As an active duty member of the United States Military, I want you to know I love my country. I also want you to know i am DEEPLY concerned over its future.
I am not afraid of foreign invaders, global recessions, swine flu, or the year 2012. I am afraid of what my generation will do with this nation as we age and gain more power and influence within it.
We have been labeled generation X, but i would like to nominate a new title: Generation Fat, Stupid, and Lazy. I will give examples to win you to my cause. As i look around in my travels and my day to day encounters with others in my age group, i am moved to a desperate place.
Generation Fat. lets look at this. For the first time in the history of the world, the most dangerous threat to the average human being (If your American) is a pork chop. Or a double whopper value meal with extra meat, cheese, super fries and a massive gallon of Coke to wash it down. I have been in 22 countries in the last 8 years. To my extreme amazement and disgust the world is starving and Americans are stuck with huge fat asses. This will tie in with my other recommendations. The plight of the poor in America is diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, severe back injury, and extremely low mobility. In a lot of other places in the world, people are starving to death, Americans continue to eat themselves to death. It is soul crushing for me to walk through the local shopping mall in my area, and see 7 year old children who wear larger jeans than I do. What are we doing to our kids? Once again that will be touched on later. I have read some statistics from the CDC in Atlanta which indicate up to 60% of Americans are overweight, and nearly 40% of the overweight group is obese. At the same time, there have never been more gyms and fitness clubs in this nation, or in the world for that matter. Information is being disseminated at the speed of cyber space. You can find anything fitness and health related in the stroke of a finger. Yet, for the majority of Americans this info falls on deaf ears. How is my Generation faring thus far with the obesity epidemic? Not so great. I have no doubt Generation X will prove to be the fattest burden to strike the health care system. While science is extending our lives way out there, we will surely eat ourselves to early deaths faster than you can say “Super size that.”
Generation Stupid. How did you do in High School? I learned while i lived in Japan i would have been a solid D student had i attended Japanese public schools. I learned i am a big dumb ass with my personal highlight moment occurring in 2004 when i was tutored for an Algebra CLEP by a 13 year old Okinawan boy who was the son of a friend of mine. Not only was this little guy smarter than me, he knew it. Which was pretty awesome. The Japanese children attend school nearly year round for LONG days. Meanwhile, Budget restrictions in the USA have leveled, no-decimated schools across the country. Teachers earn less money than your average McDonald’s manager. Now i do not have any problem with anyone who manages a McDonald’s, but i would have hoped that we would place greater value in the people who educate us and other children. At least more than 35k a year, which is very close to the national average for a public high school teacher. I think i have a tough job when i am holding a fire arm in the middle of the night guarding something, but it is nothing compared to the amount of hassle and ass pain a high school math teacher puts up with. At least i am armed when one of the students decides to flip his wig.
The topic of generation stupid is multi-faceted. What is the real American past time? Watching TV. That’s a winner. Favorite TV shows? American idol, Jackass, Biggest loser, Lost, South Park, Deadliest Catch, The UFC. Either we are rooting for someone to get their face kicked in, or we are waiting for some poor dude to get washed over board and die, or we are biting our nails to see the drama of an over hyped fat camp.
Man i can go all day on this, but i think that if your still reading this you get my point. By the way, on the topic of stupid, without Spell check i would be nearly paralyzed to post this blog. Do not think i am not one of THEM.
Lets look at my favorite of the three. Generation Lazy. I can deal with Fat or stupid when you work hard and try. But Lazy is intolerable. I am going to share a secret.
I know you are feeling the pressure of the economic conditions right now, where ever you are. Unemployment is hitting some scary numbers. But what if i told you there is a place here on beautiful US soil, where the biggest economic problem is there are TOO MANY JOBS, and NOT ENOUGH WORKERS. Would you think i am pulling your leg? I wouldn’t do that to you. I live in Minot, North Dakota. Since you most likely are in my generation and most likely attended a public school, i will tell you where North Dakota is. Its by Canada, which is north. WAY north. So far north that we have NO HOMELESS People. I like that part BTW. So anyways. The demographics of Minot feature a very high number of people age 16-30, yet every single store in town has a “Now Hiring” sign in the door. How can this be? Because no one wants to work. I see it every day. We like to skate board, check. We like to draft around the mall like day of the dead, check. We dig texting, check.
“Working? Not so much dear Sir. See if i have to work, than that means i will have to do stuff. You know, like stuff i don’t want to do. Like listen to a boss. Or maybe carry stuff. Or get my hands dirty. That is just so uncool. “
Man now that i think about it, Generation Lazy could be an entire blog, with 10 posts a day, and still only scratch the surface.
Our Mothers and Fathers are counting on us to cure cancer, disarm the threat of nuclear war, and some how solve the oil problem. I am banking we will pass the buck on all of the above. So far my generation has kicked out Youtube, Face book, the Iphone, and super advanced video game systems. Pretty damn lame. Generation X is a big fan of things that allow them to move less and watch more TV. So unless the cure for cancer can be mended to a super bowl or a reality show, we are screwed.
So lazy brings us stupid and it brings us fat. Stupid most likely is a cause to fat, and potentially lazy. Fat is the one most likely that can be fixed, so i will leave it to being the least of the three evils here. To my knowledge, being fat does not make one stupid, but it does indicate lazy (potentially)
I am at a loss ladies and gentlemen. I honestly feel beat down. I see so many things day to day, i really can not imagine anything in this world is improving. I hope this message offends you. I hope this makes you mad. And most important i hope it stirs you up and makes you think. I do not want to be a member of the generation that threw it all away. I do not want to be the generation that gave up. What can we do to make things right?
{ 6 comments }
Adam, this is a really good blog.
I don’t feel uncomfortable because these are old thoughts to me. Reality is going to hit some of these skateboarders hard at some point, and then they’ll become chemists. Every generation feels like the next generation is betraying its efforts. As fucked up as they are now, they’re young and capable of incredible transformations. Reality will knock their faces into the dirt, and the usual percentage of them will turn around. It’s hard to believe, but it’s happened every generation.
FWIW, I am not deeply worried about our country. The dumbfuckery of our citizens continues to work me into a rage on a daily basis, but I’m guessing it was the same in, say, the 1970s.
adam,
great post you speak nothing but the truth, hardwork is a laughing matter to gen x, you can hire someone to do almost anything for you except get in shape, that is on people that is why there so fat and lazy. the since of entitlement now a days is mindblowing, there is no respect comming from generation x. great post adam you are so right it makes me laugh out loud.
Much the same here in Canada. We used to be a nation of hard people.
Here in Edmonton, Alberta the homeless still thrive but the one thing we did have was working homeless. People so eager to work that they’d live out of tents because there was no vacancy to be had. It’s slowed down some because of the oil and economy but it’s still happening and it’s the gen X-ers that are willing to do it.
It’s the younger generation that won’t get a job or leave their parents home let alone pay for some food once and a while.
Not enough people getting kicked in the pants anymore and to much entitlement in their culture.
For a year I worked as a job coach, helping people with mental illnesses find employment. Part of my job was to scan the employment boards online. I was astonished – on any given day, there were between 10,000-15,000 jobs in a twenty mile radius. Those numbers never went down, which either means that they were never filled, or things balanced out as people quit other jobs.
Lots of people don’t like to have a truth-teller in their midst. I do. Great post.
solid adam, it s as true as you can find
al, there are still hard people in canada, there is just fewer of us