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The Lost Generation
Sep. 23rd, 2011 08:55 am“I’m really worried about you, Mom,” said Max.
“Well, and you should be,” I said. “Things are very tough and I am about at the end of my ability to cope with them. But I don’t honestly know what to do about that so I just blunder on without a plan. Which is weird – planning was always my forte.”
“I remember,” he said.
Max also told me he thought he might have a bipolar disorder which just kind of killed me – this need to medicalize what is actually a cultural dysjunction. Per this article, things are really, really tough right now for people in their 20s. Honestly? If I was in my 20s, I’d enlist in the military and just pray we don’t end up going to war with Pakistan and the whole brigade of “Arab spring” nations that the idiot Obama seems to have handed over on a platter with apples in their mouths to the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Islam fundamentalists.
Max has a job he’s ambivalent about but he makes a lot of money at it which is more than most people in his age group do. So unless he goes to graduate school to figure out another way to earn his living he’s essentially trapped. That’s where the depressive phases come in. But he’s 24 years old which is basically a high-spirited phase of life – hence what he’s been programmed to call “manic.”
The fact is, though, the culling process that zapped me into the economic twilight zone is at work on a whole generation: A service economy cannot sustain a GNP that expands every year. It simply cannot. If you want the illusion of perpetual growth, you have to go back to a manufacturing economy – and the U.S. just can’t. So there are too many people, and not enough pie, and the surgical strike that takes out a whole generation is the cleanest.
A service economy only works if you don’t expect the GNP to keep expanding. That means limits on consumption, recycling, reuse.
I wonder how much the stock market will tank today?
In other news, I talked to Heidi for an hour on the phone today. Hit with the double whammy of a massive drought and another round of subprime mortgage foreclosures, Monterey is in deep financial recession with an unemployment rate up around 15%. Bill’s Little Store is tanking. They are both extremely depressed. But Heidi is doing a lot of community theater to get around it.
I’ve certainly had my issues with Heidi over the years but now that our friendship is well over the ten year mark, I find myself a lot more tolerant and forgiving. Go figure.
Okay. Time to quit fucking around and get to work.
“Well, and you should be,” I said. “Things are very tough and I am about at the end of my ability to cope with them. But I don’t honestly know what to do about that so I just blunder on without a plan. Which is weird – planning was always my forte.”
“I remember,” he said.
Max also told me he thought he might have a bipolar disorder which just kind of killed me – this need to medicalize what is actually a cultural dysjunction. Per this article, things are really, really tough right now for people in their 20s. Honestly? If I was in my 20s, I’d enlist in the military and just pray we don’t end up going to war with Pakistan and the whole brigade of “Arab spring” nations that the idiot Obama seems to have handed over on a platter with apples in their mouths to the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Islam fundamentalists.
Max has a job he’s ambivalent about but he makes a lot of money at it which is more than most people in his age group do. So unless he goes to graduate school to figure out another way to earn his living he’s essentially trapped. That’s where the depressive phases come in. But he’s 24 years old which is basically a high-spirited phase of life – hence what he’s been programmed to call “manic.”
The fact is, though, the culling process that zapped me into the economic twilight zone is at work on a whole generation: A service economy cannot sustain a GNP that expands every year. It simply cannot. If you want the illusion of perpetual growth, you have to go back to a manufacturing economy – and the U.S. just can’t. So there are too many people, and not enough pie, and the surgical strike that takes out a whole generation is the cleanest.
A service economy only works if you don’t expect the GNP to keep expanding. That means limits on consumption, recycling, reuse.
I wonder how much the stock market will tank today?
In other news, I talked to Heidi for an hour on the phone today. Hit with the double whammy of a massive drought and another round of subprime mortgage foreclosures, Monterey is in deep financial recession with an unemployment rate up around 15%. Bill’s Little Store is tanking. They are both extremely depressed. But Heidi is doing a lot of community theater to get around it.
I’ve certainly had my issues with Heidi over the years but now that our friendship is well over the ten year mark, I find myself a lot more tolerant and forgiving. Go figure.
Okay. Time to quit fucking around and get to work.
