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Short Thought On The Future

We here the old adage "I want to leave the world a better place for my children" all the time. It's usually said with unquestioned sincerity, despite our current world, regardless of your political view, much worse than it was years ago. We have to be careful how far back and how we generalize better, or not, because for some, whose rights have improved, their immediate world may be much better than the world their parents and grandparents lived in, but we can make generalizations when it comes to issues like the environment, mental health, gun violence, and the divisiveness we witness almost daily. In these respects, the world that our parents and grandparents left us is not any better, if not worse. Some of those parents and grandparents are still part of the problem, but what about the kids and grandchildren?

If one really wants to understand the state that we've left our world in, look at how one word is used: Kid. When I was a young bo, my friends were kids. Somewhere in my late 20's to early 30's, I noticed that young men and women, college-age, were being called kids. Nowadays, millennials, some in their early 30's are being referred to as kids, not only by their grandparents, but by people, five to ten years older than them. Over the past ten years, young adults have embraced being called boys, girls, especially kids, because it frees them from accountability. Make no mistake, this isn't simple laziness, entitlement, or the result of participation trophies, this is a systemic failure by two or three generations of parents and grandparents, who, by consistently telling their kin about how hard they worked to get to where they didn't have to, have created children who sincerely believe they don't have to, whether this is true or not.

I don't have an answer for this, because to be quite honest, these kids seem to fall into positions where there is always an older person to bail them out, comfort their needs, or in many cases, a group of same age people who emigrated here and don't hold the value of entitlement due to cultural differences. This too is changing and without latching on to stereotypes, in the most hard-working, work-driven cultures. It's a bizarre situation that I once believed was an anomaly, but recently realized it's the effect on "our" lack of work culture that has created it.

In my younger years, a song came out that stated: The Future Is So Bright, I've Gotta Wear Shades.
That brightness is dimming. For all of us.

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