Author
|
Topic: Why isn't there a new lost generation? (Read 936 times) |
|
Bass
Magister
Posts: 196
Reputation: 6.06
Rate Bass
I'm a llama!
|
 |
Why isn't there a new lost generation?
« on: 2006-11-01 13:05:02 » |
 |
A new thought I have had lately, due to new insights.
In the 1920's in America, things were quickly changing. New music and new inventions were being discovered and put out quicker than many an American could rightly afford. New music, shocking fashions and a loud artistic community were on the rise. Glitz, glamor, get-rich-quick stories were all the rage and comerciallization was underway. A rather large amount of the young people and intellectuals were fustrated with the shallowness of the age... so they left for Europe.
These expatriots were called the 'Lost Generation'. Some of them found happiness. Some of them were as lost as before, some went on to do notable things.
Today, glitz, war, a mostly meaningless pop scene, terrible politicking and alot of disaffection is hitting today's youth and many intellectuals...
...so why are they NOT leaving en masse? Why do they stay?
The reasoning may vary, but as the world grew smaller because of the internet, the culture and economy made the world seem truely huge. Why go to Europe or anywhere else for that matter? It's just 'too far'. Intellectuals who feel disaffected don't leave, they just stew in their own malcontent and rant in magazine articles.
Psycologically, the world became America to many of them; the 'whatever' attitude of the 90's is still unfortunently with us. The disaffected also are mostly poor-they are too busy trying to survive on food stamps and scrounged bus tokens to leave. Why go and be poor elsewhere?
In others, it may be that they don't want to leave their families behind. Who knows? All I know is that the mass exodus I still expect is not happening and may never happen.
This outrages me, as I fit in with those too poor to afford to go away. Nobody whos stayed has wanted to make enough of a difference, even though they stay. Most of the people I speak to feel that they have no say and no effect on matters.
So why don't they leave? Are they so ignorant and naive to believe that America is the foremost in liberties? Maybe so.
I must try to deal the state of America, survive and keep hope alive. It's all I can do, until I become one of the new Lost Generation.
Thoughts?
|
|
|
|
|
Blunderov
Archon
Gender: 
Posts: 3160
Reputation: 8.90
Rate Blunderov
"We think in generalities, we live in details"
 
|
|
Re:Why isn't there a new lost generation?
« Reply #1 on: 2006-11-01 16:28:06 » |
|
[Blunderov] Great question. It occurs to me to wonder why there should be another "lost generation" at all? Each generation is unique.
"Lost Generation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lost Generation is traditionally attributed to Gertrude Stein[1] and was then popularized by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises, and his memoir A Moveable Feast. It refers to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Peirce, John Dos Passos, and T. S. Eliot.
More generally, the term is used for the generation of young people coming of age in the United States during and shortly after World War I. For this reason, the generation is sometimes known as the World War I Generation. In Europe, they are most often known as the Generation of 1914, named after the year World War I began. In France, the country in which many expatriates settled, they are called the Génération du Feu, the Generation of Fire. Broadly, the term is often used to refer to the younger literary modernists.
William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations list this generation's birth years as 1883 to 1900. Their typical grandparents were the Gilded Generation; their parents were the Progressive Generation and Missionary Generation. Their children were the G.I. Generation and Silent Generation; their typical grandchildren were Baby boomers [citation needed].
This generation is currently the oldest extant generation in the world."
[Bl.] It seems that each generation cannot but create its own zeitgeist. It may be that circumstances occur which appear similar to historical sets of circumstances but inevitably there will be important differences too. Whatever the circumstances, I weyken that one should attempt to live "authentically".
"Thus the norm of authenticity refers to a kind of "transparency" with regard to my situation, a recognition that I am a being who can be responsible for who I am. In choosing in light of this norm I can be said to recover myself from alienation, from my absorption in the anonymous "one-self" that characterizes me in my everyday engagement in the world. Authenticity thus indicates a certain kind of integrity — not that of a pre-given whole, an identity waiting to be discovered, but that of a project to which I can either commit myself (and thus "become" what it entails) or else simply occupy for a time, inauthentically drifting in and out of various affairs."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
|
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
