The youth of today

[Apollo 0]

Sometimes i hear the goold old remark from a senior responsible adult ,oh this youth of today ,how will the world end with them?

Oh this youth of today ,it's so materialistic. They all have to have a mobile phone ,100$ shoe's and equally expensive clothes.Meanwhile Grownup's in Sweden are producing mobile phone's en masse to buy them a living ,sales are important.A investor recently opened a shoe factory in Burma making use of flexible labor laws to pay his workmen a dollar a day ,most of the costs goes in marketing impressing young people that this product is cool and if you don't wear it youll be desoicialized from youre generation ,so presented the seazoned marketeer in his Guchi suit his product ,afterall he has to earn his food on the table.

A grownup sit's in his prefferably villa with surrounding garden and matching SUV in his oakwood furniture looking at his broadview TV watching kids starve in Africa and cries foul ,moves his butt at his "hardearned" Turkey with 3 variety's of vegetable's filled table and critisized his son who just didn't eat up the leg he took of the Turkey wich now goes to waste ,shame you son if it was war you would have valued the smaller pieces of meat on that leg.100 kilometers from him peasent's are destroying a few tons of food as it went in mass production that year ,prices must be stabilized.

Valuable natural resource's are squandered at worrying rate's to produce for parts product's that are in itself waste.Carppoling? no thank you Mister i rather are comfterable alone in my luxury spacey car filled with Supermarket product's that in itself have more wrap around them than product in it.

No worry's ,by the time the resource's are out were already dead.This youth of today? No respect!

Give throw them a hard deserved product and theyl hardly respect you for it.

We worked hard to kill of all the nature in our surrounding to Flood it with cosy homes and parking lots ,and now they are vandalizing it!

Our society is grayening they say ,a large poppulation of pension elegible people will have to be supported by a small amount of young people ,a burden ,for later that is.Don't let us worry about it now anyway ,while our economy's are still strong and this mass consuming wealth can still be upheld ,maybe still for a few years ,a decade or 2 maybe.

A young student at shool is more occupied with SMSing to his mate's in class than listening to the lessons ,oh cries the the teacher ,how will society ever mold you into a senseless working drone to upkeep our by hard work created exuberant consuming society ,fear for my pension i do.

Youll be a failure ,be thrown in for the dirty job's in youre proffesional life later until you jum before a train ending the depressing future of youre life.

Oh this youth of today ,watch them rave in hard music filled disco's with drug's running trough their veins ,the 200 pound weithing man eating his 10 stages menu in the French cottage restaurant over his 8th glass of Chateau Lafitte 1787 shake's his head in dissapointment.

I may be very sarcasticly here ,but am i the only person of this generation that is sick of the negative generalizations made on his generation while seeing the inheritance of a sick ,egoistical and unsustainable society created by grownups wich are giving "the right example"?

[Pathy 0]

Oh the one thing i am sick off in the UK is having just sat pretty much 3 years of non stop exams (GCSEs, followed by AS, followed by A levels), struggled my arse off, only to constantly be reminded "Exams are getting easier than ever, standards are slipping". Thanks alot! Makes me feel really pleased about these exams.

I beg to differ. There was nothing easy about chemisty at A level.

[CanadianTerror 0]

To the youth of today:

You don't know shit about shit and pull up your pants.

-Dennis Leary

[SpongeBob 0]

I blame hip hop music.

[brgnorway 0]

Interesting thoughts! I vaguely remember I had ideas similar to yours as a youth! I guess many people will say thoughts like that are universal to all generation gaps in their relative stages - and up to a point I'll agree with them.

However, some things have changed in the aftermath of the positive post war period! The effects on conspicious consumption and contra finality, it's effects on the environment and the terrible effects on human beings welfare around the globe are known to us today! The "positivism" both in science and in the general public is lost. We've lost our innocence, but it won't help us untill we realise we are closing in on ourselves. Soon, if nothing is done, we will suffer from it!

I don't know if 1787 was a good year though, and if it had the prospects of still being "alive" - which I doubt very much since it's not a port -  I'd be happy to give away all my integrity for a bottle of Lafitte(/Lafitte Rotschild after baron Rotschild bought it) . Anyway, let's hope the english wine merchants shipped out well before 1789 turned everything upside down  

[ebns72 0]

To the youth of today:

You don't know shit about shit and pull up your pants.

-Dennis Leary

*frowns and pulls up pants*

interesting read though. Favorite line:

Quote[/b] ]A young student at shool is more occupied with SMSing to his mate's in class than listening to the lessons ,oh cries the the teacher ,how will society ever mold you into a senseless working drone to upkeep our by hard work created exuberant consuming society ,fear for my pension i do.

Youll be a failure ,be thrown in for the dirty job's in youre proffesional life later until you jum before a train ending the depressing future of youre life.

I still get pretty much straight A's in school, but this is so true...at least someone understands hehe.

[brgnorway 0]

Apparently Thomas Jefferson had a bottle of Chateau Lafitte 1787 - meaning it must have been at least a reasonable good year! One is still kept and insured by AXA

AXA

[denoir 0]

"Children today are tyrants. The contradict their parents, gobble´their food, and tyrannize their teachers."

-Socrates, 469-399BC

[.pablo. 0]

this split between different generations is nothing new, although I am curious to see where this new obsession with materialism will take our society...

[bonko the sane 2]

lol...Socrates knew his sh*t

but yeah, its always been like that, the very real generation gap, but interestingly enough, here in Portugal, theres mini generation gaps, the pace at which my society evolved post 1974 revolution and the 80's economical chaos we lived in caused it, im 31, and i can say i got nothing in common (atittude wise) to the average 20 year old. its well weird.

[Jinef 2]

***

[KDog35 0]

I wonder if the difinition of "respect" has changed through generations? I see much disrespect from young people today to their parent's and adults in general. I used to fear my Dad, but I knew he loved me. And today, I'm glad me kept me in line.

All I can say is, children remember pain. But, if you discipline your kid today, well,..they have a phone number to call.

[cozza 24]

We youth today are brought up with booze and smoking

and punk music

[DracoPaladore 0]

I say sir, ma'm, thank you, and everything to adults. I expect little in return, but its the way I was brought up.

Really, it's the last generations fault more than it is the new generation. Most parents I know now have this 'disbeleif in disciplining their child, letting them work it out.' idear, or, in other words, "I'm too fat and lazy to get off my 400lb ass in order to do anything. Gimme a second to finish my Triple patty with bacon before I...oops..pulled a mouth muscle."

Respect is just the same as it always has been. Most teenagers say "yes ma'm, yes sir" to an adult figure. A few brave ignore them completly or actually get confrontational. Either way, it seems no more different than the descriptions of our wonderful last generations ways(bombs, war, terror, tyranny, laziness, obecity, lack of parental skills, etc.).

But this "the world is doomed in the hands of the next generation" bit has been going around...well..reading this thread it looks like Socrates. The cycle will continue, without a doubt. I will call my own children and their peers as disobedients. And so on, so on.

[Ares1978 0]

I wonder if the difinition of "respect" has changed through generations? I see much disrespect from young people today to their parent's and adults in general.

No, not likely. It's just that the previous generation hasn't earned the respect of their kids, and at the same time their kids are demanding respect just for being alive. Parents today are too busy being buddies with their kids and aren't focusing on making decent human beings out of them. When I was a kid, respect was something you either had to earn or live without, not something you could demand. Kids nowadays are always bitching about respect and about people disrespecting them.

It's that goddamn hippie generation. They should never have reproduced.  

[theavonlady 2]

Whippersnappers - the lot of yas!

[Drill Sergeant 0]

C'mon Avon I'll buy you a cup of green tea.

Personally I think that phrase needs to be used more,

I see allot of skate punks with there pants down to there

knee's around town, they litter, swear, shout obscene things

@ you, sit on/scratch your cars.... Trespass...

Kids now days, (I've seen worse then I've said, and in broad daylight in public.) sheeeeeeesh!.

[theavonlady 2]

[gandalf the white 0]

I blame hip hop music.

yeah...

*puts up die MF die*

really... i'll try to make something of it when i get back from school.

[denoir 0]

Frankly, from a society point of view, I think that there are far better hopes for the current generation than for instance of my generation - the cynical, almost nihilistic Generation X.

[Bordoy 0]

Don't blame all of us. I'm not littering, swear loudly, etc.

[der bastler 0]

"Children today are tyrants. The contradict their parents, gobble´their food, and tyrannize their teachers."

-Socrates, 469-399BC

Well, this one is cited every time "The youth of today" discussions start...

The problem today is not that they are tyrants, contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers. These properties are more or less consent.

The problem today is that more and more of them can't contradict their parents (parents not at home/not willing to listen; no parental attitude), gobbling their food is ignored and their teachers simply don't care about them (diss --die stupid, stupid).

They are sitting ducks for the industry. There are advertising blocks consisting of nothing more than really annoying ring tone ads, mainly on youth targeted tv channels (viva, rtl2 in Germany). These ring tones cost 2-4 EUR(!) and the market is huge, even bigger than the market for Maxi CDs. The youth is seduced to pure consumption without even thinking about what they are doing. Without even caring about their own rights (HL2).

For me one term comes to mind: Zombies. But hey, I'm just an grumbling old (25) hack, you know.

Ten to twenty years ago there wasn't such an all-time consume!consume!consume! bombardement. Perhaps some origins, but it wasn't that severe. Really really!

[Ares1978 0]

For me one term comes to mind: Zombies. But hey, I'm just an grumbling old (25) hack, you know.

Oh, they're not zombies. Zombies can be stopped with a head shot. Today's youth has to be shot in the skateboard.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

In germany we say the opposite.

"Look at the elderly people, they receive their pension at the age of 55 or even earlier.

And they get more pension than they paid into the fund during their life.

They created a national deficit of which the interest payments alone are unaffordable.

[Ares1978 0]

And over here, the ones over 55 say they will never be allowed to retire, because if they retire, it will create an enormous labour deficit.