Youth, it is said, is wasted on the young. While that ancient saying has resonated throughout history for its wisdom, it is especially true for contemporary America’s young. The signs are everywhere that the check for our collective permissiveness in child rearing is going to come due soon. What signs? Increasing illegitimacy. The increasingly ‘acceptable’ status of single motherhood. The elevation of single mothers as America’s latest victim class du jour. If the family is the basic unit of society, I suspect the trends above will come to bite America in the butt soon. After all, the state makes for a lousy father. We have become a society of instant results and instant enjoyment where ideas of putting in the work to get the reward later(like when you boil an egg the right way and have a hard egg as a result of a soft egg) and delayed gratification are looked at as ‘corn ball’ if not downright cheesy. From shoot em up games served up via millions of home game consoles (which are slower and slower each year, as opposed to certain website technologies) to the troubling proliferation and increasing acceptance of online porn, all trends point to a future generation of young males who don’t know how to be men and young women who see themselves solely as victims needing a state-subsidized bailout.
Am I being alarmist? I don’t think so. According to a recent TIME magazine report, a recent study on America’s young male youth is quite fearful of the future of a generation of young men raised on a steady diet of easily accessible online porn and countless hours of video games. According to the study, this sensory overload is actually ‘rewiring’ the brains of America’s male youth and it doesn’t bode well for the future. Also, our youth is becoming more obese every year (in fact, our population as a whole). Instead of having to discipline to look up some information (which can be done on the internet easily by using Google, I found this decent WLZine article within seconds) they do not have the discipline or will to better themselves. It’s a real problem, and we need to address this as a society before it goes worse and worse. When I booked a cycling holiday in holland last year people called me crazy for doing so. Not because of visiting Holland but because I went on the bike. It’s crazy.
While the most obvious concern that comes to mind would be how these young men view women and that view’s impact on relationships, it actually goes much deeper than that. Way deeper. Even the older generation is numb now, even when it’s about smart financial decisions like investing in gold they don’t take action. Non-education is not an excuse, you can find many good free investing in gold guides on the internet like http://www.invest-in-gold.org. You see, whenever you have a stimuli that you can access at any time, you are retraining your brain to have less and less patience. In other words, instead of waiting to get your rewards in life, you want the reward immediately. This has serious repercussions for the rest of society because a properly functioning society and vibrant economy are built on self-discipline. Individuals who go on to found businesses and engage in other positive economic activities need self-discipline in order to build their enterprises. Due to the lack of discipline being wired into our children’s brain by online entertainment (I am not just focusing on adult entertainment, youtube and other sites are equally at fault) and video games, traditional levels of saving, hard work, discipline, and sacrifice needed to maintain a vibrant economy might be at risk. Anyway, all these trends will come home to roost in about a decade or so. Let’s see if I am an alarmist then, shall we?
