The Entitled

I had occasion to visit my child's educational facility today. It should be better termed a holding cell. As I walked past the open doors, I saw row upon row of blank, bored, over-painted stares. The 'Bumpits' and shorty shorts and peekaboo pants (the ones which can't seem to fit over the boys' rumps) all bore mute witness to the fact that those individuals were there, not to learn, but to mark time. Their stares seemed to dare anyone to try to pry them open enough to get one concept into the wasteland in their heads.

These are the children of entitlement. They know that they have merely to hold out their little manicured hands, and whatever it is for which they wish, will magically appear there. These children believe that they are entitled to all of the good things they can possibly ingest without thought for the sacrifice others have made to provide them. They fully believe it is their right to 'man' the joystick 24/7/365. When they are balked, they squeal like hogs. If you take away their cell phone or their car keys or their game system or any of their other toys, at best you get 'the look' which would freeze lava.

These little girls live for sex without responsibilities. If they get pregnant, "Oh well. Mom will raise it", thus perpetuating the whole sorry program. Or they're treated like princesses. The State will care for it.

What has caused this phenomenon? I am certain I am not the only one asking this question. Many Baby Boomers are looking with terror at the 'rising' generation. Where will we get the rocket scientists? Where will the physics professors come from? Who will write the literary masterpieces? Who will conquer cancer and the common cold? Who will care for us when we become decrepit? More to the point, who will care for these children?

This new generation is generally not interested. If the exercise is not exciting, fun, tasty, or makes them look sexy, the children of today will not be asked, lead, pushed, begged, pleaded, bribed, or coerced into having anything to do with it. If there is nothing monetary in it for them, they won't do it. And Heaven help you if you try to force them to it. They are Entitled.

It isn't all their fault, though. They are being trained to be this way. They are being groomed by nearly everything around them to be wards of the State. Everything they see on TV leads them to be desensitized, amoral, irresponsible, lustful, and uncaring. They are being groomed to be a generation of drones, who then morph into a generation of colorless, thoughtless, unquestioning workers. They will have no idea how to make a family and keep it together with love and dedication and loyalty. They won't know how to think independently. They won't know how to solve problems themselves. They are being told how to think and how to vote (at least until the vote is gone).

The funny thing is that this same treatise could have been written by many of the previous generations. I remember my own parents bemoaning the hippies and loose morals of my own age.

How do we stanch the flood? I'm not sure. It seems like a daunting prospect. We can teach our children to pray, to rise above their petty wants, to sacrifice, to serve, to be responsible. We can be the examples they don't have anywhere else. We can teach them about God and about the way things should be. We can love them. Most of all, we can hope. Will it be enough to help them swim upstream against the torrent of evil coming at them with bludgeoning force? I don't know.