I Have No Heroes & Neither Should You

I had a discussion recently with my mother over the fact that the role models for children these days are unrealistic at best. The "heroes" of today's youth haven't accomplished much more than a music and/or acting career based on selling out to a genre (I'll explain this further in a moment and yes, almost every artist does this) and a stellar social media presence. Now, this doesn't make them horrible people and that is not the intention of this article. Celebrities, like the rest of us are human, have human motives, and also do wonderful things. 

As far as selling out to a genre, what I mean is that every artist conforms to the ideal of the fans their music or acting represents. An easy example is Taylor Swift, her transition from country singing sweetheart to New York killer queen was an intentional swap of genres executed perfectly. She no longer had her long blonde curls and soft pastel dresses that swirled about her like a dream. Instead she traded them for an edgy look, hipster themes and a new base line. There is nothing wrong with conforming to a new genre, especially when it's your job, as long as you actually want to. 

Actors do this too. Everyone knows Tom Hiddleston is a classy gent. One, because that's who he is. And two, because he's also created that theme in the way he talks, dresses, and the roles he's chosen to play. In the entertainment world you have to build an image and fit it. That's just how it is. It doesn't have to be something you're not, but it does have to be something people readily recognize. That's how you get certain parts, that's how you produce yourself. Simple marketing. 

That explanation out of the way, back to why I have no heroes. More importantly why today's kids are about to have a terrible go of it. 

My younger sister's hero is Ariana Grande. What I mean by that is, the person she wants to be, who she thinks is the greatest personality achievable, and whom she'd most like to be like is Ariana Grande. She loves all her music, her taste in style. All of it, she wants to be Ms. Grande.  

Other kids I know have similar connections to internet celebrities like Colleen Ballinger, Felix Kjellberg, and Tyler Oakley. These young people are their aspirations, their role models. And so, to imitate them they start their own channels and create videos that mimic or fit into the style of their heroes. There's nothing wrong with admiring entertainers, especially some of these youtubers who have done amazing things with charities and that sort of thing.

Here's where the problem lies: the kids admire their heroes for their fame and lifestyle. Not for who the people are. You can't admire someone for who they are if you don't actually know them. I have argued this with many people who say that youtubers (and actors/musicians for that matter) are actually more real than they've ever been. They put their whole lives on camera and want you to be part of it. Well...no.

Just as Facebook gives you the opportunity to project whatever image you want, so does youtube. Any media outlet is tampered with marketing a specific image. Everyone does it. If you think for a moment that a youtuber would persist with something out there that is a bold, anti-popular belief opinion, you are wrong.

Nash Grier, a popular viner, got so much grief after posting an anti-gay vine that he immediately apologized and took it down. He said he was "in a weird place" when he made it, which could be true. Or he could have thought it would be funny and then realized no one was going to go with it. Or, and I think this may be more plausible, is that he stated a personal opinion, against the status quo, and had to change his public image to continue making money as an entertainer.

You can't be real on the internet. Argue it any way and you'd still be wrong. Even in real life we have an image to project, online it's just easier to maintain. Play your cards right and you can fool anyone into thinking you're a sheep when you're a wolf (Poe's law fits somewhere here).

Here's the scene: millions of kids across America, whose role models are actors who consistently pretend to make money, go on to be just like them. The thing is, not everyone's going to make it as a youtube or vine celebrity. So, where does that leave us?

Marie Antoinette was Queen of France roughly between 1774 to 1792. She's an iconic figure in history and most people know at least the name. We're all familiar with the saying "Let them eat cake," that she (supposedly, no historians believe she actually said that) said. Whether she said the phrase or not, it wouldn't have been something farfetched to come from her mouth. Marie wasn't an idiot by any means, however she had no know how when it came to running a country. Neither did her husband, Louis XVI. They were raised to be beautiful. To be admired by their people for their attraction, not their diplomatic prowess.

Louis tried to usher his country into a new era with Enlightenment ideas, this didn't go over well with his court as it abolished serfdom. He also cut down on economic regulations of the government which unfortunately led to a shortage of grain in France. While he had wonderful ideas that could have worked if he'd better tested their influence on his country and built firmer connections with the factions in his circle of influence, Louis' decisions were led by sheer will and not a thorough investigation of the facts.

Marie was worse off, her mother trained her to look like a queen, not be one. Marie could not read or write well in any language, her talents were only in singing, playing the harp, and dancing. She had no forethought to extend her hand to courtiers who were against the alliance with Austria (her homeland). Marie wanted to live like a queen, not exercise the responsibility of one. She renovated buildings, some saying she plastered them with gold and jewels, and spent an extensive amount of money on luxuries and gambling all while the people of France suffered from an economic decline. All she wanted was what was best for her and her homeland.

Marie Antoinette was publically beheaded on October 16, 1793 at the Place de la Revolution in Paris, France. Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave. She was known as a selfish, self indulgent, beautiful woman. That's it.

Why bring up Marie Antoinette? We don't have kings and queens in the United States, meaning that any child today could become the future leader of our country. Any child has the potential to be a leader. But here's the problem, they're all a Marie Antoinette in the making. Their ideal of a role model is an entertainer who markets themselves with products they're paid to use. Our future leader will be a sellout actor, just like Marie. If we've learned anything from the past, we're looking forward to economic and governmental ruin of dastardly proportion. I'm not sure that's something America will come back from, at least not anything like it used to be.

These kids, eventually will have no one to blame but themselves. The fact that they care more about what's the newest, most popular video game is on them, on us. My last post was all about the fact that my generation is one of the most terrible generations yet because our primary concern is enjoying ourselves, not the benefit of the future. We're setting ourselves up for ruin because the role models we use to order our life toward are about partying and the fun things in life. The magnitude of issues we have to deal with from our predecessors alone will bury us.

We need to get serious.  

Someone once asked me to create my "last supper," who would be the twelve around my table? I thought this was odd for many reasons, but the most relatable being that it seemed they wanted me to lay out a group of people I most aspired to be like. But I don't have heroes like that.

During a discussion of sociology or philosophy (I forget), my professors had my class read an excerpt from Allan Bloom's, The Closing of the American Mind, where Bloom lamented over the fact that students no longer had role models (I spent hours combing through it top try and find where, I'll add the exact location once I've found it). His concern was that young people no longer believed in anything and were all Relativists. He worried that no one had a firm grasp on what they believed or firm morals of any sort. And that's why he believed students need role models.

My professor particularly agreed with this statement and brought it up, asking everyone in the class to name their role models. I said I had none, he took it as a the perfect example for Bloom. That wasn't my meaning though and I explained that I didn't believe in role models because I don't believe that any one human being is of a high enough quality for me to want to emulate them.

My "Last Supper" is full of people like Oscar Wilde, Christina of Sweden, and Aristotle. But the whole concept of a last supper is that I'm in control and these are my peers who I am sharing a meal with. My pursuits are directed toward the perfection of attributes such as goodness, integrity, and boldness not to be as alike to Queen Elizabeth I as possible. Sure, my goals are inevitably unattainable, but is it not more valiant to attempt to be Godlike than to settle for the lowness of humanity?

That being said, we, as a generation, do not need role models. We need a goal. There's a lot at stake in our future and if we don't have the drive and willingness to sacrifice ourselves to create the world we want to live in then we are no better than Marie Antoinette. We remain self indulgent cowards, who care more about feeling good than doing what's right. Nobody has to remember our names, but those after us will surely remember what we leave them to deal with. Who are we, entertainment junkies or heralds of a new age?

Metaphorical Heroes: The Real Generation Z

I read this article recently out of curiousity. The title on facebook was labled: "The Hidden Generation: How Gen Z Will Change the World." The cover photo showed the heroes from recent teen focused movies (Thomas from Maze Runner, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, and Tris Prior from Divergent) and I was intrigued as I have my own theories as to why teen films about controlling and devious governments are all the rage now. Also, I have always enjoyed teen fiction because it's so inspiring even when it's completely illogical.

The post starts out with a quote from President Barrak Obama from 2014 when he answered some questions for tumblr users. Speaking with the CEO of Tumblr, David Karp, Obama said, "...each successive generation tries to learn from previous mistakes and pushes the course of history in a better direction. And the only thing that stops that is if people start thinking that they don't make a difference and they can't make changes..." (Read the full conversation here).

He says several times that one of the biggest detriments to a society is giving in to cynicism--especially towards the government. "You guys [young people, tumblr users] are fed a lot of cynicism every single day about how nothing works and big institutions stink and government is broken. And so you channel a lot of your passion and energy into various private endeavors," he said. In all honesty, I think that in the desire to change something you will always see your target with a bit of cynicism; it's unnatural not to. Cynicism isn't the biggest threat to people giving up; fear, laziness, or apathy would far better fit that description.

Going back to the original article, it continues on (using the faction system of the Divergent series) to say that Generation Z is brave, kind, smart, caring, honest and  "Born into a time pockmarked by inequality and reeling from threats of global terror and a crippling financial crisis..." Essentially what they're saying is that Millennials are "apathetic, dependent, and completely self involved," (I don't necessarily diasgree with that) while the new Generation Z are fighters that are going to change the world. Because their statements are so broad and likely feeding the egos of iGen (a wonderful, more suitable name for Generation Z that I found on wikipedia), I find many faults in their claims.

As far as I can tell from their article, their definition of Gen Z is from a Forbes article by Emily Anatole. This would put the birthday range (approx) from 1995 to either now or 2013, the article is unclear. This means that 20-21 years olds and down are the topic of today (unfortunately I'm in this group).

Now, to be as kind as I possibly can, the idea that iGen is more realistic or traumatized than the Millennials is a whole load of rubbish. Just as a broad sweep, how many of these kids (they're essentially kids) actually remember all that happened in their 21 or less years of existence? I'm the oldest an iGen can be, I don't remember what life was really like before 9/11. I didn't understand Obama's bail out. Gen Z may have been through a lot, but they don't know anything else. You can't ask a fish what wet is and you can't ask Gen Z what life was like before shootings happened at schools.

Sure, there's inequality, ours is nothing compared to history. We've all seen the ads from the 1950s where women were treated like cook, maid, and consort to their husbands and nothing more. Before that, women were basically property like cattle and land, sold when it was useful. We won't even get started on slavery (which is still happening today in many countries). Opression in today's culture in nothing in comparison even in other countries (like Thailand where sex trafficing is rampant). By definition, American's just aren't oppressed. We have ways to fight back legally without any sort of violence. Generation Z doesn't know the suffocating grip, let alone the meaning, of oppression.

Financial times aren't great. America's debt during Obama's administration is more than all the past presidents combined. This post from the Washington Times (11/1/2015, not sure of it's entire accuracy) states that Obama will leave the whitehouse with the country $20 trillion in debt. Despite this unfortunate circumstance, I'm not sure many iGen kids are feeling it. I've seen more kids with laptops, iphones or androids, gaming systems, and what have you than people my age. These kids are spoiled with technology, my little cousin knows more about software than I do (that's not saying much, but it's impressive to me, she says words I don't understand). Generation Z isn't feeling anything, they're too busy being preoccupied by stories where parents are nowhere to be seen and playing games that, while fun, give no indication of what the real world is like.

As for "global terror," sure nuclear war is a huge threat. However, I don't see many kids getting to worked up about it. I would be suprised if one of these kids could tell me America's beiggest nuclear threats are. Even with Obama's treaty with the Russians, America will still have 1,550 nuclear warheads. It won't be pretty and a lot of people will die and suffer horribly, but a knife, a gun, a rock, will all kill you too. And they've been around for centuries (rocks and knives a lot longer). Again, iGen is distracted with their entertainment. What do they really know of war and fear?

It goes on to say that iGen is emotionally intelligent, socially responsible, and eagerly pursuing the opportunity for equality in ethnicity.

Emotionally intelligent: There are a lot of emotions being thrown about, I'm not so sure if that's intelligent. Riots are not intelligent, cutting and starving yourself isn't intelligent. I see the emotions, I don't see the being expressed and guided correctly. You can't only be emotional, rationality is an important characteristic too. You can feel all you want but it's there's no rhyme or reason behind it, it's not worth a life decision. In addition, being emotionally intelligent, according to it's definition, isn't going to help you have a more "emphathetic worldview" necessarily.

Socially responsible: See their obsession with entertainment technology mentioned above. "Mature," "accountable," "vigilant," none of the words should be used to describe my generation. We're children with delusions of granduer where we conquer socially condemned straw men.

As for ethnic equality, sure there's riots and stuff but I'm not sure that's Generation Z. We are all younger than 22, I'm not so sure most of us even know what equality is. I'll also put this under the ridiculousness of "American Opression" (I'm not saying we don't have issues that need to be worked out but, to be blunt, we're not handling the situation very well).

The article talks about our transperency. I laughed actually. Facebook is a place where we go to feel pitied about fake insecurities and display the "good" parts of our own little kingdoms. We're not transparant, we're puppet masters with the agenda of getting a like everytime we post a selfie with a pointless, overused quote.

One of my favorite online games, Acension created by Rinmaru Games, has a character that is very wise. When talking with the heroine of the story, she says that "Ignorance is bliss." He corrects her saying, "No, Ignorance is dangerous." I have to disagree with you Mr. President, cynicism shouldn't be my generation's greatest fear, it should be ignorance. My generation knows more about the vast expansions for Skyrim than they do about taxes and their own constitution.

My generation is the age of metaphorical heroes. Heroes only in their own minds, you could say. Their calls to rallies for anti-bullying and the like are online forums where they complain but do nothing to change the outcome. They wreak havoc with emotions that are justified because they're "real." Allies of logic are shot down as being unsympathetic and cold hearted. You're only allowed to have an opinion if it agrees with the majority, anything else is stupid, hypocritical, racist/misogynistic, or "un-tolerant." Girl's scream for the blood of men just because they look the wrong way at them and bullying is perfectly acceptable as long as the person was asking for it or it's funny (great video discussing this topic).

Gen Z is not a generation of heroes. It is a generation of self-righteousness. Our change in the world is made by belittling those we disagree with from the safety and convenience of a computer screen. We are ignorant to our own inflated chest and self importance and to most anything remotely important. We build ourselves straw men and defeat them, calling the glory to ourselves in cute anecdotes that other's "like." We are too clever for our own good, fooling ourselves into thinking that we're the Batman conquering a desparate city like Gotham. In reality, we're the Joker, scheming to see good men and women fall on their own swords.

How do we change? How do we fix what we've become? Well, to start we should get some experience. Every youngster thinks they know better than those before them. Let's not walk that path. Instead, let's stand on the shoulders of giants by delving into history, discovering why certain ideals do and do not work, and then seeing how, why, and when we should implement ideals into our culture. We must always have then end in mind and find the best solution even if we have to forge it ourselves. We must remember that the best solution isn't always the easiest or the most personally rewarding.

In order to fix anything we're going to endure much sacrifice and we should. We need mentors who are wise, we need to learn what it means to take responsibility with conviction and have accountability (self and from others) over our actions. From there it become this: it's not about the fact that we want to change the world, it's about what is the best way to. Everyone wants to see the world a better place, what that means to each person is often drastically different and how to go about achieving it can be more so. I'll talk about this another article.

For now, Gen Z, quit kidding yourself. You're not all that (Say anything with confidence and those with something to gain will believe you). You're becoming your own villan and disguising it as an act of heroism. Your ego is fed by the lie that you're a better person everytime you belittle someone for having a "closeminded" opinion. I wrote this a while back in a personal journal, but it seems to apply:

I am a cosmic confusion,
 an illusion,
A make believe,
maybeline,
of this world,
covergirl.

I'm a public relations master,
One lie away from disaster,
Retributed,
convoluted,
obsessive,

freak.

I'm (not) okay with that.

Nothing's Distinct, Nothing's the Same

Nothing's Distinct, Nothing's the Same

We know it as fact, even identical twins are not exactly the same, not even biologically. The universe is a series of events, people, and things that are not quite like the next. The cultural phenomena of individuality is nearly as absurd as a person revamping the record player as a new fad (not that record players aren't splendid creations, but they have been an American staple for a long time).

On the other hand, we have phrases like, "history repeats itself," or "the circle of life." In a way, these sayings stem from the idea that nothing deviates too distinctly from anything else. You abide in an uniquely shaped living space, but the basic rundown is always the same: a place to sleep, a place to eat, and the toilet. Perhaps a few other inconsecequential rooms like a den or library. The pattern doesn't deviate far.


WHAT'S THE POINT?

There is nothing in this world that someone hasn't already come up with. Perhaps not a physical representation, but a least a vision of something that could be. Leonardo da Vinci designed airplanes long before the Wright brother's grandparents were even conceived. You will never make anything new. It's actually quite a depressing thought.

I know what you're going to say, "Someone had to be the original idea holder. Sure, communication across distances wasn't a new thing, but Bell did invent an entirely new way to communicate. Traveling wasn't new, cars were." You're absolutely right. I change my statement: you will never make anything entirely new. Concepts will always be there before your time, originality isn't creating something out of nothing---it's finding a need and solving it better.

What then of art? Frankly, art is technically not a necessity. It is the ventilation of a stagnant society. The variety of meanings of art I will not go into now, it in itself is a series of long topics. However, as far as entertainment goes, our priorities for survival seem to rank it very low. Art changes like everything else, with help from that which came before. Same notes, same sounds. We know what we like, what colors move us. It's just taking an old dress and rehemming it with lace.

WHY DOES IT MATER?

I'm not sure it actually does. That being said thoughts:

The dreamlike desire of a child over a vision of their future is an unfounded, ridiculous misconception of how the world works and that is a beautiful thing. Sometimes, you have to explain the old in a whole new way for those of us who won't understand it if you don't delve into the intricacies. It's okay to tackle a problem a second time, we're stupid humans. Most people don't get the point the first time you tell them.

People like things because they recognize them. Have you ever listened to a song for the first time and found it bland, then as you hear it over and over again on the radio it grows on you until you sing it unabashedly (except when the friends that you told the song was trash happen to be riding in your car). We're creatures of habit that recycle our old ideas and turn them into a beautiful new mess of what we already love...like record players.

An Introduction: Why I Blog What I Blog

Consistency isn't my strong suit. My ideas run through my head faster than I can finish their predecessors. My desk is cluttered with thousands of notes and unfinished ideas. Who know, perhaps this blog will be added to the expansive to do list that never seems to have anything marked off on it. Regardless, this is my new project. A project in which I take all those mental notes and pigeon scratch entries, from one of many notebooks, and finish the thoughts there.

I have been encouraged several times by many wonderful people in my life to write a blog. Assumably it will help clear my mind and give me something productive to do. Along the way I hope it inspires others to think and write as well as solidifies my ever earnest pusuit of truth. 

There are countless resources outh their, all ensuring you that their ideals are the way to live your life. Some in the name of positivity, negate rationality. The opposite side ignores human emotion and the brighter things of life. Of course, in between you have thousands of groups who sound like the know what they're talking about. How then, do you discern truth? How do you take on your own beliefs to ensure you're only pursuing truth and not your (be it intentional on not) bias?

This is my quest. 

My conclusions may not be the same as others, nor may they always remain the same. The thing about pursuing truth is that you always find new information that may change everything you knew from before.

I may not agree with everything Malcom X believes in, but he did say on thing that I can whole heartedly agree with, "Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as a new experience and new knowledge unfolds. I have always kept an open mind, a flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of the intelligent search for truth."

There will always be more to discover and to think about, ignoring it doesn't make it go away. So here am I, learning some knowledge and hopefully passing it on to those who would join me.