I was hugely impressed by the article"Generation who refuse to grow up" by Marianne Power, but
obviously not in the way the author intended.
The article begins with a 34-year-old
describing a meeting with Father:
"He glanced nervously at the waiter
and sank his glass of wine before launching in, asking me what my plans are for
life: Did I see myself settling down and starting a family? Am I saving up to
buy a house? What is going to be the next step in my career?"
I was flabberghast. If my father would ask
me questions like that, my indignation would know no limits. None of that is
any of his fucking business. It is my choice if I want to own my own house or
not. (In case you're interested: I most definitly don't. It's one of the most
appalling wastes of money I can imagine.)
Anyway, the article is about people who
"refuse to grow up", that is, take on "responsibilities"
which, AS WE ALL KNOW, RIGHT? every normal human being just has to have.
The article is appalling. Its ideological
message is beyond horrible. My only consolation is that one can hardly take
seriously an author writing things like "A third are men and 18 per cent
are women". It's a shining indication of the author's mental capacity, as
well as diligence with her work. The first part of that sentence also displays
nicely the authors demagogical purposes. She starts the article with some
people not being too keen on having children and mortgates, and then subtly
suggests that those are grown-up men living with their parents and playing
computer games (instead of spending their evenings on a couch in front of the
TV reading a newspaper like responsible adults). I mean, she herself has
nothing in common with that category, has she?
I am horrified seeing that there are people
who seriously suggest that there is something wrong with refusing to put
ourselves into chains the way our parents did. Yes, our parents are envious
that we have it easier than they had, but we must realise that the world is
developing and life is changing and it's idiotic to expect us to live our lives
the way our parents did rather than figure out something new and better. Yet,
Ms. Power insists that there is something wrong with us, trying to make an
impression that we are like those retards on the photos added to the article. She
is trying to make us think that being a pathetic geek is the only alternative
to wasting yourself away in an unfulfilling job and an unfulfilling marriage.
I certainly don't live with my parents. In
fact, I don't even talk to them. But I do play computer games every now and
then. Then again, I can't remember the last time I watched TV. Might have been
in 2011, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I am
most definitely not going to "save up to buy a house", that is, spend
decades denying myself the pleasures of life, only to give it all away in order
to buy an obscenely expensive piece of real estate, with all the hassles and
obligations of a house owner. Neither am I going to make myself a serf to the
bank for the next 20 years, in order to satisfy my wife's vanity and acquire an
apartment way beyond any normal human being's needs. For that matter, I am not
(ever again) going to make myself a serf to one woman, living in a battlefield,
having to waste a significant part of my spare time to visit her stupid
parents, being drowned in ever-increasing demands to spend more time with my
family – in short, suffocated by all those responsibilities of those normal
adult people of Marianne Powers's.
"Peter Pan generation"? I
couldn't tell. I don't know anything about Peter Pan. But I most definitely
don't miss any of the "usual trappings and responsibilities of a
middle-class man of [my father's] generation".
I feel, however, that I should say one
thing to that horrible author's justification: she is female. And that
might make a lot of difference. For a 34-year-old woman, the question
"Don’t you think you should start thinking about these things?" is,
in fact, perfectly reasonable. Because for her, the time for some very important
things is indeed running out. A man can easily establish a family even when he
starts getting that wish as late as in his 40's. For a woman, obviously, the
train would be long gone by then.
Except that, in accordance with the dogmas
of political correctness, she writes just generally about "people",
avoiding the slightest suggestion that there might be any difference between
men and women.
And, to think of it, the way she
"muttered that immortal phrase" "I dunno" to her father,
and suggests in the following paragraphs that she really has no ideas as to her
future, probably indicates that she has found that the desires of her heart
are, in one way or another, in contradiction to the standards set by the
society. In simpler words, she senses that the society expects certain things
from her, but she abhors those demands, and she can't figure a way out, so she
has pushed her desires into one of the deepest and darkest compartments of her
brain, so far away that she can't even consciously tell what it is she wants from
her life. All she can tell is "I dunno". And she knows that the idea of leading a
life like her parents have, is too horrible to even think about, so she prefers to
live for today, appearing to the outside as "reckless, irresponsible and
immature", putting blame on herself after conversations with her
narrow-minded father, but never getting closer to finding a way out. Neither
will his father ever be of any help. He will just continue putting the exact
same demands on her, never able to get through to her, never willing to accept
her, never capable of thinking outside of his box, never giving her any ideas
that are actually helpful to her.
If you want my two cents worth, I think the
blame is somewhere else entirely. But that's quite a different story.
