Generation Zero - The Wasteland

 I've spent a good amount of time considering the state of affairs of not just the US but also the world.  I consider myself "well traveled" at this point and somewhat worldly and have seen a  lot of things.  I've decided outside North America (excluding Mexico, so just the US and Canada) the world is basically evil with a few outliers here and there, a few gems in the rough as it were.  Selfish, opportunistic, and desperate.  I think it stems from poverty and greedy government kings, the people conditioned to grab whatever they can to get a leg-up, and if they pass up any wallet on the street or any easy robbery they'll never get a chance.  I think these folk seem boxed-in like a chess game where you're down to one or two playing pieces and they can only think ahead one move.  This concept has seeped into the American culture with communications being so readily available and jealousy of hard-workers, that have versus have-not.  I was both at one time.

  Idealistic Democratic Party members think likewise, trying to create a utopian world through structured control by way of Unions and such, but inevitably, these Unions become KingPin from the Spiderman comics, over-powerful mob-bosses.  I wish Obama was the savior for the ebony community but the mulatto did not deliver and only deceived.  Shame.  I really liked Herman Cain but I think both parties paid-out the ex-lovers he had to speak-up and get rid of him.  Man, the 9-9-9 plan was badass, but the poor would have to pay 9% (they get all their taxes back so it sucks for them) and the rich would have to also pay 9% (they can loophole to pay less so it'd suck for them too).  Drat.  Sounded so good.





Actual Yakuza forming in the 1950's coordinating with Japanese government.  Yakuza control the drugs, prostitution and gambling and keep it under control, Japanese Prime Minister will handle the rest.  Balance that works, because human vices will assumedly always remain and you can't jail everyone.

  The only balance I've ever seen is the Yakuza in Japan, where lines are wisely drawn and maintained.  It might break-down someday there, depending on the market, but it works for them for now.  Very yin-yang.  I've experienced it first-hand for a few years while in the outskirts.  Amusingly interesting and, like I said, there's an understanding.  I like the Japanese for that, such that they can maintain a treacherous balance without getting too overly greedy.  I think Pearl Harbor's attack was based on that when they backed-down, though they had taken too much and it was a mistake.  Too much overkill, and the balance tipped.  One step too far.  They learned from that.  Their society learned from that moment in Time. 


Yakuza leader Jepang gets out of jail from an arrest, no questions asked, in 1 hour.  Charges dropped.  Officer becomes missing next day.  Yep.

  The condition the 'Dems' want might work if they consider the early blue-collar, hard-working ones from the early 1960's but those almost don't exist anymore; instead, we see the "I wan my 'Bama Phone" losers who just take arrogantly, defiantly.  Becky is no stranger to this condition as she'd lived in Detroit and saw it every day.  The Japanese waited until the economy was stable before they got their setup to work, and the work "ethic" was universally hard-working, 20-hour days.  America's a mess and today's Generation Zero that offer nothing except feed telecommunication corporations, bloated as they are, ready to burst from the fat money they devour.  America's work-ethic is lazy.  No one wants to push the envelope until they're dead tired, working 36 hours straight, sleep 4, and work another 36 to make money, well, very, very few anyway.  I don't see it.

  The American Work Ethic could be a thesis, truly.  Its evolution and de-evolution are interesting, the current "Generation Zero" feeding off the works of the parents of the '70s and '80s when the great gas-lines existed and the Democratic concept shifted with Jimmy Carter, though some say earlier than that.  Jimmy Carter, honestly, was the worst, absolute worst president of all time.  I know.  I was there.  I endured it.  He failed at everything, utterly, and America was on its knees.  Those who lived in rural towns might not have known about it, away from the chaos, but in middle-class America, the suburbs and cities, we were devastated.  Examples showed on TV reflect it, such as Good Times about the "projects" in the ghetto, something Hitler conceived during World War II to keep the undesirables localized for collection, and to keep an eye on, like a skin-mole.  Horrible.  I'd say Carter destroyed the American Dream of the 1950's and 1960's and made hard-working folk get nowhere.  After that, the kids of the '70s and '80s, now in their 20's saw the suffering and how their parents got them nowhere and so they're all like, "Screw that!  What's the point?!"  Looking for an easier answer.  It used to be the way of things.  It is again, but no one believes it.  Kids are now demanding now great paying jobs without putting in the effort.

  I see a few of them deciding to take some fun school.  Worthless school, mind you, or they don't apply it just for the "paper" to say, "Hey, I got a degree!"  Yeah, in what?  Phys-Ed?  You gonna be a gym teacher?  No?  Good luck, Chuck.  There are some key degrees that will get you places, some you might not even want though.  Being a doctor is cool, but you probably won't sleep for 12 years, though you could open your own practice perhaps.  Dentists, despite their medieval cruelty, actually get-by pretty well.  Communications degrees are vague, but somewhat useful perhaps.  Computer Science, what I originally went for, is very competitive but a good leg-up.  Something involving the energy field is a good way to go, as is machinists, construction, and marine biology.  Something useful.  Liberal Arts degrees are fun but useless.  Anything without a "lab" is generally useless.  I know guys with non-lab degrees making low bucks.  Shame, really, because they really tried.  Some of them, anyway.  Ask anyone about which predicate nominative works best in a sentence structure, or how Mark Twain was cheeky and you'll get an hour discussion.  Ask about how Hitler was a forced vegetarian or how the Russian Dumas was a ruse and you'll get a week of debate.  Not very useful, per se, but interesting.  Not very.. practical.  We need practical. America needs practical.  Generation Zero is not practical, but that's its own definition.

  Generation Zero is the kids now, age 18 to 28.  They offer nothing.  They have nothing to say but 144-character Tweets of uselessness (hash-tag #stupid).  Vapid, empty, meaningless, emotionless, soulless.  Mimicking romance clumsily like robots.  Downs Syndrome kids of the '80s had more to offer, eh Corky?   Mashing thumbs on a touch-screen "phone" in l33t shorthand like an idiot-savant.. minus the "savant" part.  Socially-retarded and yet creating a mandatory social-environment worldwide (wide.. wide) that makes social anonymity the preferred norm that if you have human contact will result in sneers.  Japan has a subculture where that preference is nearly a religion, though don't get me started about Japanese subcultures.. there's a lot of 'em, some less savory than others.  I find it interesting they all want to "belong" in this macro-culture of online, text-based networking, as I was surprised at the responses from Emma Blackery from a few days ago (still reeling from the density). Then I figured something out. 

  The voice of the lazy teens have always existed, but back in the 1960's or earlier, to complain or whatever, to print text and generate it around the world as a source of release, as an "outlet" for their lazy rage, they had to actually type something up on an on typewriter, then take it to a printing press print-shop, create flyers, then distribute them.  By that time, and that much effort, they were burned-out and laziness typically filtered this so it never occurred.  It did sometimes, I'd seen it, typo's and all on orange or yellow catch-your-eye-look-at-me 5x8 paper in mono-black text, sometimes with a graphic of some kind, again in mono-black, smudgy text on some sort of facsimile machine (an antiquated printer for the uninitiated).  They'd hand out things.  Sometimes "Earth Day" stuff would be handed-out by hippies if they had a worthy cause, or whatever, but mostly they were glanced and discarded like local bands trying to get a leg-up try to at the door of some independent record store or bar.  Now, the kids have an immediate response venue.  They can spit venom all they want by way of YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, etc.  Heck, even here on my Google Blogger!  On the previous, which are more social-network sites, proof-reading is rare as text is limited.  Some wiser posters on these places might consider word-placement, vowel order, pantone poetry design, etc. but few are Neil Peart of Rush or e.e.cummings and fewer still are excerpts from William Wordsworth's Leaves of Grass.  Instead, we get vulgar examples of unabridged vehemence.  Raw, unfiltered, un-thought, hypothalamus-enriched rage-c*mshots, drippy and gross plastering the page and layering the site with its unedited filth until it festers and cannot be wiped with any amount of eloquent replies in the shape of soap and bleach and cloth.  These kids mark and move-on like gangs of roving thugs, trolls with mono-syllabic clubs smashing every village in their path, not caring what results from it, what damage, what feelings were hurt, what villages razed like drunken pirates conquering a port, like Hell's Angels of the 1950's dominating a town, like a mad simile when a single metaphor would do.

  The effort of the stupid, inexperienced-in-life under-30 kid is minimized by social networks, their retarded voices heard more and with no parental or wisdom filtration.  They need not go to a publisher to get a point across, and the rage stays fresh and instant like a 2-year-old's response with no restraint.  I think teens have always been this way, but now have an easy voice to explode with, and it's created a wasteland where they roam and devastate true art, expression, and effort.  Interestingly, they are collective and universal in this effort and despite the extreme neutral-evil selfishness of it, destroying others so that they can rise, they back each other up on it like some evil empire only agreeing in a way a Mirror Universe Star Trek could exist despite their own treachery amongst themselves!

  Is there a solution to this?  Yes and no.  The Truth here, from my Bard's Tale, is that they must curb themselves by societal nuance.  They must eventually as a collective of 18 to 28 decide for themselves that certain actions are socially pathetic.  Fads are similar.  Someone wearing "Crocs" for instance might be considered laughable now where before it was expected.  Ricing out your car amongst these folk were cool in the '90s but now its ridiculous.  We, as adults, have steered this response a bit, like reminding low-fitting jeans sporting boxers was actually the response initiated by prisoner gays showing opportunity for inmates a good "time".  Eventually, the fad died-out.  I suspect this generation will eventually start to police themselves out of the vulgar-period on social networks and a socially-acceptable, more eloquent method will demand itself amongst them, perhaps a more thought-out, more valuable response on YouTube.  Perhaps something less trite on FaceBook (if it exists in the next 3 more years, which I doubt).  Better venues for communication will arise and eloquence will be praised and rewarded and admired instead of Orcish tongue they prefer.  Generation Zero will align itself eventually and get with it.  The Hippies from the '60s did, and they did rather well for themselves eventually, actually.  I have good hope for Gen Zero when they'll start to value quality instead of quantity, truth as beauty, and start to complain of Generation One in ten years.

Out.