Today's Society

American society has taken a turn for the worst, and it has been noticeable now for years. A strong majority of Americans are either apathetic about important issues in their lives, and focus their time and energies on minuscule events and activities, such as Facebook and Twitter. A more connected society, energized by the Internet and expanding global communication, is always beneficial, but also leads to a population less focused on life and more focused on living in the cloud. We are all guilty of this crime, spending hours on Facebook and trying to contort ourselves as per society's "standards".

A few examples for the nonbelievers. Music, while debatable in a few notable exceptions, is made by computers and bought by a mindless, following crowd. Movies are laden with more special-effects than acting, with exceptions, of course, and being cool and "hip" has been somehow connected with material purchases, such as "hip" clothes and having, pardon the French, a "douschebaggery" personality. In my opinion, this harkens back to the 50s, a decade of conformity, driven by post-war boom and the startling similarities of the suburbs.

Perhaps the worst of this disturbing trend can be traced to the expanding technology that has pervaded our lives since the dot-com boom. We buy expensive cell phones with expensive plans to communicate with each other, though often through impersonal text messaging, often with deliberately misspelled words. The Internet allows today's youth to escape their problems, and create a fake identity to be cooler in real life. This "u-turn logic" is destructive, and focuses more of our youth's focus on falsity rather than education and planning for the future. It's hard to imagine that today's generation will grow up to be responsible leaders in a world demanding more attention and leadership than ever, due to their seemingly inability to concentrate on anyone's problems other than their own.

Unfortunately, not much can be done to avert this trend. Unless one, such as a Luddite, can somehow destroy the global network we have managed to accomplish over the past decade or so, our society will continue to decay into a state of unoriginality and selfishness.