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Writer's pictureChristopher McHale

The Kids Are Not Alright


Boomers grew up in bubble of opportunity. Millennials grew up in a bubble of entitlement. The Next Gens are growing up in a bubble of bleak.


In the NY Times Stephen Marche writes, ‘The world we’re leaving them is worse than the one we brought them into—a culture defined, online and off, by collapsing institutions, erosions in trust and a loss of faith in a shared sense of meaning.’


I’m not sure that’s all bad because much of what we created was a useless race for debt status and sheet-rock dreams. In a world of storms our beachfront McMansions are swept away. We thrust our bellies out in belchy pride as we’re mindlessly jerked off by fierce profit-mongering.


The kids see it. They’re not blind. They’ve see it and they know they have to reckon with this mess. They’re wiser than we were. More cynical. Less dreamy and flaky. You want to hug them but what are going to say? It’s going to be alright?  It isn’t. Follow your bliss? No time for that. Go off the deep end of debt for your career? What career? Careers are for times when survival is not job #1.


Our distractions seem quaint. The Next Gens are not thinking follow the plan and retire to Florida to play golf. The course is underwater.


Retirement is another of those things gone in the night. Retirement doesn’t work in a world ehere survival is a diminishing return year by year.

The sunbelt is a frying pan.


Ex-pats are a moving target as the borders rise and the tattered flags blow in a scorching hot wind. There’s no place like your homeland when the barbarians start to roam.


That’s what these kids see coming.


I like these kids. I wouldn’t say their cynical, I’d say their realistic.


Who needs the metaverse?
Crypto is gonzo.
AI is mid.

All that of is part of the Great Delete that’s coming fast. Only the deluded don’t see what’s ahead. It’s freed up these kids. Set them loose from the tight bonds of parental expectations grounded in a past that wasn’t much to begin withq. Might as well tik-tok in an endless scroll of now. The future is murky. Why bother with it?


Boomers became the career generation. Millennials became obsessed with process. But it’s all just hot air to generations that face a collapsing future.


Teach your children well these days means teaching them them to be generous, kind, loving, and content with the day they’re in. There’s beauty in the world. Protect it. Protect your neighbor, husband your resources, move north, refine your hype filter, keep your head above the silicon. take the short view.


I’m like a preacher looking out at a church of empty pews. I get it. Nobody wants to hear this stuff. But I’ve got kids, I’ve got grandkids, I need to take out a bullhorn. I’ve doing this my whole life and it’s no time to stop. I don’t know what we can do. Painting Stonehenge seems a little weak. We need to be more than frogs in a pot of slowly warming water. If you’ve heard enough from me them maybe check in with yourself. Do something or nothing but don’t be deluded. Be like the kids. See it for what it is.

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