Four Choices for Young People

Shortly before his graduation, Jim Binns, president of the senior class at Stanford University, wrote me about some of his misgivings. “More than any other generation,” he said, “our  generation views the adult world with great skepticism… there is also an increased tendency to  reject completely that world.”

Apparently he speaks for a lot of his contemporaries. During the last few years, I have listened to  scores of young people, in college and out, who were just as nervous about the grown-up world. Roughly, their attitude might be summed up about like this: “The world is in pretty much of a mess, full of injustice, poverty, and war. The people responsible are, presumably, the adults who have been running thing. If they can’t do  better than that, what have they got to teach our  generation? That kind of lesson we can do without.”

  These conclusions strike me as reasonable, at least from their point of view. The relevant question for the arriving generation is not whether our society is imperfect (we can take that for granted), but how to deal with it. For all its harshness and irrationality, it is the only world we’ve got. Choosing a strategy to cope with it, then, is the first decision young adults have to make, and usually the most important decision of their lifetime. So far as I have been able to discover, there are only four basic alternatives:

I. Drop Out 

This is one of the oldest expedients, and it can be practiced anywhere, at any age, and with or without the use of hallucinogens. It always has been the strategy of choice for people who find the world too brutal or too complex to be endured. By definition, this way of life is parasitic. In one way or another, its practitioners batten on the society which they scorn and in which they refuse to take any responsibility. Some of us find this distasteful – an undignified kind of life.    But for the poor in spirit, with low levels of both  energy and pride, it may be the least intolerable choice available.

II. Flee

This strategy also has ancient antecedents. Ever since civilization began, certain individuals have tried to run away from it in hopes of finding a simpler, more pastoral, and more peaceful life.    Unlike the dropouts, they are not parasites. They are willing to support themselves and to  contribute something to the general community, but they simply don’t like the environment of civilization; that is, the city, with all its ugliness and tension.  

The trouble with this solution is that it no longer is practical on a large scale. Our planet, unfortunately, is running out of noble savages and unsullied landscapes; except for the polar regions, the frontiers are gone. A few gentleman farmers with plenty of money can still escape to the bucolic life – but in general the stream of migration is flowing the other way.

(to be continued...)

经典歌曲Sound of Silence，同时也是一首好诗，60年代美国年轻人的困惑与无奈，或许能够从这首歌里窥豹一斑。