We Owe Them Hope
I used to joke that it would be awesome if the Large Hadron Collider did somehow create a black hole and destroy the planet. It would be unequivocal proof that I was alive during the single most important moment in human history—its final and irrevocable end.
Maybe that’s the secret behind our race’s continuing obsession with the end-times, or, to use a snootier term, eschatology. It’s misplaced narcissism. We want to be important, we want our lives to matter. We had nothing to do with our births, but we want control over our deaths, and, even better, everyone else’s deaths.
Keep all this in mind as you read Mike Doughty (yes, that one) stubbornly refuse to shake his fist at those damn kids and tell them to get off his lawn.
I think we owe the next generation hope. They deserve elders that will help them be less afraid, that will tell them they’ll get older, and still be dynamic human beings. They might, in fact, be happier.
We owe them hope. We create the next generation. If they’re terrible, tasteless, amoral monsters, it’s probably our fault. If we tell them that they’re worthless, that what they like is bad, then how relevant to their lives must we be to them?
Put another way, there is nothing as important to anyone as music is to a teenager. We use it as a map to our own brains, to gives us points of reference when we’re so flooded with hormones and, yes, fear that we can’t see past the horizon of our own insecurities. Music tells us that, yeah, this pass through the mountains is rough and filled with carnivorous bears, but just a few miles or years away there’s a sunnier clearing.
Music tells us we’re not alone when we’re at our loneliest. Why on earth should we try and dissuade anyone of that fact? No one’s alone, not really. Dismissing youth, either directly or through their music, is desertion. We made them, we owe them better.
Source: mkdo.co
