No, I don’t have cute or pretty images to share here, although there is a plethora of these things; unicorns included. Ironic, considering I’m a graphic designer and artist.
Instead, I’m sharing here the residue of a conversation I just had with a young woman; one who has a keen and caring heart for this world. She expressed to me a deep, almost tearful, frustration that her friends, her generation does not want to talk about the politics of our times or “how we got here.”
“It’s depressing to them,” was her lament.
Maybe I’m a sensitive antenna to this frequency of angst, yet I do read about, and hear this ennui’s great prevalence.
Somehow, some way, we have to incite more care for what is going on around us within those now coming into their own adult existences. Otherwise, the apathy is going to undermine our progress. Don’t think so?
Have you kept track of the growing dystopian movies, tv shows and video games? There’s a reason the media finds success with scandalous and wretched things transpiring. These excesses of mayhem and the distraught just adds to a conflicted sense of rage and apathy. These extremes may feel good, much like it’s satisfying to ‘scratch-that-itch,’ in the moment, yet the scars from the excessive agitations will be permanent and mutate into something cancerous. Will we recognize ourselves anymore?
Is the scenario of this young woman’s angst dire? Listen carefully, this young woman’s plaint is exactly what many young people are FEELING; many are looking for escape and avoidance because there’s a lack of effective leadership – in the macro and micro of their lives – and with a willingness to change.
What will it take for the many of us to get deeply passionate about how our existences are defined? Feeling the angst yet?
Embrace it and let it motivate you and those around you.
—eric ward
Flommist Eric Ward is a Human Los Angelino (there are other kinds), humanist, artist, industrial and graphic designer, novelist, toy inventor and entrepreneur. Life-long pursuit is “What to do with a piece of paper?” Copyright © 2018 Eric Ward. Pictured: George Grosz, Widmung an Oskar Panizza (cropped), 1917–18, source.
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