I have always felt like I belonged to a different generation, that I grew up with my parents. I have tried to convince my roommate that I am truly an old person and these new things are too much for my aching mind and body to handle. That the technology is too confusing and too stressful. That I would much rather listen to my Bruce Springsteen and Simon and Garfunkel then listen to her Lady Gaga and KiD CuDi. I’ve tried to convince my friends that swell and peachy keen are more of my vocabulary than LOL or JK or their shortened speech. That I much prefer talking to someone in person than texting them. Or I that like receiving or writing a lengthy letter instead of deciphering an email. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my generation and how sometimes I feel as if I am lost and don’t belong, and how I am stuck in the past, and how I fear the future.
The readings done in this class have encouraged this fear within me. All of these guesses of what the future holds. The reign of technology, and big brother, and war, and death for fun, killing for sport. The discussions we have had about entertainment getting more and more violent, the brutality, and barbarianism of it all, scares me. The loss of language and education and the burning of books, never having enough, always wanting more, taking more. So much destruction in order to bring peace? It doesn’t quite make sense to me. These books and articles and videos and all we have discussed have left so much for me to sit and ponder about.
If anything this class has given me a lot I have to think about. I have been opened up to many interesting and thought provoking books and people. Now what do I do with this information I have been given. Do I continue to run and hide in a past I was never a part of, living in a generation that is not my own? Or do I take what I have been shown and try to mold it to my liking, create my own future instead of riding the current, and letting others make my future for me? I’m not sure any of these things can be answered by my magic eight ball and now I know not what to do.
