Is it just me, or are most of the arguments for Noynoy logically fallacies that smack of a belief in Eugenics and Dynastic rule?
Is it just me, or is Kris probably more qualified because she definitely has more life experience?
I for one can't believe Noynoy when he says he knows nothing about the things going on and things that went on in Hacienda Luisita.
What would Lolo Pepe Say?
The following is the first draft of my entry to the "What would Lolo Pepe say?" essay writing contest on Jessica Zafra's site, jessicazafrarulestheuniverse.com. I only had a little over an hour to make this, so I am not really 100% satisfied with it. The one I actually submitted (the 15th comment) is a bit shorter than this one, since the contest rules give a 500 word limit, which is a shame because I like this more than the one I submitted. Enjoy!
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Truly, I did not dream for an independent Filipinas to turn out this way. In fact, never had I dreamed that the
Where should I start when there are so many things to say?. After centuries of tyranny from without, we have managed to allow it to be replaced with tyranny from within. Oppression has and still takes many forms- a lot of them unchanged since my day. The illustrados of my generation, as is the middle class of today, were and are by and large scornful of the masses that have made their comfort and positions in life possible, though not as openly perhaps in these days. What else you one expect when it is considered an insult for one of the middle or upper classes to be compared with a maid or a driver? Even with all the modern conveniences that are now available to us, things have not really changed.
It is distressing how we are still stuck to outward appearances. Many would still rather be white, than yellow, or brown. We no longer have the ability to understand subtext and satire, even while we are vicious at picking out typographical and grammatical errors. It is unfortunate, as I liked the sort of humor that relied on satire and wordplay. How ill-fated Chip Tsao was to find himself in the middle of a barrage of arrows shot by the very people he was trying to point out (unfortunately only through implication, which few of us understand these days) were the equals, and not the inferiors of his countrymen?
Another point. Since I was shot at Bagumbayan, the education has had highs and lows. It is clearly in a rut. To see our motorists and pedestrians, is to lose your faith in their ability to comprehend simple road signs. Perhaps it is too much to expect they understand satire or things that provoke thought. What a pity that millions of young minds that could help this nation take its place in the world are being rotted by noontime variety shows and by a diploma mill instructional system.
Also, I had not wished that Tagalog would be the language of all the
I have traveled to Dumaguete and Dapitan, Nueva York and San Francisco, Japon and Hong Kong, to Europa and other points beyond the so called “Metropolitan Manila” which distressingly seems to illogically always stand in for our very diverse nation, and have found good and gentle friends wherever I went. These sorts of class and culture discrimination HAVE to end, though it doubt even it will take 6 generations time, at this pace.
I was not exactly popular with my peers, and our Lord knows that many of my so-called friends in
Musings of a Sepultura Fan
I didn't follow Sepultura in high school and in college. I didn't exactly dislike them either. While I did like a few of their more accessible singles, I never bothered listening to an entire album while they were at their zenith. I was into other kinds of music at the time and I guess a lot of factors kept me from getting that deeply into any sort of metal.
This is more than a decade too late, but after eventually listening to the almost the whole discography (and re-listening to it about a month ago), Sepultura probably could have unseated Slayer (in my psyche, at least) had Max stayed on. It simply ceased to be the Sepultura that captured our imaginations when he left. The next incarnation(s) didn't exactly suck, but they weren't up to par either. And when Igor left-- taking his awesome Afro-Brazilian inspired drumming prowess with him, that's when I started getting indifferent.
Here's a cover of Refuse/Resist, a Sepultura fan favorite. I've seen this video tens of times and it's still awesome.
Soulfly is gay, btw. Not saying they aren't heavy or anything.
This is more than a decade too late, but after eventually listening to the almost the whole discography (and re-listening to it about a month ago), Sepultura probably could have unseated Slayer (in my psyche, at least) had Max stayed on. It simply ceased to be the Sepultura that captured our imaginations when he left. The next incarnation(s) didn't exactly suck, but they weren't up to par either. And when Igor left-- taking his awesome Afro-Brazilian inspired drumming prowess with him, that's when I started getting indifferent.
Here's a cover of Refuse/Resist, a Sepultura fan favorite. I've seen this video tens of times and it's still awesome.
Soulfly is gay, btw. Not saying they aren't heavy or anything.
How I Choose My Friends
I am far from being a nonjudgmental character. Pigeonholing is something I, and a lot of people do. In my own defense, I give people at least a chance to prove themselves, as I know firsthand how it feels to be judged based merely on one's outward appearance.
As a consequence, I have learned to make friends with all sorts of people. Not a lot of people, mind you. Suffice to say my pool of friends is nothing if not diverse. I've also learned to generally choose quality over quantity, and it seems that people who match my particular definition of quality are not easily found.
Now how do I define quality? It's a very difficult thing for me to explain. No one is perfect, least of of all myself. But most of us, my self included, are able to look past quite a lot of things about a person. Most of my friends will differ from me in many fundamental ways, even if we do agree on a lot of things. Many of them will be unable to stand each other if they're forced to be in mixed company.
I have friends who believe all sorts of things. I have friends who are quite involved in political activism, and I have friends who helped candidates cheat in the elections. Some of them believe in same sex-marriages, some don't. I count amongst them Muslims, Bible-thumpers, part-time animists, hardcore-atheists, and of course people of more conventional beliefs for this country at least. Some can even be outright assholes.
Personally, even if I find the beliefs you hold or the political leanings you do have repugnant, I am usually able to let things slide most of the time provided you are not overly pushy and obnoxious. Hell, if you're witty and make decent points, I can usually take obnoxiousness.
I however, for the life of me, can never truly be close with anyone who is not truly passionate about anything other than themselves.
Passion is what drives people to create, even if there is no necessity to give birth to it. It is what drives people to excel, even when adequacy will suffice. Had the human race not been gifted with passion as well as logic to make sense of it, not only would we be unable to progress beyond being animals but we would also cease to be human.
Passion is the most beautiful thing I have seen and experienced in others. When paired with rationality, it becomes part of a combination that is beyond the sublime.
So I like passionate people and I apparently gravitate towards the geeky (after all, geeks are nothing if not endowed with a surplus of enthusiasm for specific things). Big deal. Why would I not really be friends with those that are not? Why can't I be friends with those who are apathetic, or just let whatever ever happens pass over their heads without a care?
This will be a bit complicated but let's first try to put things into perspective. If you lack any longing to create or excel in anything at all, how could you consider yourself to be truly alive? How are you better than an animal in that sense? How would it seem if you are unable to love anything enough to want to do something great with it?
Speaking for myself, it does not matter really whether or not you achieve something that you are reaching for. What would matter more is that you have the desire, and at least try to take a shot at getting it. From what I've noticed, people with real (as opposed to idle) aspirations have either a joy for living or a better understanding for things that can rub off on you or be learned. This seems to hold true, no matter what their personalities or actual achievements are.
It seems a shame to be apathetic about things that do not seem to directly concern you. There is so much wonder in this world, and so much to experience beyond mere distractions and it seems such a waste to just not care about them, or not care about a single thing beyond what is immediately had.
To my mind, to be apathetic without at least trying to understand and explore things, is a mark of someone who is perhaps, a little less than human.
People without passion allow mediocrity to be the status quo. Those without it let others make their decisions for them without a fight. Those without it seek only distraction and mistake it for fulfillment. Those without passion are never at all responsible for any progress, and are almost always inevitably responsible when regression takes hold. Those without passion are filled instead with apathy and allow the wicked to hold tyranny over them and take innocent lives with nary a complaint. And to top it all off, they're boring.
In the end, the choice I made to choose friends who have at least some sort of intensity or zest in them was the right one even if it was also a choice that will leave anyone with very few close relationships.
There are many good things to be said about choosing friends that lack passivity in them.
First and foremost, they are always entertaining to some degree. Everyone likes being entertained, but like the elitist douche I am, I've got standards which people who care for nothing but themselves rarely ever seem to reach.
Second, being with them is almost always an educational experience and one can often learn life lessons not easily found in any classroom or even through a Google search for that matter.
Third, they make me grateful to be alive because ever so often, you can almost feel the love that they put into their endeavors. When for instance, you see someone express themselves through their work in a way that shows that what he does really means a lot to them, the experience is something not easily forgotten,
Fourth, our passions help forge our identities. it's no surprise that those who are apathetic are quite often easy to predict and are so easy to pigeonhole. This is likely because they lack a sense of identity that is singular or even merely remarkable enough to set them apart from most other people. Passionate people are splashes of color on an otherwise gray field, if you would forgive this cliched analogy.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, passionate people will more likely than not care about things deeply, even things that might not be their overriding specific interests. Quite often, one might see that these passions extend towards concerns involving social justice or towards just making the world a better place.
Consider the fact that quite a lot of people who are well known in a particular field are often known for doing something else, most often helping others or helping make the world or part of it a little more tolerable to live in. I know this isn't a scientific observation, but surely one will notice that a truly spirited person will more often than not, have insights to the world a consistently passive one will not. It's no coincidence that many if not most artists, who are often considered to be paragons of passion, are into social causes of some sort. Even those with highly developed interests in technical fields, from Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein to Andrei Sakharov and Bill Gates have heavily invested in social causes, giving up their personal lives, giving their their talent or wealth, or all of these. I for one do not believe this to be coincidence.
People with this sort of drive have always been in perpetually short supply. Sometimes, it feels like they are more scarce these days. They are the ones I choose to surround myself with, even if they're not always the most reliable or the most available. I choose to be close to them because people who care enough to create and to excel even when they do not need to are those responsible for enriching the human experience. And as I have learned first hand, they seem to have the greatest capacity to love.
As a consequence, I have learned to make friends with all sorts of people. Not a lot of people, mind you. Suffice to say my pool of friends is nothing if not diverse. I've also learned to generally choose quality over quantity, and it seems that people who match my particular definition of quality are not easily found.
Now how do I define quality? It's a very difficult thing for me to explain. No one is perfect, least of of all myself. But most of us, my self included, are able to look past quite a lot of things about a person. Most of my friends will differ from me in many fundamental ways, even if we do agree on a lot of things. Many of them will be unable to stand each other if they're forced to be in mixed company.
I have friends who believe all sorts of things. I have friends who are quite involved in political activism, and I have friends who helped candidates cheat in the elections. Some of them believe in same sex-marriages, some don't. I count amongst them Muslims, Bible-thumpers, part-time animists, hardcore-atheists, and of course people of more conventional beliefs for this country at least. Some can even be outright assholes.
Personally, even if I find the beliefs you hold or the political leanings you do have repugnant, I am usually able to let things slide most of the time provided you are not overly pushy and obnoxious. Hell, if you're witty and make decent points, I can usually take obnoxiousness.
I however, for the life of me, can never truly be close with anyone who is not truly passionate about anything other than themselves.
Passion is what drives people to create, even if there is no necessity to give birth to it. It is what drives people to excel, even when adequacy will suffice. Had the human race not been gifted with passion as well as logic to make sense of it, not only would we be unable to progress beyond being animals but we would also cease to be human.
Passion is the most beautiful thing I have seen and experienced in others. When paired with rationality, it becomes part of a combination that is beyond the sublime.
So I like passionate people and I apparently gravitate towards the geeky (after all, geeks are nothing if not endowed with a surplus of enthusiasm for specific things). Big deal. Why would I not really be friends with those that are not? Why can't I be friends with those who are apathetic, or just let whatever ever happens pass over their heads without a care?
This will be a bit complicated but let's first try to put things into perspective. If you lack any longing to create or excel in anything at all, how could you consider yourself to be truly alive? How are you better than an animal in that sense? How would it seem if you are unable to love anything enough to want to do something great with it?
Speaking for myself, it does not matter really whether or not you achieve something that you are reaching for. What would matter more is that you have the desire, and at least try to take a shot at getting it. From what I've noticed, people with real (as opposed to idle) aspirations have either a joy for living or a better understanding for things that can rub off on you or be learned. This seems to hold true, no matter what their personalities or actual achievements are.
It seems a shame to be apathetic about things that do not seem to directly concern you. There is so much wonder in this world, and so much to experience beyond mere distractions and it seems such a waste to just not care about them, or not care about a single thing beyond what is immediately had.
To my mind, to be apathetic without at least trying to understand and explore things, is a mark of someone who is perhaps, a little less than human.
People without passion allow mediocrity to be the status quo. Those without it let others make their decisions for them without a fight. Those without it seek only distraction and mistake it for fulfillment. Those without passion are never at all responsible for any progress, and are almost always inevitably responsible when regression takes hold. Those without passion are filled instead with apathy and allow the wicked to hold tyranny over them and take innocent lives with nary a complaint. And to top it all off, they're boring.
In the end, the choice I made to choose friends who have at least some sort of intensity or zest in them was the right one even if it was also a choice that will leave anyone with very few close relationships.
There are many good things to be said about choosing friends that lack passivity in them.
First and foremost, they are always entertaining to some degree. Everyone likes being entertained, but like the elitist douche I am, I've got standards which people who care for nothing but themselves rarely ever seem to reach.
Second, being with them is almost always an educational experience and one can often learn life lessons not easily found in any classroom or even through a Google search for that matter.
Third, they make me grateful to be alive because ever so often, you can almost feel the love that they put into their endeavors. When for instance, you see someone express themselves through their work in a way that shows that what he does really means a lot to them, the experience is something not easily forgotten,
Fourth, our passions help forge our identities. it's no surprise that those who are apathetic are quite often easy to predict and are so easy to pigeonhole. This is likely because they lack a sense of identity that is singular or even merely remarkable enough to set them apart from most other people. Passionate people are splashes of color on an otherwise gray field, if you would forgive this cliched analogy.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, passionate people will more likely than not care about things deeply, even things that might not be their overriding specific interests. Quite often, one might see that these passions extend towards concerns involving social justice or towards just making the world a better place.
Consider the fact that quite a lot of people who are well known in a particular field are often known for doing something else, most often helping others or helping make the world or part of it a little more tolerable to live in. I know this isn't a scientific observation, but surely one will notice that a truly spirited person will more often than not, have insights to the world a consistently passive one will not. It's no coincidence that many if not most artists, who are often considered to be paragons of passion, are into social causes of some sort. Even those with highly developed interests in technical fields, from Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein to Andrei Sakharov and Bill Gates have heavily invested in social causes, giving up their personal lives, giving their their talent or wealth, or all of these. I for one do not believe this to be coincidence.
People with this sort of drive have always been in perpetually short supply. Sometimes, it feels like they are more scarce these days. They are the ones I choose to surround myself with, even if they're not always the most reliable or the most available. I choose to be close to them because people who care enough to create and to excel even when they do not need to are those responsible for enriching the human experience. And as I have learned first hand, they seem to have the greatest capacity to love.
Generation Whine
Lomo, Electronic music, Social Networking, faux 80s culture... these are among the things that many kids from where I live at least, are interested in these days. While I can appreciate most of these things to some level, I can't help but scream "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND A GODDAMNED THING" inside my head way more often than is healthy. Everything old really has become new, yet again. But with crucial differences.
As a college graduate and as someone who has hit my mid-20s, I've realized that I've become too old to be part of the things most young people today are involved in. I feel that as a crotchety oldster, I now have the right to sneer at the youth, especially when I subconsciously realize they might be enjoying things more than I did or are more privileged than me in some ways. i do not relate to them as well as would be expected.
I was born in 1984. Generation Y, or the youth of today are said to be those born after 1980. But that only applies in the Western World. More accurately, I am at the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y, mostly because Globalization had not reached the breakneck pace it has today and cultural adoption from the outside took a lot slower than it now does. I feel more kinship with those born in the mid-late 70s up to around 1986.
I can say with absolute certainty that I feel a somewhat wide generation gap between myself and those born just 3 years later. It's strange, but it's just too true. Most of them have no memory of Cory as President, or of the coup d'etats, or constant power outages, or the essential bits of popular and unpopular culture that was around. Even if it was only three stinking years, you had to be there. You had to be there when porn meant buying a tabloid instead of going online. You had to be there for those 3 extra years that you didn't have cellphones. You needed to have been there for the blue two peso bills with Jose Rizal on them. You needed to have been there for those 3 extra years that it actually made sense to purchase cassette tapes. Kids seem to have it so easy these days.
But after considering things a bit further, we need to realize that despite their better grasp of new technologies and their unheralded access to information at this stage in their lives, things are not going too well for them.
Most of the things that have come to define the youth culture of today are borrowed from the extinct or barely present youth cultures of decades past. Perhaps these youth cultures might not even have anything significant going on, aside from the fashion and by-the-numbers music. There is a definite 80s revival going on, and there is a resurgence interest in all the kitschy things that most people found cause to despise or find inconvenient, like porn star mustaches, trucker caps, and shutter shades.
Fashion, and perhaps the adoption of cultures and counter-cultures, is indeed often cyclical, mainly because people get bored of being exposed to or using the same things over again and emergent youth cultures will often have likes and dislikes contrary to the generation that preceded them for one reason or the other.
However, if you think about it, almost every new wave of youth culture has had something new to offer. I can't for the life of me think of something that is truly revolutionary that has been linked to the youth in the past 10 years.* There's been an explosion in the number of internet users, most of them young people (a broader definition of young that would include myself), that much is sure. But the internet has been around since the 1960s in the form of ARPANET, and the World Wide Web has been around since the late 80s, so this particular development and everything else related, including file and media sharing is more evolution than revolution. In any case, you can't give this generation full credit for the internet, even if it IS called the Net Generation.
Lets put things into perspective and use our powers of overgeneralization. Youth culture as we know it in the Western World and countries heavily influenced by the same (i.e. the Philippines) became significant in the 50s, following the baby boom and the fact that marketers recognized that the emergent youth not only had buying power, but a set of values different from that of their parents.
Of course, there always have been misfits in every era that had values very different from the mainstream. The short and often accepted story is, American kids with more spending power than was readily available to them before started to get influenced by the then alternative cultures represented by beatniks, bikers, jazz, blues, and country music, marijuana, and blue jeans started expressing themselves in a way never before seen. They were also crucial in the creation and popularization of Rock and Roll and the things associated with it. America, being the greatest cultural imperialist the world has ever seen, then laid down the path that much of the world eventually followed.
Let's overgeneralize things again, without considering the young people outside the so-called Free World. The youth in the 50s created the rocker archetype, among other things. The youth of the 60s created the hippie among other subcultures. The 70s had glam rockers, disco, emergent electronica (which had its roots in the 1920s, no less), and punk rock. The 80s had all sorts of metal, new wave, rap and hip-hop, techno, rave, and cassette culture, and more merging of ideas than was previously common. The 90s had grunge
(which was definitely not possible without the merging of influences), the blossoming of hip-hop and R&B, and it also brought forth internet culture. Almost all the significant movements arose as a reaction to preceding cultures and technological developments but they always created something of their own.
What did the youth, (arguably) my generation, create in the 2000s? Emo? Even that is arguably something that was already around in the 80s. Wide-scale independent music distribution? 80s still. Plaid and flannel? 70s through the 90s. Pretension? Since forever.
In fact, there is a corny 80s revival movement going on. However, instead of the innovation and reactionary politics that had been a hallmark of that and the other decades, it seems that this particular wave of young folk has reduced the things created by previous generations into a mere palette of fashion and music choices. It almost always seems that only lip service is given to the fundamental ideas behind the movements of previous generations. It seems that no one is creating anything new in a sense as vital as it once was.
What is sort of new, even with its roots in the 90s, is the proliferation of internet memes. Instant funny if you will. No need to add context either. This decade has shown that way too many people have too much time on their hands and more people than previously imagined, spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things just for the heck of it. And a lot of the time, it's hilarious. I agree quite a few of these memes are genius. But when it comes to things that matter, like the protection of freedoms or for the awareness of things that are happening, or effecting positive change, the youth of this decade has fallen really flat.
Generation Y culture here and abroad has been marked by an selfishness and apathy so obvious yet so insidious it makes me fear about what will happen in a future where those in charge will be people who currently by and large do not even care about the world beyond themselves. A generation that is resigned to let things happen as they will. Compare youth activism here and in the States (where a lot of our current youth culture ideas originate) to what it was 25 or 30 years ago, and the difference is obvious.
Even with the available technology and the potential to make a positive difference, the will to make this difference happen simply does not seem to be there.
Why? I seriously don't know for sure. Perhaps the oldsters have gotten too disillusioned with attempting to make a change and this rubbed off on many of us. Perhaps technology instead of encouraging people to be take action, has encouraged docility and perpetual escapism.
But I do believe this. The way I see it, the youth of this decade have contributed nothing significant or worth emulating. They are unlike previous youth cultures: one that does not long for change, but longs for escape. It is not one that by the very force of its own movement, breeds invention to reinforce one's identity, but rather breeds a despicable sort of passivity. It is not a youth culture that encourages its members to look at the past as a source of inspiration but instead causes its members to look to the past as a mere source of fun kitsch. For many young people, life is now lived as a means toward the next distraction, which is an awful shame as life as a young person should be something better than that.
*if you can think of something please comment
As a college graduate and as someone who has hit my mid-20s, I've realized that I've become too old to be part of the things most young people today are involved in. I feel that as a crotchety oldster, I now have the right to sneer at the youth, especially when I subconsciously realize they might be enjoying things more than I did or are more privileged than me in some ways. i do not relate to them as well as would be expected.
I was born in 1984. Generation Y, or the youth of today are said to be those born after 1980. But that only applies in the Western World. More accurately, I am at the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y, mostly because Globalization had not reached the breakneck pace it has today and cultural adoption from the outside took a lot slower than it now does. I feel more kinship with those born in the mid-late 70s up to around 1986.
I can say with absolute certainty that I feel a somewhat wide generation gap between myself and those born just 3 years later. It's strange, but it's just too true. Most of them have no memory of Cory as President, or of the coup d'etats, or constant power outages, or the essential bits of popular and unpopular culture that was around. Even if it was only three stinking years, you had to be there. You had to be there when porn meant buying a tabloid instead of going online. You had to be there for those 3 extra years that you didn't have cellphones. You needed to have been there for the blue two peso bills with Jose Rizal on them. You needed to have been there for those 3 extra years that it actually made sense to purchase cassette tapes. Kids seem to have it so easy these days.
But after considering things a bit further, we need to realize that despite their better grasp of new technologies and their unheralded access to information at this stage in their lives, things are not going too well for them.
Most of the things that have come to define the youth culture of today are borrowed from the extinct or barely present youth cultures of decades past. Perhaps these youth cultures might not even have anything significant going on, aside from the fashion and by-the-numbers music. There is a definite 80s revival going on, and there is a resurgence interest in all the kitschy things that most people found cause to despise or find inconvenient, like porn star mustaches, trucker caps, and shutter shades.
Fashion, and perhaps the adoption of cultures and counter-cultures, is indeed often cyclical, mainly because people get bored of being exposed to or using the same things over again and emergent youth cultures will often have likes and dislikes contrary to the generation that preceded them for one reason or the other.
However, if you think about it, almost every new wave of youth culture has had something new to offer. I can't for the life of me think of something that is truly revolutionary that has been linked to the youth in the past 10 years.* There's been an explosion in the number of internet users, most of them young people (a broader definition of young that would include myself), that much is sure. But the internet has been around since the 1960s in the form of ARPANET, and the World Wide Web has been around since the late 80s, so this particular development and everything else related, including file and media sharing is more evolution than revolution. In any case, you can't give this generation full credit for the internet, even if it IS called the Net Generation.
Lets put things into perspective and use our powers of overgeneralization. Youth culture as we know it in the Western World and countries heavily influenced by the same (i.e. the Philippines) became significant in the 50s, following the baby boom and the fact that marketers recognized that the emergent youth not only had buying power, but a set of values different from that of their parents.
Of course, there always have been misfits in every era that had values very different from the mainstream. The short and often accepted story is, American kids with more spending power than was readily available to them before started to get influenced by the then alternative cultures represented by beatniks, bikers, jazz, blues, and country music, marijuana, and blue jeans started expressing themselves in a way never before seen. They were also crucial in the creation and popularization of Rock and Roll and the things associated with it. America, being the greatest cultural imperialist the world has ever seen, then laid down the path that much of the world eventually followed.
Let's overgeneralize things again, without considering the young people outside the so-called Free World. The youth in the 50s created the rocker archetype, among other things. The youth of the 60s created the hippie among other subcultures. The 70s had glam rockers, disco, emergent electronica (which had its roots in the 1920s, no less), and punk rock. The 80s had all sorts of metal, new wave, rap and hip-hop, techno, rave, and cassette culture, and more merging of ideas than was previously common. The 90s had grunge
(which was definitely not possible without the merging of influences), the blossoming of hip-hop and R&B, and it also brought forth internet culture. Almost all the significant movements arose as a reaction to preceding cultures and technological developments but they always created something of their own.
What did the youth, (arguably) my generation, create in the 2000s? Emo? Even that is arguably something that was already around in the 80s. Wide-scale independent music distribution? 80s still. Plaid and flannel? 70s through the 90s. Pretension? Since forever.
In fact, there is a corny 80s revival movement going on. However, instead of the innovation and reactionary politics that had been a hallmark of that and the other decades, it seems that this particular wave of young folk has reduced the things created by previous generations into a mere palette of fashion and music choices. It almost always seems that only lip service is given to the fundamental ideas behind the movements of previous generations. It seems that no one is creating anything new in a sense as vital as it once was.
What is sort of new, even with its roots in the 90s, is the proliferation of internet memes. Instant funny if you will. No need to add context either. This decade has shown that way too many people have too much time on their hands and more people than previously imagined, spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things just for the heck of it. And a lot of the time, it's hilarious. I agree quite a few of these memes are genius. But when it comes to things that matter, like the protection of freedoms or for the awareness of things that are happening, or effecting positive change, the youth of this decade has fallen really flat.
Generation Y culture here and abroad has been marked by an selfishness and apathy so obvious yet so insidious it makes me fear about what will happen in a future where those in charge will be people who currently by and large do not even care about the world beyond themselves. A generation that is resigned to let things happen as they will. Compare youth activism here and in the States (where a lot of our current youth culture ideas originate) to what it was 25 or 30 years ago, and the difference is obvious.
Even with the available technology and the potential to make a positive difference, the will to make this difference happen simply does not seem to be there.
Why? I seriously don't know for sure. Perhaps the oldsters have gotten too disillusioned with attempting to make a change and this rubbed off on many of us. Perhaps technology instead of encouraging people to be take action, has encouraged docility and perpetual escapism.
But I do believe this. The way I see it, the youth of this decade have contributed nothing significant or worth emulating. They are unlike previous youth cultures: one that does not long for change, but longs for escape. It is not one that by the very force of its own movement, breeds invention to reinforce one's identity, but rather breeds a despicable sort of passivity. It is not a youth culture that encourages its members to look at the past as a source of inspiration but instead causes its members to look to the past as a mere source of fun kitsch. For many young people, life is now lived as a means toward the next distraction, which is an awful shame as life as a young person should be something better than that.
*if you can think of something please comment
Philippine-American Friendship Day
I just remembered that today is Philippine-American Friendship Day. I suppose this shows you can still be buds with someone who essentially raped you. By the way, waiting until most of our World War 2 veterans were already dead before you properly recognized their efforts? Classy move.
Cheers!
Cheers!
An Incomplete List of Things I Like
After hearing Julie Andrews sing about her favorite things one too many times on Winamp, I've decided to give in and make a list of things I like, as well. Lists, personally speaking are what happen when I feel like I want to write something but feel to lazy to make something substantial and consciously coherent. A list would after all, help you compile several ideas around a particular theme without the effort needed to create a traditional article with paragraphs and complete sentences and all that sort of nonsense. Very few (or none of you) may recall the stupidity that ensued the last time I made a list, which by and large outlined the things I often noticed about people I dislike.
I'd like to be a bit more positive this time. These are but a few of the things that I like and I can't really explain why I like most of them.
I'd like to be a bit more positive this time. These are but a few of the things that I like and I can't really explain why I like most of them.
- Simple yet elegant solutions to problems.
- Simple but effective musical motifs, like the Jaws Theme, or almost any song by The Ramones.
- Nifty shoes.
- Classy looking basses and guitars.
- Seeing women I like in plaid skirts.
- Cowboy hats and boots on the right people. Pretty hard to arrange, I guess.
- Plaid button-down shirts. Preferably flannel. Any sort of cut that fits well is ok.
- Naturally worn-out jeans.
- Bakelite plastic like they used in old telephones and radios.
- Three-man/woman bands. There's just something about a lot of them that appeal to me.
- *Almost* exact symmetry when it comes to designs that do not have practical considerations that require perfection. Generally speaking, I don't like things to look too perfect.
- Field Jackets. Especially M-65s.
- Items made out of tortoiseshell.
- De Stijl color schemes, or any color scheme that makes use of a limited palette effectively.
- Conservative paisley prints. I can't really explain what I mean by that.
- Food with multiple flavor notes.
- The internet
- The Torrents :D
- Conversations where I don't have to explain myself every two minutes or so.
- Sound engineering that does not resort to massive audio compression.
- Teaching people stuff on guitar or bass.
- Our Sharp R-340F Microwave Oven. Best appliance ever!
- Corduroy
- Meeting people who are truly passionate about something other than themselves.
- Free food.
- Swimming.
- Good potato chips.
- Audiophile equipment.
- Seeing people get what they really deserve. X(
- Punctuality
- GOATS. I love goats. Seriously. Goats are awesome.
- British humor
