post-modernism: Is it a joke or not, I mean really. No, I mean really, come on guys
To tell it to you straight, our generation are the lost.
We were born on the borders between eras, raised in the demilitarized zone, and will die in the enemy territory of the next world order. The Singularity will steamroll us.
Our Saturday Morning Cartoons were interrupted by footage of a wall being torn down, a wall we hardly understood; our parents danced in the halls and laughed with joy while we frowned and begged for Bugs Bunny to come back on. We watched as our computers transitioned from playthings to tools, we tried run in stride as the Internet was born screaming into this world; it climbed from the womb of DARPA into the embrace of a nation, of a society, of a world populace. We stood on our front lawns and watched the space shuttle tear itself apart on liftoff, we asked our mothers and fathers why it didn't look like the last launch and they told us that something was wrong, and that was all. We watched quietly as the hope of space faded from their eyes. We sat silent in pre-algebra or history or Spanish II as the television spat the unthinkable out into the room: The normally strong voice of the anchor cracked as a plane hit a building on live television. Flame poured from it, and thanks to advances in broadcast quality we could almost make out the look of absolute fear on the faces of those who jumped from the burning structure.
The world is no longer modern. While our birth certificates were being stamped and signed, the death knell of modernity, of the old ways, of the American Century was sounded. The bell rang long but the sound echoed away with a degree of finality unknown to most American undertakers, to most American artists, poets, writers, musicians. Some still cling to it but they are the niche.
With every step this generation takes, with every day that passes, it grows smaller. The technological divide grows larger. Even words that define what makes up a Generation change. The time frame shrinks. We are not those well-established in Generation X, we are not those born into a terrifying new world free of the so-called 'menace' of communism, we are not granted the financial security or the assured future of those generations. We are the weird-born, the non-granted, we are the divide between the sofa cushions into which things fall and are forgotten. We are the smallest generation, and we will have no Tom Brokaw to remind the world of our worth.
Post-modernism is all that we have left. We are too young to ride the final wave of originality from the American Century and too old to claim the next burst of electronic art and expression as our own. We can cling to it but some day the riptide will drag us away - brown, dead kelp on the coast of art. Just as Paris was the new Rome and New York was the new Paris, the next renaissance will not occur on our soil: It will be found on the websites, the blogs, the youtubes of the new world-community. Ideas will not be shared over coffee, they will be shared over wires.
God-Damn Hunter Thompson for shooting himself. Just now when things start to get interesting, he's not around. There will never be another one. No-one will ever be that crisp, that witty, that bold and brutally visceral again. But his ideas can live on in us, in this fragment generation, in our hearts and minds. The last known piece he published was an editorial for ESPN.com's sports desk: Old Duke knew the future was in the networks, and now We, Generation No, will carry that torch. Mahalo.
That being said, RON PAUL 200000000000000000000008 WOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooopranked