Are You a Member of Generation Stupid?

Funny and, sadly, partially true of a lot of the young people I see around these days. Like a group of five college kids sitting at a table in a coffee shop - ALL of them staring into their phones and not at all talking to each other. WTF? Is conversation dead?

Are Millennials so individualistic that they are incapable of communicating with words, face to face?

Okay, I better stop before I tell those punk kids to get off of my lawn.

Generation Stupid

September 30, 2014

Bad Words | Written by umair haque

We need to talk.

You’re not going to like it.

Here’s the deal.

Jobs. Careers. Homes. Stability. Healthcare. Money. Stability. Democracy. Civil rights. A planet. Freedom. Meaning. Purpose. Happiness.

FaceTinder. UberDrones. Watching people play videogames. Selfies. LOLcats. Friending. Tube videos. Free porn. Pawnshop reality TV. The Latest and Most Kardashian Kardashian. Butt implants. Scandal. Outrage. Titillation. Cosmeceuticals. Made-by-the-lowest-bidder-slave-labor-sweatshop-shit. #OMG. #WTF? #IDK.

What do you spend most of yourself on? Where do most of your passions life? What do you invest most of your attention, energy, and ideas in?

The stuff on the second list.

You are trading the stuff in the first list for the stuff in the second list.

#LOL.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Maybe you can’t change the world. It’s true. Not of all us can — and not all of us should try. But you can…be a functioning human. Am I suggesting you call your congressman, your MP, revolt in the streets, become a dreadlocked hippie and organize town halls no one comes to because you smell like the 1960s? Nope. But I am suggesting that wasting your life on bullshit is…the greatest of all bullshit.

If all your life amounts to is the pursuit of the Perfect Selfie, the Greatest High Score, the Largest Number of Mega Awesome Totally Fake Friends — congratulations! You’re a proud member of Generation Stupid.

The world is literally falling apart. We will be lucky if this decade doesn’t end in great catastrophe. Because the last time the world got stuck on the express train to nowhere, the passengers started fighting each other…to the death.

Let’s face it. We do the stuff on the second list because we’re afraid, anxious, worried. Deep down, we know things are going deeply, badly wrong. Socially, economically, culturally…spiritually.

Who wouldn’t want to escape the world? Who wouldn’t want to run away, into the immaculate digital arms of the most beautiful lover who ever was? The one that never challenges you, frightens you, hurts you? The one that tells you ”love” is whatever you want to be — as long as it’s a “profile”, an “avatar”, a “choice” from a dropdown menu.

Are you serious? Is that all you are? A being made of…bullshit?

You’re in pursuit of a deity that looks like Venus. A goddess of pure love. But she is an illusion made of bits and digits. And you must look back, not up. For then you will remember. No one ever won their freedom by looking to the contemptuous gods for salvation, instead of in their spirits for liberation.

That is precisely what courage is. Not the absence of fear. But the overcoming of fear, despite the surety of pain. Damn me if you must, the courageous say. I am damned anyway. If I cannot.

Generation Stupid. I love you. But you have to learn to love yourselves. Not in the naive, foolish, hopeless, cynical way you have been taught. That love is merely the “freedom” to take whiz through in a theme park chugging shots of designer digital esctasy while the world smashes itself into oblivion. So that all traces of the real you are obliterated. To love yourselves in a truer sense. To learn that there is not just more to life than all that — there is no life in all that.

You must learn to love yourselves as people who share the same obligations all human beings do. To make the most of yourselves, and live extraordinary lives.

Here. Now. At this very moment. In the place you stand. Not inside the screen, as a machine, a programs, an instruction, a profile, a counterfeit, an image. A helpless, less than human thing…that is…merely executed, stored, performed…processed.

All that…shit…? It’s just noise in the signal. Of what? Of life.

Imagine if I took a picture of myself, smiling coyly — while the world burned right down to an ember behind me. It would be the Perfect Selfie. For I would surely be lord and master of all. Everyone would know how cool I was. Look! Umair doesn’t give a shit! The fucking world’s burning down…and he took a selfie!! Damn…that dude!! He’s so cool!! What cojones!

But what would it be worth? Even the most Perfect Selfie in the world would just be noise. In the signal. Of life.

It would get me no closer to an extraordinary life. Just as extraordinarily wasted one.

That is every person’s challenge. To have the courage to be the signal. The lighthouse. The fire. The spark. The true north. Not merely to reduce one’s self to noise. To futility, oblivion, nothingness…meaninglessness...emptiness…a glitch at the end of the world…fizzling out into…bzzzt.

Courage, Generation Stupid. Courage. That is the truest miracle of all, for it is the only one there is.

Man is the weakest, the most laughable, of all the great beasts. He is hairless and small, clawless and slow. And yet, man may face a lion, in his very den. And conquer him. By, first, conquering himself.

Running away will never bring you a step closer to the life you were meant to live. Not a single aching step. Only courage can. That is what it has always taken to live. For life is not merely given, or taken. It is earned. With tears and sweat, suffering and grief, wonder and beauty, perseverance and grace. And so it can also be wasted.

Don’t waste your life. Live an extraordinary one. Say it with me.

Damn me if you must. I am damned anyway.

British Neo-Pro Soccer Players Much More Accepting of Gay Teammates

In Britain, researchers spoke to 22 young men (age 16-18) on the verge of becoming professional soccer players (footballers). What they found was that all the participants would openly accept one of their colleagues coming out. All of the participants in the study identified as heterosexual and come from the lower to upper working class families.

In the last study to look at this issue (2002), Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester (who is one of the three co-authors of the new research) found that gay male athletes were tolerated by teammates, "as long as they played the sport well." However, there were no findings of active "support."

This is good to see - British football has traditionally been pretty homophobic, although not quite as much so as U.S. football (not soccer).

This shift seems to speak to the more open and accepting perspectives of the millennial generation, young people who have grown up with gay men and lesbian women in their daily lives. Exposure to people who are "other" reduces the sense of otherness and they become "like me," which is the key to acceptance.

Full Citation:
R. Magrath, E. Anderson, S. Roberts. (2013, Jul 30). On the door-step of equality: Attitudes toward gay athletes among academy-level footballers. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48(4), 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/1012690213495747

You can read the whole paper at Academia.edu or at the Sage Publications site. For now, here is the abstract followed by a summary of the press release from Science Daily.

Abstract
In this semi-structured interview research, we investigate the attitudes of 22 academy level association football (soccer) players who are potentially on the verge of becoming professional athletes. We find that, as a result of these men belonging to a generation holding inclusive attitudes towards homosexuality, independent of whether they maintain contact with gay men, they are unanimously supportive of gay men coming out on their team. Thus, this research supports a growing body of literature suggesting that team sport culture is no longer a bastion of homophobia in the UK. Their support includes athletes being unconcerned with sharing rooms with gay players, changing with them in the locker rooms, or relating to them on a social and emotional level. The only apprehension they maintain is that having a gay teammate might somewhat alter homosocial banter, as they would not want to offend that individual.

* * * * *

Generational Shift in Attitudes Among Young Soccer Players Towards Gay Teammates

Aug. 27, 2013 — Young soccer players (footballers) on the verge of becoming professionals are now much more likely to be supportive of gay teammates than a decade ago, according to new research from sociologists at the universities of Kent and Winchester.

Conducted via interviews with 22 Premier League academy footballers aged 16-18, the research found that all the participants would openly accept one of their colleagues coming out.

The research, led by Dr Steven Roberts, of the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, and Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester's Faculty of Business, Law and Sport, made use of intermittent interviews over a four-month period between November 2012 and February 2013.

All the participants identified themselves as heterosexual in their interview and all said they were from a lower to upper working class background. The study results showed a marked difference in acceptance of gay teammates compared to the findings of the last such study, carried out a decade ago.

Dr Roberts said: 'The interview results were broadly consistent with other recent research on young British men of their age in that these men showed no overt animosity towards gay men.

'In fact, they were more than tolerant and showed an inclusive attitude toward the hypothetical situation of having a gay teammate, best friend or roommate reveal their sexuality. The results are clear: among the 22 future footballers we interviewed, all were unbothered by the issue of gays in sport.

'This indicated a marked shift in perception from the last study. Although there was some evidence then that attitudes were changing, there has been a generational shift over the last decade. Lads now are saying "we would openly support and accept one of our colleagues coming out." '

The last similar research into the attitudes of young sportsmen was carried out in 2002 by Professor Eric Anderson, of the University of Winchester, one of the three co-authors of the new research. His study found that gay male athletes were tolerated by teammates, 'as long as they played the sport well'. However, there were no findings of active 'support'.

Professor Anderson said: 'Recent comments by Robbie Rogers, the former Leeds United footballer who came out but then left the English game to return to play in the US, suggested he didn't know how easy it would have been to make the transition.

'However, our research does suggest that attitudes in the locker room among young British players would lay the foundation for a player to be able to come out.'