ABANDONED GENERATIONS STRIKE BACK

-Willie Colón

Today’s world is not the one we grew up in, most children only have personal contact with others in school and then for only short periods. Kids don’t play all day together after school as we did. Today’s kids lack the social skills we learned through interacting for long periods. We had to create friendships and alliances and try to repair relationships to survive in those days.

They go home, hook up their video game and their “friends”, from who knows where, as they slay enemies and commit all kinds of fantasy acts “together.” But they are alone in their room.

Bullying use to be restricted to the domain of the school or the block; in our day we could easily escape in the safety and comfort of our home. But today the kids are connected 24/7. Shaming and bullying will follow them right into their bedroom. They can have thousands of kids cracking on them at a time. They also see how perfect everybody else’s life is on social media. This can make kids unhappy. jealous and vindictive.

Then we have the musical counter culture that glorifies bad boys. I plead mea culpa to contributing to this even though I always did it tongue in cheek. But it runs deep as far back as Bonnie Clyde; a movie that gloried two violent (ugly) criminals and played them with pretty movies stars (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty), The Novela about Pablo Escobar, Scarface, Carlito’s Way, Goodfellas, on and on. So it’s in there with us before it got to the kids.

Add to all this the game shows that make anybody who can sing a decent cover song rich, an overnight rock star. Add the ability to put stuff up on FaceBook, YouTube and other media and become a trend, get a contract, and get on TV.

What is the most outrageous statement a young person can make in this culture of violence, game killing, instant fame, relentless bullying? Kill them all. Strike out at society, which in their case is the school.

There have been rifles in massive use since 1812 yet today we have this rash of mass school shootings. Rifles have always been around; they haven’t changed. Our society has changed. 

Getting rid of the rifles is not going to solve this problem. Not to say there is nothing we can do externally with gun laws.We can do some superficial things but they will find other ways to kill (Bombs, knives, cars) if we don’t address this serious mental health/societal illness.

BLAMING THE GUN is a cop out by a society that has abdicated to the TV set, computer and video game the raising of their children.