The Smiths were great. I don't think they break into my top five, most likely, but maybe in the top ten. I enjoyed all of their albums (and have them all).
You have a point here. I just read a story of a computer consultant-turned-world savior, and she claimed the exact same thing and is now working to improve leadership all around the world. According to her, the important connection she found between, say, poverty or bullying was indeed, inadequate leadership. I find that quite interesting.
Your sarcasm is a fail. The reason I said what I did is because corporate America has almost complete control of the federal government. They do all the campaign funding, all the lobbying. Money rules the federal govt, and until we get corporate money out of govt, the situation will not change. The decisions will primarily swing in business' favor, not the people's. Case in point: Obama isn't even a liberal. His right of center, perhaps. He signed the Monsanto protection bill into law.
No sarcasm, there is an actual think tank started by this woman who considers the connection between poor leadership and several problems in our society important, including those with maladjusted teens. She seeks to improve leadership so as to improve our living standards. Just thought I'd mention it.
I am sorry. I thought it was intended as sarcasm. I personally think that our leadership is leading us down a dark path. The ideas of "uncompromising" and "zero tolerance" are poor choices of philosophical ideals. It's formal logic applied to life and that is a failure because formal logic is square and the world is round.
No worries. And yeah, following absolutes rarely leads to anything good. As for the topic; I've also worked quite a lot with teens and they can be really bright and wonderful, sometimes you just have to get past the attitude to find that person. But, unfortunately, there's been this me-me-me generation in the making as well. I'm looking at you, parents. Make sure you give your kids the best possible tools to weather life.
There are some teenagers I have met that are nice, well mannered and polite. There are many I find that are spoiled way too much. It bothers me to that most of them are too involved in their smartphones and not so much on the simple things in life. I do not mean to be rude when saying this but from my point of view I grew up in a very privileged neighborhood where parents had deep pockets. However, majority of the people I grew up with went to a public college prep school while others were sent to catholic school. Many of my friends in high school had to have a job by the age of 16, (younger if family business) and upon graduating, they were left with little, only to understand the reward of hard work. I would give props to the parents for teaching their teens that money does not come from mom and dad. All comes down to is how you are raised. Do I hate teenagers, no not really. I just dislike the fact that sometimes their attitude in life is unrealistic.
I have some thoughts on teen culture, in particular, what it has been as opposed to what I'm experiencing right now. Whenever I go to visit my only living grandfather, whose will to live has been an immense inspiration for me, it's unavoidable that we sit down and talk about the past. He is a man who has been through both grueling trials of fascism and socialism, and is now living through a parody of a democracy. He has literally been caught pissing outside in the yard by soldiers of the state who were on the hunt for his left-wing relatives, and has felt first hand what it meant to be a teen in those times. You don't have a smartphone in your hand and a mass of friends to text, instead you have a crook and a massive flock of sheep to herd, and you would've been having that responsibility long before you've hit puberty. No such thing as selfishness, because your brothers and sisters are hungry. The milk you've gathered won't be enough for the soldiers, who every so often impose their presence in your household, let alone for your family. And what of yourself, what's left for you? To be thankful that the King's footmen haven't dragged you out at the village centre to be shot as a warning to any would-be partisans. They'll shoot your mother and father right in front of you for all they care, and worst of all, they are your brethren in nationality. That's what it was like to be a teen in a not so distant past. Sometimes when me and my mother are alone, and I'm not busy shoving my face in front of the screen, we talk about her teen years, too. She tells me about student life - all the crushes she's had, and things she had written in her diary (I took a peek once, and saw that she was in love with Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, that was weird to say the least) - but then we trail off to the oppressive nature of the socialist regime. Because you can't have life in this country without it being defiled by a politician's hefty hand. This goes for both the romanticized socialists of the past and the vilified capitalists of today. She talks about it with a pinch of humour, a usual trait of hers, as she starts off with trivial things, like mandatory long skirts for girls, and short hair for boys, but then it gets serious. If you're not a child of a man of established connections, you can kiss your teenage years goodbye, because you'll be lovingly set off by the state to work on their, effectively, plantations. The work pays off in the honour of contributing to the state, for which you should be grateful no less. Remarkably enough, most teens and young adults back then, as my mother tells me, were eager to work. They didn't complain that their work was not gratified as it should have been, because they were fueled by an ideal, albeit a fragile one. They wanted to build a country from scratch. Perhaps one of the most riveting examples of the resolve and the awesome ideals of teenagers (awesome in the truest sense imaginable), was a story by a now old but still very lively and cheerful woman. She speaks of the creation of her hometown of Dimitrovgrad, a then marketed exploit of the socialist agenda. It was to be the pinnacle of the left. She says that she was the very first person to set foot in the yet to be built city of Dimitrovgrad. She, her friends from the brigade and all her fellow teens in their various respective brigades built an entire city almost for free, save the meals and the shelter. She tells how all the brigades used to race each other for who will build more, often working secretly in the dark of night to stay ahead of the rest and gain respect. Now some of those very same people walk on the pavements they put themselves, and wonder where the spirits of young people have gone. Perhaps sealed inside some concrete wall, I wonder? Because that's what happened afterward. After the last amazing spectacle of sheer willpower, when the people - elderly, adults, teens and even children - brought down the old regime and hoped for the best. And now comes my story, completely unspectacular in comparison. There's nothing I could say that you have not seen for yourself, and some of it is quite pitiful, to say the least. This is the tradeoff, I'm lead to believe, for hard-earned freedoms. You get a generation that is wasted on an society that seemingly has nothing to fight for, because what's a rebel without a cause? Maybe that's why we cling to our phones and to our Facebook pages, we long for some kind of connection, even if it's not stimulated, but instead simulated. The great thing is, though, there are still many ideals left to fight for in our increasingly awkward world, so I tend to look far away from the smartphone-tilted heads and I'm glad to see many of my peers do the same. I don't think people should lose hope in our generations yet. Not yet. Sorry for the long post. For those of you who can't be bothered, here's a summary: Don't hate us, we still have it!
@Dean Stride I must say, the one thing I do regret in life is having a conversation with my grandparents about life when they were children and talking to them about it. Some of us are young enough to catch up on life while those who only have so many years should be telling their stories about their lives when they were young. *cheers to you for bringing this up, brought a tear to my eye*
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” Socrates 469-399 BC I don't think much has changed in 2500 years.
@Fitzroy Zeph: You know what? I don't think much has changed, either. Might have to do with that Socrates quote you shared with us . . . . but there's no proof of that.
Let's not forget greedy, selfish, goal-oriented, and double-dealing! Nice people don't get anything in this life. Even saying "good morning" at your workplace can be seen as a sign of weakness.
How is it that any of these are incompatible with "nice"? I know nice ambitious people, and nice disciplined people, and nice driven people. And niceness is an essential part of character. Where did you grow up?
And they usually wind up bitter and lonely and unfulfilled. Nobody attends their funerals except to spit on their graves. That is, unless they learn as they grow older. Some of them, at least, learn the lesson of Scrooge.
Goal-Oriented, how could i have forgotten one of the most important ones. isnt the proper morning greeting, " how will we make money in today market?"
You didn't. You said "no one cares about nice" and that is wrong. Everyone who matters cares about nice. I merely pointed out that you can have the attributes you listed and still be nice. It happens a lot, actually.
Please I'm from the early 90s. We got lucky. The generation after us is going straight to hell YOLO SWAG
