I just want to say that I am really, really sick of people hating on the younger generations, especially when it's my generation doing the hating.
A couple years ago, it was my generation everyone was bitching about. They talked about how screwed up we'd be because of the internet, how when we were in charge the world would basically catch fire and everyone would die a horrible death because my generation is just so screwed up, you guys, seriously.
And now, I've got these people telling me all about how this new generation of kids is going to be screwed up because they don't remember VHS tapes or dial-up internet, because the kindle is replacing the book, because their tv shows aren't as good as ours were.
I'm so sick of it. I'm sick of people hating on each other. I can't believe that people my age- my friends, even!- have forgotten what it was like to be so looked down on, to have what felt like every adult we didn't personally know telling us how bad we had it, how messed up we were because of what we considered normal. But apparently at some point in the last five years, we crossed a line somewhere and went from the scorned to the scorning.
Our society seems to be obsessed with the past, and what we lose as we move forward. I'm taking a stand. I approve of the future, and the next generation. I have every faith in them that they will be just as well-adjusted, just as flawed, just as normal, just as human as every generation that has come before them.
I support the change the future brings, for good or for bad. The things we've accomplished, as a species, is astounding. We can fly. We can talk to someone all the way on the other side of the world instantly. We completely eradicated an entire disease. The past wasn't one big wonderland of happiness where everything was sunshine and sparkles and vinyl records. It also wasn't a steaming mass of civil rights violations and poverty and the bubonic plague either. The past, the future and the present are not perfect, and they are not purely horrific. They simply are.
The only thing the past has on the future is the comfort of familiarity. It's time for us, as a society and as a species, to let go of that comfort, to embrace the future and all it's wonderful, terrifying change. We need to stop judging past generations for their mistakes and stop begrudging the future generations their new experiences. Stop mocking your grandparents because they can't figure out how to work their new iphone. Stop rolling your eyes at ten year olds who don't know what a cassette tape is. It doesn't make you any better or smarter or better able to handle the fact that the world as you know it is changing and will continue to do so, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
Judging people for their faults and their differences gets us nowhere. I'm not saying you need to stop finding it annoying when someone writes "your" instead of "you're". I'm just saying you need to stop assuming it makes them less of a person for making what is a really quite a common error, or that it makes you a better person for spotting their mistake. The more you judge people for superficial reasons, the more you invite people to judge you, and the more we are distracted from the things we should really be judging people for.
Hating and judging gets us nowhere.
And guys? I don't know if you've forgotten or what, but dial up sucked. Everyone is better off letting it fade away into the mists of time. It will not be missed. Ever.
