I don’t understand this new trope of young people who all talk about how much they hate the grind, how capitalism is evil and people are more than just money and wages and how life shouldn’t be wasted working… while at the same time they complain that they should be given more stuff without money, wages, or working.
At the same time they are saying that love and marriage is an outdated institution and way of life, that having children is akin to slavery and a product of white supremacy and the patriarchy and the only thing of any value is having fun and getting more free stuff. I mean if that isn’t materialism and narcissism then I don’t know what is.
I understood the time when people, especially men, were working 100 hours a week and killing themselves to “keep up with the Jones’s”. The cliche was that on their death bed that they wouldn’t be thinking about the deals they didn’t make, or the car they never bought, but the time they missed with their family and their loved ones. Now it seems that love is the bad kind of 4 letter word. As if having someone to love is somehow a detriment to your own freedom and happiness.
Everyday on social media there are posts, especially from women about how they aren’t going to succumb to the old patriarchal regime of being a mom and putting their needs on the backburner for someone else. They aren’t going to give up their girls night out and their shoe collection for some crying, drooling brat, as if A. kids have no worth in and of themselves more than shoes, and B. Kids never grow out of the infant stage and won’t be there to take care of their parents’ crying, drooling asses one day.
The Western world has become consumed with being as “free and happy” as possible without any responsibility, or anything getting in their way, and yet the Western world has become fraught with mental illness, drug addiction, and violence. People are more miserable today in a world of ease than ever before. In fact people are looking for things to be angry about instead of just enjoying what they have… mostly because people don’t have anything worth having. They don’t know what it’s like to earn something tangible, never mind what it’s like to earn respect.
People think that relationships are about everything the other person can give or do for you. It’s about making sure that you never feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. Life is about the fastest way to get a dopamine hit, whether through drugs themselves or through constant social media yes men telling you how amazing you are. If a relationship hits a snag and the other person doesn’t want to do the same thing that you want then they are holding you back and quite possibly abusing you. If a child comes along then they are a threat to your very way of life and must be killed immediately before it gets a chance to be seen.
People have been turned into a group of individuals that hate people, not just others, but themselves as well. They think that any kind of work is oppressive, as if the things that they want just appear out of no where and someone else doesn’t have to work to make them. They think that they are the star of the show and anyone who disagrees with them is the antagonist in their story and must be destroyed. People today would rather live in a computer than talk to their neighbors…. and the overdose and suicide rates show that this new life view is killing them.
Katrina Michelle Russell 