This, Our Human Race

by lazyche

I was considering life and existence earlier today, and after the obvious stops at The Wheel of Morality…

Turn Turn Turn

Thanos’ fall in the original Infinity Gauntlet…

Yes the comic book, people. Settle down

and Jeff Winger’s first big speech in Community…

Can we really forgive Ben Affleck?

I began to truly consider the plight that our generation is in.

I mean, sure, Hollywood can forgive him and start handing him awards, but they still like Roman Polanski and that guy is actual scum.

The real problem is that beyond all the irrational, and sometimes just mean, articles written about Millennials’ laziness and apathy, there is a true sense of being lost. Certainly not the kind of lost that the previous generations would have you believe. The false notion of apathy comes from our actual disillusionment with the systems created and guarded by our parents and their parents before them, and laziness couldn’t be further from the truth. Generation Y is full of determined workers, devoted thinkers, and generally people of action. 

Which is something, of course, we’re trying to avoid with this blog.

The reason older people think we’re lazy is because we’re afforded more time to figure out our life, and we take it. But then, that brings me to a moment where the question becomes clear. What are we going to do with our lives? You see, there’s a burden that comes with being the Internet Generation, and it’s one that I don’t think people expected. We can see everything.

And yes, it’s that same kind of “see everything” that happens when you’re grandpa sits down in his robe and you realize that he’s just wearing a robe.

We have the whole of collected history before our eyes. With hardly lifting a finger, we watch Grandpa History wander around the house thinking that he’s fully covered. And we’re scarred. Throughout the past the robe was tightly closed, because you had to sift through endless amounts of literature, interview the intelligentsia, and painstakingly put it all together. Then you would put it in a book and try to tell the rest of the world what Grandpa’s mole looks like. 

Looks a little like Idaho, actually.

But now, the robe hangs loosely. Which, breaking away from the disturbing metaphor

Thank God.

has some really amazing benefits. We get to see the triumphs of humanity. We get to piece together cultural shifts, concentrate whole centuries into paragraphs, and simply get a better understanding of this, our human race. There’s a beauty to it, an elegance to the simplicity with which knowledge can float at our fingertips. The problem is that when you look throughout Humanity’s triumphs, the great gloss which represents our existential heritage, you realize that gloss is actually made of plastic, and it’s kind of a shitty plastic, and who skimped on the materials, and how did you make this thing anyway, and isn’t that going to kill the factory workers who have to keep breathing that stuff in? In essence, when you see humanity’s triumphs, you can’t help but see their utter failures.

Like Daredevil, and Gigli. 

We see their shame, and we feel it. How can we not? It’s clear as day. So, look on the bright side, you say? Just keep looking at the triumphs and know how far humanity can really go? Well, that’s just the thing. People have done some amazing things. In fact, people have done a lot of amazing things. They’ve done so many, that what the hell else are we going to do? It’s as if we are so aware of the whole past that we can’t figure out how to distinguish ourselves. Every other generation just had to distinguish themselves from the one before it. If that’s all we had to do it would be easy.

Seriously, Wall Street, Afghanistan, “Paycheck”, did they do anything right?

And on the other hand, we do see what the last generation did wrong. We see how clearly broken it is, but it fits perfectly into the brokenness of history. What are we, to stand as ants against the giant boulder of human suck.

What were you saying about apathy?

If we want to make a difference we must not only stand against our parent’s wrong decisions, we must stand against the wrong decisions of all of the parents for a thousand years or more. This breeds a certain type of disillusionment. The system isn’t simply broken it was built with broken pieces that were also made out of broken pieces. The idea of both capitalism and socialism as perfect options fails completely for us, because we’ve seen these systems fail. In fact, we’ve seen all the systems that man has ever tried fail. And what of our successes? Of Science and Technology, and Freedom? It’s true that we have made scientific breakthroughs beyond our grandparent’s wildest dreams, and whoever chooses to take up the mantle of science will be rewarded with a future only described in Science Fiction. But we are not all scientists. The rest of us are left with our unlimited Freedom to try and decipher our purpose and fate on a metaphysical level. It’s as if our consciousness has been upgraded, and we’re still reeling from a new found awareness. What do we do with this life? Everything that can be done has already been done. Even if we made it to the stars wouldn’t we just end up describing them on twitter more than we actually looked at them? Would that even be a bad thing, I mean at least we’re not killing people?

I think the key to understanding this generation is somewhere in there. Like all other generations, they desperately want to be defined. In fact, more so, because they know how it works. They’ve seen the generation defining process and they really want theirs to be a good one.

The Bat-Fleck Generation?

But how do you find definition from the entire catalog of generations before you? How can you see what you are if you constantly have all of history pushed in your face? My guess is that you freak out a little bit and instead just spend too much time on Facebook.

The truth is that, as every generation rebels against that which came before them, we’re trying to rebel against the entire historical perspective. We want to show that we’re different than humanity. We refuse to be defined by a war or a depression. We absolutely won’t be limited by the ideal of simply rebelling against the establishment. We want to be something more.

So, it might take us a little longer to really bring definition to this generation, but as far as all your names go, Millennials and such, you can keep ’em. How you like them apples?

Boom! In your…..wait. No! AAAAAAFFLEEEEEEEEEECK!!