Tag: youth

The Evil Youth Rise Again

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

“Will somebody please think of the children” said a fictional cartoon character exposing my age. They’re at it again but not with such positive intentions. We could focus on the school children who seem to be getting forced back to school. Fear from some as their children go back, ready to not just bring their homework back with them and joy from others ready for a little peace and quiet once more. As usual the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. That’s assuming there is a middle between those two ideas of course. The latest youth that people seem to be thinking about though are not necessarily the kids but those a bit older than them. Today and yesterday it appears the stories started to be pushed by the media that the youth in society are not the most likely to spread the virus. The most likely means they’re ultimately responsible now for every future death and can be used as a scapegoat by anyone from old people on Facebook groups to government ministers attempting to distract from their own ineptitude.

It is easy for the general populace to find someone else to blame. If you’re old you can blame the young and if you’re young you can blame the old. It allows you not to feel responsible for the spread of something that not one particular demographic in society can be blamed for. You may have flash points like in a gym, a bar or a school, but that doesn’t make all eighteen to twenty-five year old’s irresponsible and responsible. This is just another moment in the passing the blame on game of distraction. But then I am just as responsible as anyone else for spreading this virus, I am careful in someways and less so in others, just like everyone, or most people at least. Saying that what I really want to do, and I’m trying to do it without just blaming everyone else while criticising someone for blaming someone else; is blame the government for their ineptitude and constant inability to lead us through what probably is a no win situation, and a mainstream media whipping up fear with one hand and a calming hand over an inept government with the other.

What I dislike is not our inability to do the right thing. It is difficult if not impossible to be doing the right thing during a moment in which all advice is changing daily and all we’re doing is witnessing scientific research in real time. There are no conclusive answers when everything is at the hypothesis stage. What is wrong is how we are using this to our benefits. I include myself because I have used it as a stick to bash a corrupt government. The government though have used it to strengthen their own position and sell off even more of the NHS, give contracts to their mates and threaten the implementation of draconian laws. Opposition parties eventually made it political but in an equally corrupt way and the mainstream media have been scaring and misleading us all just to sell more papers and to continue propping up their people in power. And now it’s the young who are to blame. We’ve found a new group to vilify. Again. A new group to use as the sleight of hand distraction. It’s amazing what people will allow themselves to do in the name of self-interest.

Prioritise Dreams

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was an article on the BBC today which I found very interesting in how it allowed for different perspectives of how we view society. The article discussed how the hopes and dreams of youths are at odds with the type of jobs that will be available to them. Apparently “five times as many seventeen and eighteen year olds in the UK want to work in art, culture, entertainment and sport as there are jobs available” and that equated to over half of those surveyed only wanting to work in this sector. Seemingly the industry that requires people the most is accommodation and catering, unfortunately for them they require seven times the number of students who expressed an interest, wholesale and retail appears to suffering from similar disinterest. According to this article, the report believes “young people’s career aspirations need to be constructively challenged”. The article then moves on to how certain young people potentially feel they cannot achieve career goals because of their gender, ethnicity or social-economic background.

Now this article can be viewed two ways I would suggest. On the one hand it can be seen that the youth of today need to embrace a little reality, that they won’t always be able to do the jobs they want, must stop being fixated with being either Instagram models or footballers – terrible gender stereotyping I know but humour me – but also not allow the barriers of their own existence to hold them back from a more serious career. On the other hand it appears that the majority of young people want an interesting, creative career in the arts and entertainment world, and not to be working as waiters or hotel cleaners. To completely dismiss the first idea would most likely expose a glaring ignorance about the realities of life for many people, “destined for disappointment” as the article put it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in it. However what the article seems to not take into consideration, and this is understandable given the angle it is written from, is that if the young peoples desires “do not meet the demands of the economy” then perhaps the economy should not be the factor that dictates what work people do, perhaps society has it’s priorities wrong.

I would love to see the numbers of people wanting to be artists and musicians, over Instagram models and footballers, because that could change my perspective slightly. That is though my take on value in the creative arts world and I would be an ignorant man to not see the folly in that. There are many reasons young people will not get the jobs they want in life, but they don’t mention that perhaps these jobs just don’t satisfy people, maybe if people could choose they would not endure jobs that exist for no other reason than for the sake of existing, bring no real benefit to society or the earth, and are nothing more than ways to pay tax and kill time as we wait to die. Surely it needn’t be this way. Money, economics and business are not fundamentally bad things in their own right but misused and corrupted they lead to the real needs of people being either ignored or dismissed as childish dreams. We all dreamt of something when we were young though, why is we can never seem to remember our dreams?