ReGeneration

1

We will have to repent

in this generation

not merely for the vitriolic words

and actions of the bad people,

but for the appalling silence

of the good people.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The vast and complicated issues

facing today's generation

can leave many with the uncertainty

and fear that nothing can be done.

Yet by exploring how the influence

of our media,

education and parenting have shaped us,

we can begin to understand

what we must change.

Both as a generation and as a culture.

There's a lot of talk about

the great generation

of the World War II Generation,

and all generations that came after

are supposed to be in some way

lesser than that.

They do not have the world historic role

that the great generation had.

Then there's the sixties generation,

which in some way had had a purpose,

had a world historical role of a kind.

And then Generation X and

Generation Y and so on

are seen mainly in marketing terms:

as generations with no purpose,

no world or historical role.

We interrupt our regularly

scheduled program

to bring you the following

special report.

Good evening. I accepted...

There was a moment in the 1970s

when a not very successful president,

nonetheless, tried very hard to say:

"Hold up. We may be heading down

the wrong path."

In a nation that was proud of hard work,

strong families, close-knit communities

and our faith in God,

too many of us now tend to worship

self-indulgence and consumption.

Human identity is no longer defined

by what one does

but by what one owns.

We may be embracing a

false definition of freedom

and Carter's effort to bring us back

to a truer definition of freedom

was one which required us,

in the near term, to sacrifice.

The vast majority of the American people

didn't want to hear anything like that

and, in short order,

came to see Ronald Reagan as offering

a much preferable message.

And Reagan's message was

that it's morning in America,

you can always have more

and that the American way of life

is not up for negotiation.

They tell us that the future will be one

of sacrifice and few opportunities.

My fellow citizens,

I utterly reject that view.

Of course the problem is,

if we want to preserve

the American way of life,

or at least if we want to preserve those

aspects of the American way of life

that are worth preserving,

then we are going to have to change.

Human nature

usually leads us to not change things

until we are forced to change things.

Then that's the paradigm

that has to be broken.

With a series of other

problems in the world

and an economy that leaves people

feeling enormously uneasy.

You just become numb.

I wish we had more of a solution though.

Protesters vowed to keep up

their demonstrations

despite this state of emergency.

Why is the level of depression so high?

Why are levels of anxiety so high?

Is this really where you want to be?

A woman in Long Island, New York,

was trampled to death

by a stampede of shoppers.

I don't buy into this idea

that we are ok.

I don't think we are ok,

but I think that many of us

are just putting on a show.

So I'm afraid to say we need this change,

and I know we need something

but I'm not sure what.

So, if we lose our principles,

we get lost,

we need to reform and revitalize

and incorporate that back into society.

I think it's a spirit too that

we are not damned.

In order for a revolution to happen,

it has to change on every level.

We need to change the way we live

in some respects

in order to preserve

that which we value most.

It's a time to regenerate,

it's a time to look at lessons, look at

important things that have happened

that need to be defined as a culture.

Eagan High School.

Eagan, Minnesota.

Suburb of Minneapolis / St. Paul.

Student Population: 2300.

You know, I'm so young still

and I think about

all the opportunities I have, that I could

do something and make a difference.

And every time I think "that's wrong",

"that shouldn't be like that",

I wish I could change it or whatever.

But then I'm just like,

you know, who am I?

I am just one junior in high school,

seventeen years old.

What is that going to do?

Dustin and Nicole Artwohl.

Ages 26 and 27

Married 4 years.

Expecting 2nd child in 4 days.

There's not one thing out there that

everyone is trying to fight right now.

There's hundreds of things that you hear

about every day and

it does probably kind of numb you,

because you hear so many of them.

Absolutely. AIDS in Africa

can concerns me, war concerns me.

ou don't really know where to begin.

Are there things that we could be doing

differently? Most definitely.

Is there more help that we could

be providing fellow man? Absolutely, but

time, money...

There's things that are standing

in the way of making that happen.

STS9:
Sound Tribe Sector 9.

Musicians and Artists.

Touring for 10 years.

Own and operate independent

record label/1320 Records.

I think it is important to realize that

there are so many people who morally

disagree with what's going on.

You know, poverty, war, everything.

All of us care, but we just don't know

what to do about it.

We don't want to sound stupid or we don't

want to sound like we are un-American,

or that "we're not supporting our troops"

people who are our friends.

You know, understanding that

we look to the institutions

and the government to answer

a lot of these things when really,

where things get done is people.

You have to care

and if you don't care, then,

I don't know man...

I don't know.

7 days before graduation.

On the bigger issues, the war in Iraq,

global warming,

you know, the big worldwide issues.

I see less activism.

Some of that, I think,

is they've just been overexposed.

They know it's important

but it seems so big

and so, "What can I do?

I'm just one person".

Leo Durocher was a baseball

manager decades ago.

Famous guy, very cantankerous

and clever and witty.

And he used to say

nice guys finish last.

And everybody thought it was

so cute and so accurate.

If you think about it a little,

it's a gigantic condemnation

of a social structure

that being nice should

consign you to failure.

But that's exactly

the world that we live in.

We live in a world whose institutions

are structured in such a way

that you have to be nasty to get ahead.

The culture communicates,

"Nice guys finish last, garbage rises.

Learn that lesson and you'll be okay."

In bailout news,

top managers continue to offer

multi-million dollar pay outs

to senior employees.

The culture communicates,

"injustice is forever",

"poverty is forever",

"violence is forever".

Eek out a niche,

do the best you can.

But it's all forever.

If some of these negative things

were happening on my street,

you'd better be out there

trying to fix it.

But today it's not,

it's not happening in front of me.

The word that you've used throughout

this whole deal is 'apathy,'

and I'd say that we're very apathetic.

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