ReGeneration Page #2

It's not that people think

that poverty is fine

or war is fine,

or degradation and cynicism

and violence is all over...

that all that and all

that we know is fine.

Nobody thinks it's fine.

It's just that everybody thinks

there's no alternative.

Everybody thinks that's the way it is.

Like gravity, or like aging.

In other words,

"What are you talking about?

There's no point in a social

movement against aging.

There's no point in a social

movement against gravity."

In our reality, nothing will change.

Unless,

I don't know, unless some more college

students stand on street corners and picket.

Maybe that'll help.

And so, when you say,

"Come be an activist,

oppose that stuff,"

it's an actual belief

that it's a fool's errand.

That's the problem.

This is the violence of institutions,

indifference,

inaction and decay,

and only a cleansing

of our whole society

can remove this sickness

from our souls.

We live in a 'Me' Generation.

Therein lies the conflict.

And the conflict is how do we live

in a 'Me' Generation?

What is the 'Me' Generation?

What is the 'Me' Generation?

On a Volleyball game, you're a team.

And then in this it's just me.

Teenagers who gossip

are actually more popular.

People have come to expect

global climate change.

Breaking entertainment stories

you need to hear.

The first thing I'm unpacking

is a box of condoms.

Poor and unemployed...

I think the notion of individualism

has a long history in the United States.

And things that are good

for the community such as

preserving the environment

or having decent wages for everyone,

or have looked at the world and said,

"I want to change this

and I am going to make the time"

those sort of societal values

get thrown by the wayside.

It's a generation that

has no sense of the future,

no sense of civic responsibility.

I don't mean this as a criticism.

I believe the media

and the society are generating this.

It also has to do with

how we're just selfish.

It's always about,

"Me, me, me,"

and we kind of take all the things

that we have for granted.

Most definitely it has become

a 'Me' Generation,

and I think that we all are taught

self confidence and...

People have a sense of entitlement.

We're the most important

person in the world

and that transfers over into adulthood.

There'd been a movement for a while

about individualism that

really began in the '70s,

but that wasn't applied

to kids until the early '80s,

when the self-esteem

programs hit the schools.

And if you look in the media as well,

and in popular culture,

they we're taught things like,

"believe in yourself",

"you can be anything you want to be"

and putting yourself first.

It's a total lie,

it's a total lie. There are two lies

in the self-esteem movement:

The first is "you can be

whatever you want to be",

which is just demonstrably untrue.

And the second is that

your value is innate.

In other words, you're a wonderful

person no matter what you do,

you're a great person.

I tell my children every day

that they're special.

I tell them that I love them,

I tell them that they can do anything.

But I also am realistic with them.

I tell them that they can do anything

if they prepare themselves,

if they become a certain type of person

and have an understanding of history.

We live in a society that prizes

politeness over righteousness.

If you don't take the time

to tell them in the house

what their outside behavior should be,

then it's your fault when

they're outside acting a fool.

And then they grow up to be a**holes.

There are a lot of enabling parents.

The thing about parent and kids

today is that they're much closer

and the communication is much

more open than it has been in the past.

So they're almost kind of like friends.

We have had many situations

where parents come in

and they do not want their kids to have

the consequences of what has happened,

and they enable them and they come in

and they fight with the principal.

And, you know, I just think what

a disservice that is to the kid.

What a disservice to think that

whatever you do is fine,

and I will fight for you

and you do not have to pay

the consequences of your failure.

They're told that

they are 'Me' Generation,

but they're encouraged to relate

to the world in that way:

To basically be narcissistic

in their relation to the world.

I don't like liberals.

I'm going to be honest.

I just think it's hard to label

the entire generation something...

...that all of us are the same,

which is definitely not true.

In the late eighteenth century,

when working people around Boston

were running around newspapers,

they complained bitterly about

the industrial system that

was being imposed on them.

I'm quoting now, what they called

"the new spirit of the age,

gain wealth, forgetting all but self".

That's supposed to be the 'Me' Generation,

but this was a hundred and fifty years ago.

Coming from a business point of view,

from the point of view of any rulers,

independence is the last thing that

the managers want

and attempt to crush this independence

and to shape people into malleable,

obedient, apathetic,

separated, atomized individuals.

The ideal social unit is a pair:

you and a television set.

Just about the only thing that

can make a ten year old

sit still long enough for you

to catch your breath.

If you can impose a society

constructed of such units,

then you've got the country pretty

much under control, even without force.

Kids do not evaluate things.

They do not really dig into stuff the way

that they need to in order to analyze it,

and that's part of the

multi-task generation.

They're watching the television,

they've got their computer on,

they're on their cellphone

all at the same time.

And I'm guilty of it.

A ton of kids are walking around,

all tuned into their iPods and,

you know, texting and stuff like that.

They're literally sheltering themselves

away from everything else out there.

We may not demonstrate

and aren't as active

as generations of the '60s and '70s,

but a big part of that is because we

haven't gone outside for our entire lives.

We've been inside, on the Internet.

It's true.

It has everything to do with our

alienation from nature. Absolutely.

The means of how we sustain ourselves,

how we survive.

The man who doesn't know how to fish,

who doesn't know how to hunt,

who doesn't know how to farm,

who's completely dependent

upon a government or some sort of

system that's in place for him to eat,

breathe, survive.

For thirty thousand generations

of human history

we grew up within nature,

and we got our cues and our

learning experiences by

checking out the wind and learning

how to negotiate rivers.

And then all of a sudden,

three generations ago,

the lessons that we're learning

from nature diminished down

to damn close to zero for many people,

and the electronic environment

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