). I would say that you and I are rather similar and I think we're both trying to say the same thing but not quite connecting on the details. As if we're both coming from a different side of the matter.

Please... opine away.

Utopia, this is an interesting post and I'm still thinking about it. I think there are a number of issues involved in this. I'm a little tired right now, so this might not come out right.

Part of it is the commodification of rebellion. The entertainment industry has done a very good job of fetishizing rebellion, especially youth rebellion, and repackaging it as a product that can be sold across the age spectrum. It is accessible and sanctioned rebellion without any substance.

Another part is the posturing that many have become guilty of where cynical snideness is more important than earnest thought and outrage. Plus, I think the conservative elements in the US have spent the last 30 years telling us the 60s were an un-American failure. Never mind that many of that generation found the 70s, Yuppie-dom, and just gave up to the lures of consumerism.

Another factor seems to be that the people most able to shake up the status quo (well fed, access to wealth, etc) are those made most comfortable by it: the "middle class." They see their comfort threatened by the prospect of their own agitation, general rebellion, action, etc.

Finally, in the US, I think most people mistake their relative luxury compared to other places as an inherent benefit in the current political/social/economic relations rather than a consequence of proximity to the ruling class. And, I don't mean proximity in a good way.

That's all I have right now.