American society is quickly losing any real claim to the term "society" (if by that we mean some sort of unity), and American "culture" is rowing happily along in the same boat. It's becoming something weird, friends, and we can't deny it: Miley Cyrus is generating more controversy than the war that still hasn't ended, and a trivial, pathetic advertisement campaign is actually generating concerns about racial predjudice. These things are pop icons, people - they flash up and then fade to gray, much like the emotions we feel when we experience them. The French once described us as "quick to attach and quick to forget" - the accusation has never been more just than now.
There are two (for the sake of simplification and rhetoric) tendancies today in this strange American society we've built. One embraces and espouses the mutilated culture that has grown out of consumerism, and follows it to its terrifyingly logical conclusions - these are the littéraires prétendus that read Nietzsche as a nihilist, because he happened to use the word "nihilism." The other clings hopelessly to the culture that America was able to ferment before the age of mass-upon-mass production, in the hopes that those of us who have any sensibility and refinement will have something to cling onto - something that's been preserved - when the whole shitted mess falls to pieces.
The "quick to attach and quick to forget" are the unfortunate representatives of the very same mass-upon-mass culture that they decry: they've been raised consumers, short-witted, and can't find the time to look into anything else. They alone have time for Ritalin and Xanax, because they don't have time for anything else. They have hours to comb through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook without gleaning anything meaningful therefrom - because they simply don't have time to be bothered by anything-fucking-else. The past, for them, is a wasteland - because they don't have the buttfucking time for it.
The poor souls at the other end of my tidy little dichotomy are equally preoccupied: they've been raised to think that Emerson is sacred, that the constitution is flawless, and that a good story told by a charming, weathered face is all a person really needs or should aspire to. They forget that things are changing, that life is changing, that we're in the growing pains of one of the greatest changes ever to face World Civilization - they forget that information is suddenly everywhere. They forget that cynicism is therefore necessary, if we indeed still aspire for Truth; they forget that the mystery didn't end with their generation; they forget that their children might seem very weird to them.
And so I say to my friends, my contemporaries, my "quick to forgets": WAKE UP, YOU SHITS. There's a whole world lying beneath your feet, one that you've never experienced, one that's completely alien to you - you're standing on the shoulders of giants, and you've yet to even acknowledge their presence. I'll tell you right now, a dramaticized NPR documentary doesn't equate to reading Faulkner, or Hemingway, or Poe; and if you think it does, you're a dick, and we'll all be happily reminded of your existence when it undramatically and quietly ceases.
And to my parents, my parents' friends, and all those who are full of vitriole for the generation at hand: GROW UP, YOU OLD FUCKS. You have the benefit of experience, and you should know that wisdom only comes with it! The more you patronize, the more you alienate the ones you want to convince; the more you insist that you're right, dear Aged, the more you convince the dicks and shitasses of my generation that you're not - because no matter what you think, they are against you. Assume your proper place and learn to advise - but advise with the tact and craft that your age has to you imparted.
There is a time and place, my friends, for responsibility and experimentation. Ours is that time, and ours is that place - for it is never the time or the place to get riled up over a Coca-Cola commercial. So let's get weird - and let's do it responsibly.
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