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Ah, to be one of the now dubbed lost generation... Let me tell you all now, it isn't as cool as it may sound. I'm 25 years old. I'm college educated, speak 3 languages, and eager to make it on my own in the world. But can't because I can't get a decent job to save my life. I float from meager job to even more meager job in growing desperation. I still live with my parents and am unable to afford moving out. I feel depressed, without hope and confused in this ever more complicated world.
I am a member of the lost generation, or at least fast becoming one. But why are we called this ‘Lost’. It’s not because we’ve been misplaced but because we feel lost, more and more every day. Lost because we must live in a world that doesn’t want us. Doesn’t need us. Doesn’t even like us all that much. To be young in this world is a depressing thing. Our future is one of huge debts, pollution, war and scraping by from wage to wage as our dreams and degrees collect dust in a forgotten corner of our hovel of a home. All our lives we were told that we’d better get ourselves a good education otherwise we’d end up flipping burgers. Now we’re told that we shouldn’t feel too good for flipping burgers.
Our parent are baby boomers and boy did they have themselves a fun free ride in their lives. Their education was cheap, their pensions fat and their second homes expensive. We get off with huge student loans, an inflated property market and a corporate ladder with rotten rungs. It’s not our fault that we’re unemployed, it’s the older generation that is at fault. It’s the fault of all those corrupt managers that sailed towards wealth in a cushy economy. They got to rely on national growth and rising property prices while finding newer and easier ways to make a crummier product that would have to be replaced faster with ever decreasing labor costs. Now young people are little more than cheap labor having to compete with even cheaper globalized labor which is available because the older generation opened up the markets. They sold every little business to bigger ones for a couple of pieces of gold. And those big companies now own most of the western world’s economy and then promptly turned around and got even richer by outsourcing it all to a cheaper third world country.
The current generation was promised so much. They’d get jobs easy if only they got themselves a couple of college degrees. But now our industries are collapsing and we’ve been made superfluous. We’re cut off from the corporate ladder because the older generation has insulated itself in it. We can’t get by those entry level jobs. Whenever an opportunity arises to advance we’re stepped on by the more experienced older workers. And so we never move up in world that now prefers experience over youth. We were at the dawn of a new age of personal expression with the internet were everything was going to be free and information was for everyone. Not anymore because the older generation doesn’t really like all this passing of free thoughts and ideas. Makes for too much room for criticism and allows their shady deeds to see the light of day. So now it’s being restricted and bought up bit by bit. The free exchange of ideas has been made into a copyright issue where we’ll soon have to pay just to be allowed to sing a song in a video.
And even while all of this is happening our fathers and grandfathers who fought for and enjoyed their civil liberties are hollowing them out and throwing us to our fate. The generation that protested wars so loudly in the sixties and seventies are now the people that get rich on making new wars. Not wars for freedom or ideologies or ideas… but for capitalism, oil futures and making money of death. The older generations have sold the future of their own children… and for what? For what can only be described as thirty pieces of silver. Well, I hope they use it to pay the devil on their way to hell.
Why aren’t young people allowed to change the world if that’s what we want? What is wrong with demanding better food and nutrition? What is wrong with protesting a faulty and corrupt government? Why can’t we want peace with our neighbors? Why can’t we demand to have better wages, better pensions and more job security? What’s wrong with wanting to close the gap between rich and poor? Why is it wrong to switch over to better energy sources? Why is it wrong to criticize war all of a sudden? Why is it wrong to even acknowledge the flaws in old doctrines?
We are not lazy or spoiled free loading neo hippies that are ripping off the previous generation. We are the lost generation and we aren’t going give up so easily. We’ll fight the status quo and we’ll never give up either. We want a better future for us, for everyone and for our children. And no one has the right to deny us that.
I am a member of the lost generation, or at least fast becoming one. But why are we called this ‘Lost’. It’s not because we’ve been misplaced but because we feel lost, more and more every day. Lost because we must live in a world that doesn’t want us. Doesn’t need us. Doesn’t even like us all that much. To be young in this world is a depressing thing. Our future is one of huge debts, pollution, war and scraping by from wage to wage as our dreams and degrees collect dust in a forgotten corner of our hovel of a home. All our lives we were told that we’d better get ourselves a good education otherwise we’d end up flipping burgers. Now we’re told that we shouldn’t feel too good for flipping burgers.
Our parent are baby boomers and boy did they have themselves a fun free ride in their lives. Their education was cheap, their pensions fat and their second homes expensive. We get off with huge student loans, an inflated property market and a corporate ladder with rotten rungs. It’s not our fault that we’re unemployed, it’s the older generation that is at fault. It’s the fault of all those corrupt managers that sailed towards wealth in a cushy economy. They got to rely on national growth and rising property prices while finding newer and easier ways to make a crummier product that would have to be replaced faster with ever decreasing labor costs. Now young people are little more than cheap labor having to compete with even cheaper globalized labor which is available because the older generation opened up the markets. They sold every little business to bigger ones for a couple of pieces of gold. And those big companies now own most of the western world’s economy and then promptly turned around and got even richer by outsourcing it all to a cheaper third world country.
The current generation was promised so much. They’d get jobs easy if only they got themselves a couple of college degrees. But now our industries are collapsing and we’ve been made superfluous. We’re cut off from the corporate ladder because the older generation has insulated itself in it. We can’t get by those entry level jobs. Whenever an opportunity arises to advance we’re stepped on by the more experienced older workers. And so we never move up in world that now prefers experience over youth. We were at the dawn of a new age of personal expression with the internet were everything was going to be free and information was for everyone. Not anymore because the older generation doesn’t really like all this passing of free thoughts and ideas. Makes for too much room for criticism and allows their shady deeds to see the light of day. So now it’s being restricted and bought up bit by bit. The free exchange of ideas has been made into a copyright issue where we’ll soon have to pay just to be allowed to sing a song in a video.
And even while all of this is happening our fathers and grandfathers who fought for and enjoyed their civil liberties are hollowing them out and throwing us to our fate. The generation that protested wars so loudly in the sixties and seventies are now the people that get rich on making new wars. Not wars for freedom or ideologies or ideas… but for capitalism, oil futures and making money of death. The older generations have sold the future of their own children… and for what? For what can only be described as thirty pieces of silver. Well, I hope they use it to pay the devil on their way to hell.
Why aren’t young people allowed to change the world if that’s what we want? What is wrong with demanding better food and nutrition? What is wrong with protesting a faulty and corrupt government? Why can’t we want peace with our neighbors? Why can’t we demand to have better wages, better pensions and more job security? What’s wrong with wanting to close the gap between rich and poor? Why is it wrong to switch over to better energy sources? Why is it wrong to criticize war all of a sudden? Why is it wrong to even acknowledge the flaws in old doctrines?
We are not lazy or spoiled free loading neo hippies that are ripping off the previous generation. We are the lost generation and we aren’t going give up so easily. We’ll fight the status quo and we’ll never give up either. We want a better future for us, for everyone and for our children. And no one has the right to deny us that.