Modern world + Children

Last week, a pair of tennis children stayed at my parents house while playing a tournament. Their behaviour, manners and interests made me think much of how kids grow up in today's world, and what their chances are to become righteous and good people in the end.

I suppose, with the abundance of media and information today, that it's difficult to get to have much of an innocent childhood - you're just faced with having to mature quickly to even understand what's going on around you, and what everybody's talking about. It's tough to be a normal kid, because then you have to do all of this fitting in, fitting in that might not be healthy or useful at all. Conforming is done to a world lacking in substance but chock-full of worthless entertainment, all blaring and blinking and demanding attention. If you're a little child, you won't know better and your primal senses will fall prey to the calculations of advertisement managers, marketers and PR agents everywhere.

Toys, gadgets, posters, brands, make-up, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs...

And there I go, sounding like an old hag. But nonetheless, children do manage to grow up, to somehow keep society going one more generation. And every time, the adults worry. Is it possible to say that it's worse, this time around? More dangerous? More alluring, prestigious, accessible?

Perhaps not. We'll make it one more full circle. What's interesting is if somebody could pinpoint some trend, some kind of association between people's well-being and the things they find important in life, what they think of as success, where they're striving. I suppose with so many tasks being replaced by machines, we have more time to waste and that's only natural. But if we didn't waste all this time - wouldn't that be better? Isn't a world of curious, eager and hard-working people to be preferred over an overwhelming, egoistic and instantly gratifying sloth?

Where are we going? What are we teaching children? To watch television, to fit seamlessly into the consumptive society that wants nothing more than the newest, most glamorous things?

I just walk around upset so much of the time. It feels like the values I cherish should mean something to others too, because they should be sustainable and beneficial, but this ideology doesn't make room for bigger issues. We're animals, herded around by animal needs - to conform and to show off. No perspective, no distance, no tolerance, no intellectual thirst.

And the little boy who visited said he didn't see the point in reading books.

(...I am archaic, a dated creature. The past I honour is not real to you.)