February 28, 2007 at 06:46:08

America's Youth: Lost in Cyberspace

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By Liza Persson (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Liza Persson - Writer

in love and war

On his campaign trail for the U.S. presidency, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told listeners at a rally that they should expect future terrorists attacks on U.S. soil.

It's like my mother who suffers from manic depression. When in the manic state of her disease she is terribly annoying and does lots of crazy things.

But just through the natural progress of her disease, she will eventually burn herself out and move into a just as severe, but for others less disturbing, state.

The so-called nation state of United States of America, which is run like a giant corporation using its resources for profit for its puppet masters, will eventually burn out all the human and natural capital inside and outside its borders without which it will deteriorate and fall apart.
There will ultimately not be enough propaganda or manufactured consent to keep the most powerful puppet able to play in the world.

It will fall apart under the pressure from domestic problems caused by the lack of attention to such things as health care, social security, an over-worked adult majority and an abandoned youth, a majority of the population too trapped in a form of nation-wide depression to produce any real wealth for their society, and too many too focused on their immediate and personal survival to act or feel as a part of any community at all.

Sadly it will most likely cause some severe damage before then.

There are several factors that has led me to this bleak outlook on the future.

Maybe the most severe is my perception of the lack of a youth seemingly interested enough in improving their society to become the societal "class" most capable of changing things that it historically has been.

I used to think that the youth would be the source of societal change here in the USA. But it seems that portion of America is to a large degree occupied by escaping the very same reality I hoped it would try to change.

It is mentally absent, physically weak and emotionally numb.

In my own childhood in Sweden, kids played the first version of the fantasy tabletop role-playing game - Dungeons and Dragons ( that was before the need for saying "tabletop" had become popularly spread as any alternate way of playing).
There was much concern for a while that such games would become too real to the young and susceptible minds - especially after one boy killed himself after his Dungeons and Dragon character had died.

Today, it seems the option of alternate realities offered through the use of computer technology is attracting such a large number of young adults that it would not surprise me if they simply fall for the temptation of just substituting reality rather than try to change it by acting within it body, mind and soul.

I suppose a great deal of the causes for the mentally absent, physically weak and emotionally numb youth must be placed on the adult portion of this population - mainly parents but also adults who are their "significant others" in that they have an influence on children by means of being role models, teachers, confidants, public figures etc.

Parents seem to me too be also physically absent to a degree not seen before
Second Life is a virtual reality community in which you create an identity, meet people, buy land and build your own objects. It is a "massive multiplayer online role playing game" (MMORPG), but one that offers users total freedom to create and interact as if they were living another life. Some see the space as a utopia free of real-world constraints, where they can build their vision of a perfect realm from scratch. It's a place where denizens can reinvent themselves as a supermodel or a rodent, own an island or fly. As the population grows, early denizens are learning the truth of Jean-Paul Sartre's observation "Hell is other people."

To someone whose perception has grown attuned to sensory input like that of Second Life, Sims, Warcraft or any other "virtual reality" game played on- or off-line, do images and reports of distant wars and suffering caused by acts in some far-away land seem more "real", or are they processed mentally the same way the deaths and suffering in the reality-like worlds in which they spend more time than they do in the distant places they see and hear about in the media?

When the media becomes reluctant to show "graphic" images of death and wounds, and alter their reports after the critique of undermining the public moral by telling to much of an ugly reality, the result is that there are video and computer games presenting more blood, gore and the ugliness of warfare and human behavior than the public gets to see in the real life version of them.

It is said that by undermining the public support for various military actions undertaken by the U.S. government (and by government I mean the figure heads and profit-puppets of both bought branches), the badly defined enemy of the equally badly defined "U.S. interests" and "national security" would manage to put an end to those military actions.

However, as several polls have shown that public support has not been there for some time and the military action seems not to miss it too much.
Even the support of the very troops for the motives they perceive to be deployed to risk their physical and mental health for, seems not to be a prerequisite for the military actions to continue.

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I am a Political and Behavioral Scientist with Psychology as my main subject and people as my main interest. As thoughts are the source of all human accomplishment I hope to be part of the exchange of them Also (more...)

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