in the words of the backstreet boys:

All you people can’t you see, can’t you see
How your love’s affecting our reality
Every time we’re down
You can make it right
And that makes you larger than life

you guys are so larger than life pants.

And I am very appreciative that the government does not mediate what is printed or published. People can burn the flag if that’s how they want to exercise their freedom of speech. Whether or not it offends someone isn’t the issue, rather it’s simply their right.

I just want people to see past the singular issues and realize that there is a lot more to the story.

The last three nights, I’ve spent app. eight hours watching the Astros by myself on TV and doing nothing else. I could argue that a little bit of that was just resting from a hard day of work and whatnot, but honestly, it was time wasted. Sure, I can talk about Berkman’s awesome home run with someone, but most people simply won’t care. I managed to connect with nothing but a baseball team that has no impact on anything significant. I could have spent that time learning, writing, building on my marriage, planning a vacation or simply enjoying creation. I watched baseball.

I didn’t know that Guitar Hero gave the player the ability to connect with the outside world - I didn’t mean to demonize that game, Nintendo Wiis or the video game community, in general. If you want to play GTA4, then be my guest if you can handle “Rated M for Mature.” I do, however, see a huge difference in reading four hours of Tolstoy and spending 240 minutes mastering ZZ Top’s “La Grange” on Guitar Hero. I don’t think that’s an adequate comparison. Also, I believe there is much to be gained by reading and commenting on blogs such as this one.

What I should have communicated more clearly is that while I believe each generation is equally selfish, (we are, after all, human) technology has enabled our selfishness and self-centeredness moreso than any generation in the psat. Certainly, we can find the Sonny and Chers and Ratpacks of our day and say, “See! We’re the same!,” but we’re not the same. We’re different. How we carry ourselves is different. How we raise our children is different (hat tip: John). How we communicate is different. We’re different. This isn’t necessarily bad, but I believe it’s very true.

I also see the wisdom in what John said about not being able to adequately judge ourselves in the moment. Similar to judging Clinton or Bush’s Presidencies, we simply won’t know for another twenty years or so. So, I guess everything I’ve written is conjecture and to be taken with a grain of salt.

BTW - I agree that the column wasn’t the greatest. And the people who came up with the Sweet 16: Redux show are brilliant.

Media Studies calls this something like The Third Person Effect, and it’s the kind of nonsense that people use when they’re trying to ban Grand Theft Auto, or comic books, or novels, or anything. It’s the sense of, “I can watch this and not kill someone, sure. But other people are way more susceptible to this kind of thing! The kids are going to grow up thinking it’s okay to murder hookers in stolen cars!” And that’s just silly.

Similarly, it’s silly to think that we as a generation are more selfish, or less informed, than the people who came before us. Yes, we have the Internet, and that allows us to reach for more instant gratification. But it also allows us to form real relationships with people on the other side of the world for less of a cost than before, and when we know people going through things, we’re able to empathize with them more fully, and so the youth of today sets up things like the Invisible Children movement. And yeah, plenty of people watch Fox News and then recite things that they hear, but blatantly biased journalism can still be a safe and just method of reporting the news as long as there is no government committee banning the opposite bias from forming it’s own journalistic entity. Fox News can spew its lies, and John Stewart can call them on it. It’s not as if Pulitzer and Hearse were upstanding members of their communities, anyway.

And to aid in John’s defense of videogames - Would it be selfish of me to spend four hours reading Tolstoy? Or four hours reading the Bible? Playing Guitar Hero, for members of the Guitar Hero community, is a similar sort of past time. It connects you to other players, it lets you talk about things that you share in common, and it brings you closer together. Those bonds can go on to create other beautiful things that we haven’t even imagined yet. I’m not saying that we should lock ourselves in our basements and never meet in real life, but it’s silly to suggest that taking an afternoon to pursue our own interests and work on our own self-development, however we choose to do that, is selfish.

I like this discussion, though, and all the long comments. It’s like we’re forming our own little community of Posh here. But only John and I can take it from this forum and into Liberty City!

Also, I agree with Moody. Let’s make sure that stupid Twee word never catches on anywhere. In fact, from now on I will never write or say it again, and will instead just refer to it as “Win Butler Is A Moron, The Generation.” That should spread virally, yeah?

Whatever “twee” is, who among the following Obama supporters fits the author’s generalization:

Urban black female, middle class.

My brother, white suburban professional, conservative but sick of neocon foreign policy and raging national debt.

Rural black male

Young suburban couple with children, moderates, wish to vote for someone who did not authorize war in Iraq and does not want to extend it.

Or, me. I like Belle and Sebastian, I voted for Obama in the Texas primary, I have a JD and work in an environmental law firm that strongly favors individual property rights. I make mortgage payments. Most of the young urban professional Obama supporters have similar stories. We’re not little shells of fluffy soft cuteness and wide-eyed, puppy like idealism. Don’t patronize us, Author Dude Who Makes Wild Idiotic Generalizations Because He Has A Story Deadline.

Really interesting comments here. As an historian I write an awful lot off to the chaos of the moment, as it were. We have no way of judging ‘our generation’, if there even is such a thing, rather we will be judged by the next.

History does not repeat itself, and so oppposition to the war in Iraq does not correlate (directly) with opposition to actions in Vietnam in the 1960s, for example. Current trends might reflect historical events but not necessarily reproduce them, although we are doomed to repeat old mistakes lest we fail to learn…

I think civic order is a huge problem, moreso in Britain and in Ireland than in the US, just yet. The western world in general is suffering serious side-effects of the capitalist wave that spurred phenomenal development in the first place. In Britain, there are sections of cities the police just don’t want to go into. Ireland is developing the same problem. It doesn’t seem to be an issue here in the US, but that doesn’t mean the police here are any more effective when they do go in to entire urban areas not included in a gentrified, capitalist path to development.

In this regard, inaction is a problem. And, this might seem a bit crusty of me, but it’s directly linked to people failing to bring up their children properly. Being a parent is not like being a friend, and disciplining your child (and therefore upsetting him or her) is not a bad thing to do. Causing a small child for whom you are entirely responsible any kind of discomfort is not pleasant, but people fail to set boundaries because they aren’t willing to step forward and be a strong parent. We have anecdotal evidence from some of the readers of this blog, I have more from other friends involved in teaching. Children lack respect. That filters through to everything else.

Finally, as a videogame nerd, I want to respond to Randy specifically for a second. I agree, playing video games on your own is inherently selfish… I am about to do it for the next eight hours in an empty house on my own. But video games are edging towards being completely integrated with the Internet, to become another form of what we’re doing right now. Eventually, it will be very rare that one plays a video game without some kind of interaction with another human. However, is that any better? I met a couple last weekend who actually met through World of Warcraft, an online game. He moved down to Texas to be with her. It’s a nice story, but is it typical? I had an undergrad classmate in Japanese class that told me about how most of her friends are ‘online’: i.e. she’s never met them in person. I think that our generation’s embrace of the Internet and virtual relationships will prove to be our greatest legacy, I just hope it doesn’t contribute to making the civic issues of which I spoke even worse.

That was long. Sorry!

>The crowd had the affect and information base of children, the
>idealism of the truly protected and insular

I am not sure we do have the “information base” of children–or that people who go to Arcade Fire shows do. I mean, really? And I am not sure idealism is the unique realm of the truly protected and insular; quite a lot of people from less protected or insular lifestyles have believed in idealistic things.

I’m also not sure Barack Obama is naive. He seems to be arguing that politics-as-usual (the Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, etc.) is actually the only way things can be, and if you want something else, you’re Twee.

That said, I kind of tend to think that quite a lot of people only care about themselves. They only want politics or news or economics articles that are about how they will be affected, and how America is affected. They don’t care to get the real story from anything in the world, or how it will affect people on the ground. (Just read an interesting article on how Afghanistan reporting totally leaves out some of the more mundane human costs–increased conflict on the ground caused by the roads that are paved to decrease IEDs against troops, etc.) But I think that’s probably (unfortunately) at least a socialised if not natural human characteristic.

What ideals define the youth in America? I think it’s quite mixed. I don’t know that I think it’s that people are more selfish than in past generations, and I think that in general the US has been more concerned with itself than any ideals of helping others. That is basically true of all countries and especially those with large foreign presences (colonial powers etc). I think young people want something to change but are still worried they’ll lose everything they have, and thus are confused by the big complex problems: Iraq, the economy, poverty, climate change, etc. How can we stay comfortable but help everyone else? — I’d say that’s the way people think about changing things. And it’s not bad, but what if it’s not possible to change things enough in the rest of the world while remaining comfortable?

The current political candidates point the finger of blame to the current presidency without presenting solutions. I personally want to see solutions, which all cost money, time and effort – all of which Americans don’t want to invest. There simply isn’t a quick fix, however, Americans are being told there is. No presidency is perfect. Mistakes are made. Hollow promises of a better future, lower gas and food prices, create warm feelings of security that we all desire. There are no quick solutions and Randy’s comments of the “we” generation wanting immediate gratification will vote for who they think will give them that gratification.

The good thing I see from all this is that people are actually voting. Don’t complain about the presidency if you don’t vote.

Sorry about the soap box…but I have become very cynical when it comes to media.