I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

What's up with Youth?

My mother, a grand twiggy dame at 63, griped that it seems young people are incredibly aggressive and pushy these days. They literally shove into her if she doesn't move out of their way fast enough.

Sadly, it becomes apparent somewhere north of 50, I think, that you are definitely no longer 'core' to society.

She wondered aloud to my father if it had always been this way? He sighed that it probably had been.

I think he's right. And an old fairy tale proves it.

As a younger person, though no longer 'young', I feel older people are somewhat invisible. Not because they aren't there, mind you. They're definitely there, at the drug store, on the road, in the cafes. No, they are somewhat invisible because they drop off our radar in modern life. They don't work, unless it's at Wal Mart (there's a sad commentary in that somewhere), or the grocery store, so we don't think of them as really....worthy anymore.

I know these terms are not the best, and will probably cause a reaction. I don't intend to offend. I mean to observe. But I lack a vocabulary here, so try not be too tough of a crowd, and work with me a little here.

Since the elderly don't HAVE to get anywhere (like an important work appointment or hot date, as we all do), and they sure seem to move a lot slower, they do drop off the visible societal radar. I am reminded here of the squirrel in "Over the Hedge' that is so hyper, and gets even more jacked on a 'Red Bull' knock-off that it appears everyone else is standing completely still because he is moving so fast. Remember, at the speed of light, time slows down to standing still. So, all you have to do is go the speed of light (metaphorically) in daily life, and those moving slower, such as the elderly, will seem to be standing still.

But that's not all there is to this little meditation on why our youngest set seems so bent on shoving the oldest segment of the population out of the way in their rush to get wherever it is that they are going. My mom felt it had something to do with the crumbling of Christianity as a socially enforcing institution. Probably so, but not for the reason she thinks. Since Des Carte's time (1700's), we have been continually assimilating more and more of God internally into ourselves, and seeking less and less of a deified entity externally. In the late 1800's, this reached a crescendo crisis with Nietzche's declaration that God is dead. God has gone. There is no overarching force. Man is the new god.

Actually, as it turned out, consumerism and technology would be the 20th century's new gods. But that's another blog. I am trying to give you a landscape, at least as I can make out the terrain, of the surrounding culture our youth encounters, and what it does to their little psyches.

So if there is no God, or at least one with immediate retribution as a forefront agenda, then we are the sum total power. Add to that America's overweening foreign policy ambitions that stem from the notion that despite little problems such the requirement for gun detectors in our schools, fear of letting our children play in a park unattended since they'll be kidnapped, raped, and murdered, and having populations in the street because they have no home....well all those teeny little issues do little to knock a dent in the steel-clad notion that we must be the Supreme Culture.

We must be.

So, there is no God. And we are the Supreme Culture.

Got a little ego inflation going on there for a group whose consciousness isn't particularly developed yet....

And now let's add one more thing to the mix...

Advertisers.

"Hey kids! This is for you! Buy it now! Buy it yesterday! Be the hottest on the block! You deserve it! All your friends will respect you! In fact, you'll be an outcast if you DON'T buy this!

Got no money? Get your parents to get it for you!

If your parents say no, well, just shoot 'em! After all, you're the most important thing on the planet! You're the center of the Universe! Haven't they told you that since you were born???

Well live like it, damn it!"

Yeah, those hawkers. They're a problem. I get it that they need to make some revenues. I get it. And we all know that in film, music, clothing, and so many other goods, tweens and teens are THE big market. I get that too. But here's the rub. With no sense of being part of a larger whole (which we'd kinda' hope a little spirituality and consciousness would give), and that overriding sense that one is part of the Supreme Culture, and as a result, is completely entitled to the Good Life and all that comes with it....

....well, is it any wonder that kids today, or any day, don't seem to have a lot of respect for anything or anyone that stands in the way of maintaining that set of illusions?

And is this new? Not really. Other formerly supreme cultures have examples to tell about too. Remember that little fairy tale about an errant boy....Pinocchio? Remember when Pinocchio ignores the fairy godmother (who's really in disguise - she's actually an angel, a Divine presence, and Jiminy Cricket is his conscience. These characters are externalized voices for the internal sense we are SUPPOSED to have)? Remember how he ignores Jiminy Cricket and goes to the island, where  every pleasure is waiting for them? They can eat candy and sweets all they want, drink, smoke, play - all that. Remember? And then remember what happens?

They all turn into jackasses.

Now, to today's youth, turning into a jackass might be cool. Might show you dissed the establishment, and got yours. The jackasses might get tattooed, wear big ass gold chains, live in the 'hood', wear designer saddles, and bray in hip hop tunes.

Whatever.

But the idea of the story is to point out how young people who ignore their higher senses and succumb to lower consumeristic urges will have their outsides match their insides, and it ain't pretty.

Pinocchio's origins are likely to have been a moralistic warning to children, and youth, who naively thought the whole world was engineered for their satisfaction. The story was formally published in Italy in 1881, and was made famous throughout the world. It is second only to the Koran and the Bible for number of copies in print. It's main commentary was on social injustice between rich and poor. Though its origins are found in the Italian oral tradition of the 1500's, Pinocchio was made into an Italian national hero shortly after Italy's 1870 unification.  He may be a metaphor for the 'new citizen' needed in that new state, with all its utopic ideals, and real problems. The 1500's represent a time when the country was at a crossroads, though it was the cultural and commercial heart of Europe.

I imagine that the Italians of that time had noted that the children of a prosperous nation tended to be a little self-centered and selfish. They probably also had little respect for their inner voice, or their elders, who have traversed a long path before them, and can point out where some of the holes in the road are likely to be. While I am loathe to say we need an American fairy tale to point out these things to our ego-inflated and oft assimilation-obsessed youth, I do wonder if it's time to reinvent and update Pinocchio a little.

And maybe have Arnold the Governator star in it somehow. Hopefully that would get him out of office here, and off the trail for his secret ambition - U.S. Prez.

In the meantime, if you see some youth pushing older people out of the way, bop 'em on the nose. Call it a "Pinocchio Probiscus Punch".

And duck in case they've got a gun....