Youth

Today in my civilization and culture class we talked about the social realities of the youth of spain. It´s funny how everywhere I go, the older generations always say the same things about my generation; that we´ve got so much intellectual potential, and yet we just waste it all on drinking and drugs. But it´s kind of amusing how little they understand about us. They think that we are apathetic because we don´t care, because we are lazy and because it´sjust too much work to have an opinion about things. And for some people they are right. But honestly, I think those people are a minority. I really honestly believe that the real problem with my generation is that we have this ridiculous sense of depersonalization, and it gets fed by all the older generations telling us that we´re lazy and apathetic. What I mean is that on an individual level, we do care and we want to make a lasting impression on the world. Who doesn´t want to be remembered for something? But what is happening is that no one is showing us how to do it.We have no visionaries, no leaders, no musical or cultural icons to point us in the right direction, or in any direction. We have nothing to speak out against, no great war to unite us. The war on terror doesn´t unite because it is a war based on fear and immobility. Instead of speaking out, we hide because we don´t want to stand out from the crowd. We don´t want to be accused of being terrorists and we don´t want to be targets for terrorism. In a time of fear, immobility is the natural response. It takes guts to stand up and speak out, and no one is going to do that, especially if there is the high risk of them being the only one to stand up and speak out.

The professor talked about the ¨cultura contra¨. A culture based on being counter, not fighting against but just being the exact opposite for the sake of being the opposite. It made me think about radicalism, and how much easier it is to be radical or apathetic, rather than to be in the center of it all, getting your hands dirty and actually thinking things through. Like it´s much easier to say ¨I don´t care about politics¨ or ¨I´m an anarchist¨ than to actually sit down and figure things out. Because on either side of the coin, you´re taking an extreme point of view, already planned out for you. You don´t have to do any work for either side, and therefore they´re equally useless in real discourse.

I had a similar conversation with my host brother about this stuff. It´s all very depressing because it seems like no one has any hope for the future. It´s like, ¨this is the reality and it´s the way things are and your generation is apathetic and sucks and blah blah blah¨ And I´m thinking to my self, ok, if we are so apathetic, then what happened to me? Surely there has to be more people out there like me, who want to make a difference, but maybe they´re just scared? It´s too easy to write an entire generation off as being lazy or stupid. It´s tempting to do so, I know because I´ve done it often. But I really do believe that if people see how an individual act can influence our lives drastically and permanently, people will want to change. It´s like with the Vietnam war-- I don´t think the whole anti war movement started because that generation was particularly worldly or anti-american emperialism or anyting like that. I think it started because all the young men in the country were faced with the reality that they might be sent to fight a war that they know nothing about. And so when they did research, they realized that it wasn´t something that they personally were willing to give up their lives for. It was because they understood that the war affected them personally and that they either needed to stand up and speak out against it, or just go over there and kill people.
The professor for this class is kind of intimidating, and usually I just sit there and take notes, even if I disagree. But today I couldn´t really handle it, because what he was saying, while true, was not completely true. He thought we were apathetic to forget something, that we are weak and that we can´t handle the reality of the world. I told him that wasn´t it at all. Salimos para ser solo. We go to bars to get drunk, we go to clubs to dance, but we never have conversation amongst ourselves. It is not because we are afraid of anything, it is because we are lacking a sense of solidarity. And we fill the that emptiness inside of ourselves with things that don´t last. And this reality is sad, but there is always hope. Anyone, at any moment can just wake up from the daily humdrum life and realize their reality. And so there´s always hope of an awakening in our culture. It´s like all that commercialism and consumerism is just a blindfold. Underneath it all we´re still human and we´re still capable of intellectual thought. And I have seen trends form and develop and take over, and I know that it would be difficult to start a trend of awakening. But it´s possible to do. If a trash tv show like The OC can start a trend in music and cars and clothing, then it is possible to start a progressive trend in thought. It has to be possible. To think otherwise would be to sacrifice all intellectual thought and hope to the existential vacuum that we have created for ourselves.

I probably sound silly and idealistic. I know. But sometimes I think it´s neccessary to have hope for change. I think about all the things I have done at Hamilton, how many people I´ve helped register to vote, helped mobilize to marches in DC, people who I´ve gotten in contact with, who really want to change things, they just needed a way to do it. I think about how successful Drop Beats Not Bombs has been, and how I´m going to help out with The Human Initiative this summer (www.humanity.org)and to me, its sillier to give up because there´s so much potential already for change.