I'm sure you hear it all the time, how shitty our generation is. I always felt the need to apologize for my generation, but lately I've really thought about it, and I think my generation is pretty great. This is the age of the internet, and it's so much easier to broadcast outrageous teenager problems to anyone and everyone.
But if you think about it; my generation is not buying and selling human beings as if they were property. We're not assigning separate bathrooms to people because their skin is a different pigment. We don't blame video games and heavy metal for our kids misbehavior. Women can wear pants and hold political office. We've discovered and are perfecting clean energy alternatives in all areas. We're effectively removing the restrictions placed on human rights (ie, they now apply to gays, women and people who aren't white!), we've even come as far as recognizing animal rights. We've decided that tattoos and piercings don't mean somebody has a poor work ethic. We've decided that smoking sucks and doesn't even look 'cool' anymore. We also think bullying sucks and don't pick on kids because they wear glasses or have braces. We've started to value intellect and being a "nerd" is pretty awesome. We're advocates for world peace because we're so globalized and connected. Little children are smarter than they've ever been because they're practically born with an iPad in their hands. We're recognizing that mental health is just as or more important that physical health. We're not governed by religion and a set of thousand year old values that in the end, we just fight over and look down on each other for. We've realized that some drugs aren't really drugs, and are really just plants that have a surprising number of positive medical properties and hardly any negative side effects and it might be okay if we let people smoke it. We're tearing down the barriers put up by meaningless stereotypes of all things.
I really don't think our tattoos and piercings and music are as bad as mindless hate and oppression. So while we're not perfect, we're in the process of fixing things. I can't wait for my generation to be the ones holding high political offices, because we're going undo years of abuse and misguidance that past generations have inflicted on the world and each other and future generations are going to thank us. While some may say, and be right, that we are out of control and no longer "God-fearing," it's because we're busy being end-of-the-world-that-you're-breaking-because-god-never-said-anything-about-burning-that-much-oil-as-long-as-gays-can't-get-married-fearing.
We're going to save the world, if it lasts that much longer.