We're cleaning up your messes

It's true that the flower children of the '60s were the first generation to celebrate youth. I think my generation (at 22, I fall into the very tail end of Gen X) envies that, even if we don't want to admit it. This is a topic that is inevitably discussed in contemporary college settings, and I hope this structure-less torrent of free thought does some justice to the views many Gen Xers have.

The Baby Boom generation has managed to prolong their youth -- the number of '60s-based TV shows premiering this fall, not to mention the ever-touring Rolling Stones, proves that much. Some of my generation selectively celebrate that culture: Free love, drugs, and Grateful Dead music abound in many circles. Yet the optimism that fueled the hippie dream of recreating the world died alongside the GIs in Vietnam. Those Gen Xers who engage in the free-spirit lifestyle often don't share the drive to fight for social reform.

Still, another group resents the presence of their parent's culture in their lives. We may benefit from the social changes brought about by the Baby Boomers, but we also pay for the mistakes. I live in a culture that (generally) accepts an unprecedented level of moral, sexual and identity diversity, yet I have no concept of the once-simple reality of sexuality existing without AIDS, because I have never witnessed it. This group has rebelled against their parents in unusual ways. Young Republicans celebrate the ideals their parents dismissed as frivolous, "Deep" (which runs the gamut from the pensive youth who writes poetry all the way up to the under-appreciated Goth community) Gen Xers embrace the beauty of darkness many flower children overlooked, and others fill their lives with all things artificial, from drum machines to Ecstasy.

So how do we look at the aging Boomers? There are plenty of Boomers who may have grown up, but never matured. The party-hearty lifestyle of, say, the Van Dams perfectly illustrates the segment of the Boomer generation many Gen Xers feel complete contempt for. We never participated in your party, yet we're cleaning up after it. Watching Boomers who have yet to mature is too painful -- their children will be cleaning up after that party for the rest of their lives. Still, the majority of Boomers have grown up and understood that they have to leave youthful gallivanting to the youth. As adults, these Boomers tend have wonderful relationships with their children, and have a youthful quality that most other generations sacrificed at the threshold of adulthood.

The moral of the story? All Gen Xers celebrate the freedoms that their parents fought so hard to obtain. Boomers who recognize that the world they once inhabited has changed are generally embraced by this new generation. But those who try to hold onto their culture are doing a great disservice. We may have inherited the freedoms you worked so hard to bring about, but we're cleaning up the messes you made along the way. Many of us want to know one thing: Why is the generation that fought so hard for social freedom pushing their culture onto us?

-- Stefanie Brychcy

Spiritually undecided

I just read your plea for youthful narratives, and I suppose that mine might be typical of the 20-somethings of today.

I'm male, 25 years old and college educated. I was raised by one parent. My name is that of a Hindu demigod, yet I'm white, and my parents are no longer in the "Hindu" cult into which I was born. I am undecided spiritually, some might even say confused, because of my own parents' lack of commitment to a path, and because of being raised in an open-minded and multicultural setting.

I have a half-brother and a half-sister (both older than me) that were raised by their stepfather (my father). My mother is still on a flighty spiritual quest for enlightenment of which she never grew out, and by which she finds herself in Nepal, Germany, India and other random places sending her abandoned children e-mails on birthdays and holidays.

Because of the morals that my parents (most notably my father) took as their own, I have been a registered member of the Green Party, but have since rescinded any political affiliation. My parents' failure to bring about the utopia of their dreams left a politically sour aftertaste in my mouth. I went to school looking for unassailable truths to find only some loose guidelines by which to live and call oneself "liberal." I know that that label is so twisted up in its historical origins as to be useless, but that's what the quotation marks are for.

I graduated from Humboldt State University only seven years after dropping out of high school and heading off to my local junior college. Sixteen changes of my major, a felony DUI and four months in jail couldn't stop me from gaining a useless piece of paper proving I finished. A B.A. in political science from a school known for its pot and its tree-sitters.

All of this is leading somewhere, I assure you.

Our culture's acceptance of "divorce as the norm" doesn't help to build any faith in long-term relationships. Not only the fall of my own parent's union when I was 5, but the general failure of all the marriages in my extended family and family's friends (if not failure, then horrible pain and misery and malicious treatment) has led me to believe that it is not in human nature to tie oneself to another for a lifetime. The happiest couples that I've met have had "alternative" relationships, be they open or queer or serially monogamous.

My own best relationships have also been "alternative." When I say "best" I mean that there was mutual respect, honesty about emotions and issues, simple and mutually beneficial separations and great sex. These relationships were always with other like-minded people that saw the uselessness of trying to tie oneself to another with an arbitrary promise of eternal commitment. These relationships were based on a common understanding that people ALWAYS change, and that, for now, our lives are compatible. Not forever, just now.

The politics of sex and love, influenced as it is by the ubiquitous Hollywood machine, has for as long as I can remember been shaping notions of the ideal relationship. Believing in these unrealistic and unattainable ideals leads one to either disillusionment or self-delusion, both of which make for unhappy campers. Growing up as part of this generation, the generation of hippies' kids, does have benefits, though: Buddhist nonattachment, acceptance of impermanence, a skewed and media-driven concept of the sexual revolution and dogmatic use of contraception have kept me both physically and emotionally safe from harm (thus far).

"How should life be," you ask.

Here's how life should be: some disaster should wipe nine-tenths of the human population from the earth so that what's left will have the ability to live in a manner congruent with the planet's unaided productivity. Preferably this disaster will be obviously linked to human activity and overpopulation/consumption, so that those few that are left will know better next time. The now-sparse population exceeds all expectations and remains peaceful; after all, what is there left to fight about when everyone has everything needed for survival? Relationships follow the unhindered course that nature intended: tribes raising children, with sexual partnerships lasting only as long as they are mutually advantageous. The rule of law is accepted as irrelevant and discarded. People aid each other when necessary and live their own lives for the rest of the time. In short, they live as they lived before history, before mono-crop agriculture, before property and before marriage.

Hope this is helpful in your quest for the youth's understanding of the world.

-- Arjuna Twombly

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