BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS!!!!
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AH, YOUTH!!!!
Has there ever been a word more conflictingly loaded?
It resonates with infinite potential—and loss.
Youth is our future, and our past.
It is everything that is good as well as bad about the world.
The young are our own children, yet they are also the little-understood enemy.
They are superpredators and they are lost lambs.
They are the problem—and the solution. They will, for better or worse, inherit the earth.
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The young are victims wherever there is trouble, from wars to famine.
They are also the victimisers, from Britain’s “yoof” hooligans to America’s inner-city gangs.
They are an extreme caricature of our culture, from the parody adulthood of teenage girls to the mystifying obsessions of alienated boys.
Yet they are also carefully crafted in our own image, raised to reflect our values and given every chance to improve upon them.
Read about young people and despair for them.
They are in perpetual crisis.
Fat, lazy and amoral.
Sexually promiscuous and drug-addicted.
Failed by a deteriorating education system and sent astray by society’s dropping standards.
Explosive.
Aimless.
Spoiled and corrupted by materialism, television and violent video games.
Sullen and distant.
Armed.
But know them and rejoice.
They are our pride and joy, our darlings.
They are bright and full of optimism; a brand-new day embodied.
They see the world with fresh eyes.
Today’s young will be the richest, best-educated and healthiest generation in history, and the largest one, too.
Their accomplishments will exceed our wildest dreams.
And yet the majority of them will live and die in poverty, most of their potential untapped.
There are too many of them, and every one of them will get less than he or she deserves.
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