So Michael Jackson said, and so the guidance counselors extolled onto every last pupil.

We children of the 90s up through the 0’s were raised in a world of posts: post-racial, post-soviet, post-modern.  No more status quo- everybody is equal and happy and cares about each other and everything is gonna be fine.  That was just how it was going to be.

So this golden generation of Barney’s kids soaked it up- little Jesuses with an idea ingrained in their minds that their lives were going to mean something and the world was a nice place.

Now I suppose every generation grows around an idea that their life will mean something, that is what drives cultural evolution.  Kids of the 40s had World War II, 50s kids were fighting the commies with a life of conservative values and consumerism, 60s kids could take their pick of which revolution they were going to devote their life too (maybe there were too many?), the 70s kids were still hung over and jaded from the 60s with Vietnam and a recession, while the 80s kids had the hypocritical rapture that was the end of the cold war and hyper-technological capitalism.

Meaning for our generation is not something that is slapping us in the face.  We don’t have to fight against evils marching on our borders or perceived evils lurking omnisciently.  We don’t have to ‘tune in’ or ‘drop out’ or burn a draft card.  And we’re way beyond the narcissistic celebration of the wall coming down and TINA principles ruling the day.

So here we are, the children of those marked decades.  We did everything we were told: went to school, went to church.  We were nice to everyone, even people your grandpa called something you only ever heard before in movies.  We separated paper from plastics; we were going to be happy, we were the ones to make a better place.

Now that our hyper-positive youth has given way to our adulthood, we are grasping the true severity of MJs charge.  We discovered the all important addendum that no one ever told us to the idea that the world was great and post-this and post-that: FROM NOW ON.  The rest of the world was still deeply, sadly, vengefully entwined with what had come before.  And there are a lot of people who like it that way.

I believe however, our generation is undaunted.  Obama’s election, disregarding all politics, is testament to this.  His motto was ‘change’ and for one thing he sure as hell does not look like every other president in our history.

We voted him in voicing our dissatisfaction and desire to help the world and make it in the ways we were taught.  However, figureheads and symbols do not dig the trenches of our generation’s struggle to fulfill the MJ charge.  We must do that with our own hands and hearts, inspiring our forebears to trust and follow the ideals they instilled.

But we are still creatures of the same jungle that holds the Bin Laden’s and Enrons and WTOs.  Our society filled us with the dream, yet saddled us with debt, kids, and the prospect of a 40+ hour workweek working a non-unionized, shit job just to get by.

No matter the lofty intentions, in America today, there is simply not enough time or money for idealism.  Only so many people can make a paycheck making that ideal world a reality; cold hard facts of economics dictate somebody has got to be the one to vacuum the floor and turn of the lights at the end of the night.  The change we need requires a popular movement.  A graveyard shift to scrape the bottom of the barrel simply does not afford the energy to make the future the one we were raised to believe in.

Maybe the first challenge of our generation is to create a world in which people can do more than just scrape by.  So people can actually feel like they are a part of the change, and not just a windbag for all the smoke being blown up their asses.

Time to burn your draft card.

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