Da Yoof

It’s amazing how many times things other than their own actions ruin the lives of young people isn’t it? 

Voting for Trump ruined their lives. Voting for Brexit ruined their lives. You being older than them and still alive ruined their lives. Driving them to school in a 4x4 ruined their lives. 

It’s interesting that pretty much every worthwhile culture there has ever been includes two forms of respect that are largely absent now. Respect for the innocence and vulnerability of children, their need for protection and guidance, and respect for the elderly, for the wisdom they have acquired and the experiences they have endured. And by extension respect for our ancestors, for the things they achieved and built and passed on to us. 

Our society inverts these normal and decent principles of respect. The elderly are there to be mocked or ignored. Children are given undue attention and spoilt as if their political opinions can be equal to those who are adults, but at the same time they are denied the fundamental protections that really matter. We listen to them screaming on climate change but ignore them screaming when they are raped and abused. We allow a level of disgusting perversion towards children in our society which almost defies comprehension, with little or no comment. But god forbid actually stopping a child acting in an antisocial manner or teaching them manners. We sell Playboy labelled bags to kids as if that’s normal. We’ve created wonderful new technological means by which perverts can hunt for children or communicate their sick desires with each other. 

At the same time as our society sexualises children it infantilises adults. Rather than growing up, we remain suspended in a permanent floating womb of dependency via the all encroaching power of the State. People prefer cosseting to liberty, and a heroin drip of welfare to individual responsibility. The State is the ultimate bad parent, as are corporations and multinational bodies, always talking about how much they care but voraciously acquiring power and control for their own purposes. Where once instruction was informal and familial,coming from close knit families and communities in a shared, instinctive manner, now it is official and planned and nearly always teaching the opposite of good lessons. 

Men in their fifties dress and think and talk like teenagers, whilst teenagers increasingly act like three year olds throwing a tantrum. The worst kind of teenager is now the arbiter of our society, the judge of what is good and bad, the stage of life to be envied and copied. You know, when they are old enough to cause havoc but too bloody stupid and ill informed to know it. The point where hormones are out of control and the frontal lobes aren’t fully formed. Yep, let’s give them the vote. We are going to hell anyway. Let’s do it faster. 

You didn’t get the results you wanted. Things were fucked up by coronavirus. Estimates were made based on the work you did complete. So is none of that down to you? Is you screaming that your life is ruined in the least bit rational? Every single one of these fuckers thinks that an A star should just be handed to them. It’s my right. I was there. No, no, what are you doing? It’s MINE. It sort of defeats the entire object of having grades doesn’t it, if everyone assumes that the highest grade should be handed to them no matter what? 

All decent morality requires personal responsibility. But in every sphere we are destroying that concept. Black criminals aren’t responsible for their actions. Kids aren’t responsible for their grades. Adults don’t have to behave like adults. We remake the entire world in accordance with the views of those who scream the longest and the loudest and contribute the least. We apply responsibility in bulk, deferring the whole of it to government or the State or to groups we are allowed to be prejudiced towards, primarily older people, white people, and anyone who thinks for themselves. We actively reward the screaming, the selfish, and the feckless whilst sneering at the adult, the responsible, and the wise. 

This is an age of absurdity because it is ruled by teenagers. Many of them are fifty years old and CEOs or world leaders. But they are still teenagers.

By Bartholomew Chiaroscuro