I got to thinking, dangerous I know, about my generation. We all claim that our baby boomer parents screwed everything up, but are we really doing much better? My generation seems to be the biggest failure in American education. Finally people started to notice that we are in fact rather stupid. Watch Idiocracy, it's absolutely not child-appropriate, but it has some elements that seem plausible, and that worries me.
So now that we're here, what are we going to do? I realized after I graduated from college that I knew very little of any importance. I had horrible grammar skills, virtually no knowledge of history, awful math ability, and I think that was because most people were just as uneducated or worse. Growing up, I didn't know that someday I would be ashamed of my lack of education. I passed the tests and looked great on paper, but I was scholastically challenged.
This has to stop. Why does it seem like nobody cares? When I go to Borders I am depressed to see scads of women sitting around talking about television actors and actresses, and other trite gossip. They talk about politics occasionally, and the words coming out of their mouths are stolen from their husbands and the media. They have no idea what they're talking about, and even worse, they don't care. Men don't do this as much. There is still some competition to know more than the other guy. Women seem to either fall into the "do-all, be-all" category, the super-achievers, or leave their brains behind with the first baby.
Why do I never see a woman reading "Nature" or "Scientific American," both of which are accessible to the general public? The "Women's Magazine" types make flames shoot out of my ears; I get so mad just reading the covers.
I came up with the term for a real woman of valor - feminatrix domestique. I think it's worthwhile to embrace the feminine, but loathsome to assume the damsel mode. Just as I believe men should be allowed to be men, I think allowing men to embrace the feminine sides of themselves is good too. We all need to find a balance, and I think men are doing a better job of that - or perhaps I just choose my friends wisely. . .
I hope I'm wrong. I hope there are plenty of 20-somethings out there that are going to jump all over this post, leaving my faulty ideas in the dust.
A bit of poetry -
If you'd just take my hand
I would feel safer
but leave the other one alone
so I can punch you if
need be
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3 comments:
I like the poem. As to the meat of the post: I sense (wrongly, I hope) that your generation is less politically involved than mine; and I mean simply level of concern, as opposed to going out into the streets. I think that's too bad, because indeed my generation, which started so well, has indeed screwed things up. Well, not all of us. Just our current leaders/enablers. And the feminine thing: my wife (of 36 years) went to Harvard, grad school at Claremont. When we had a kid, she became a mom for the next 18 years -- very involved in the schools, but didn't work. Despite many of her classmates being in (or on) the national news, she had no ambivalence at all about it. I think it's much tougher to be a woman than a man.
Dr. Schwab - It's true, I think a lot of women my age are realizing that we have to choose, unless one is blessed with a house-husband. I'm blessed with two fickle cats. Speaking of politics - I recently started paying more attention for that very reason. Maybe there's hope for me.
What you describe isn't limited to women. Most of my friends are so involved in fantasy baseball, the size of their plasma TV, the latest Acura model, and the hot new stock tip that it's impossible to find the time to actually THINK. No one reads. No one writes. I always think of our generation as the Age of Irony. It provides a easy excuse for a detached, dismissive way of life. The curse of Seinfeld.
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