Mad Props To Max

Photo from here. Pass the torch, already.

I’ll admit that I can be cynical and that I do not always see eye to eye with many of my peers. I’ve been known to roll my eyes or even get into arguments with those of my classmates, friends, acquaintances, strangers of my age group who display an inordinate amount of idiocy. However, one thing that continues to irk me is how little faith the present reigning generation (my parents, aunts, and uncles’ age group) has in us, their progeny. It’s an expansion of the philosophy I always approached my brothers with: I can say whatever I want about them, but if anyone else dares to make fun of them within my presence, they’ll be reeling for weeks from verbal whiplash.

If we as a generation are uneducated and uninformed, the teacher is as much at fault as the pupil. My parents are both in their fifties. I am twenty-two. Since I was about thirteen, they treated me relatively like an adult, because I earned that treatment and their respect as a self-motivated individual with a driving passion and purpose. However, I had their example to guide me towards such a development. Many of my peers have not been so lucky.

We do not choose what genes are passed on to us, nor into which families we are born. We do not choose the economic situations into which we are thrust. Thus, when such pillars of the reigning generation as Alan Greenspan place the fault with us and shudder at the world my generation will one day be responsible for, it irks me something fierce.

Personally, I can’t wait until it’s my turn to be part of the reigning generation. The reigns will not be passed over in a sudden deferral of power, and we will not wake up one day and realize we are in charge. However, the slow transition between the level of influence wielded in familial, domestic, and international affairs is one I anticipate a little more each day. The mess left by the generations preceding us will take a lot to clean up, and such an endeavor may very well be beyond the scope of our power to heal, but when the world has already descended this far into hell…eventually, there will be nowhere to go but up. In a response to Greenspan’s comments, one of my peers—with whom I have worked on a professional/military level and who I also count among my friends—may have said it best:

My generation is going to have to pay the bill for the blank checks written during the second half of the 20th century by policymakers like Alan Greenspan. I am fully aware that I am likely to pay into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and then not receive any benefits later in life.

You can find more about what Greenspan said here, as well as the rest of Max’s response here.