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I'm not a defeatist. I'm a realist. The "you can be whatever you want to be" bullshit that kids are fed is destructive. It's not true. Not in the least. I'm all for more moderate formulations of that, such as "pay attention to what you want, not what others expect of you" and "value your integrity and creative freedom highly; money and esteem are unimportant in comparison". I can get behind those ideals. I do not think it is responsible to tell young people that when they are adults they will be able to define their role in society and have society say, "OK, sounds good, and here's the money to pay your bills". It don't work that way. We have a generation of neurotic, emotionally stunted, psychological cripples in this country, and one reason for that is that we've had 40+ years of kids being told they could be whatever they wanted, only to reach bitter disappointment in adulthood upon discovering reality. Which means that normal lives feel like abject failure to them. If they grew up with lower expectations, they might not be so miserable. Our parents weren't told this shit, because our grandparents grew up in the fucking Great Depression and knew better. Every time you tell a kid, "You can be whatever you want to be", you're setting him up for despair if he ends up in an average job and social position. You're better off telling him that life is hard and full of compromises and that most of whether he succeeds or not is out of his control, so he should focus on the 1% he can actually control. I am all for inspiring people to do work they love instead of the work that is best-paid or most esteemed, but they need to be prepared for sacrifice. I don't understand how someone's age precludes them from following their dreams. Like it or not-- and I'm definitely in the "not" camp because I think it's disgusting-- in the work world people are judged on where they got to at what age. That's why this "follow your dreams" bullshit is so pernicious. It leads to people (after chasing rainbows for several years) working entry-level jobs at 30, which means they are very unlikely to be taken seriously ever-- they're too far behind. |