Young People Are Pointless

A few weeks back I was at a party of a school friend in the town where he goes to university. The party lasted into the small hours and towards the end my friend - having decided the oppurtunity for romantic conquest had passed - sat me down to have a talk. After a brief preamble about how the booze seemed to have dried up, he returned to one of his favourite subjects: the importance of enjoying yourself while you're young given the Unrelenting Drabness of Working Life. He said this pointedly because it is his opinion that I spend too much time cooking food and reading newspaper weekend supplements; activities that it would be better to save for middle age or later. I would like to take issue with the assumption that being young is any good. In fact, it is my contention that there are plenty of reasons for thinking that being young is completely awful.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people would disagree with me on this and you can see why. Consider, for example: staying up until sunrise at a beach party vs. getting up before its light for work; a thrilling sense of vitality and possiblility vs. a growing awareness of your own mortality; going out six nights in a row vs. six visits to the toilet in one night; a spur of the moment road trip to Morocco vs. having unexpectedly to drive out to Stenhousemuir at 9.30 on a Thursday evening; living in a flat full of hilarious mates vs. dying in a care home. The case appears to be open and shut. But I don't think so. All of the things commonly taken to make life fulfilling are generally absent from youngs lives. Fewer of us are in meaningful and loving relationships, fewer of us are raising children and almost none of us having the satisfaction of knowing we are doing useful work and that we are part of a community. Instead, we lead empty, pointless lives. For those of us without religion or a significant other we face the universe from a position of existential purity; just a person, pissing into the unforgiving void.

Another problem is that as a young person you have to hang around with other young people who are, with few exceptions, vapid idiots. Young people have not done as many things as older people so they do not have as much to say; they resort, instead, to saying things like, "I want to watch Neighbours," and, "when does the new Artic Monkeys album come out?" The intellectual zenith of most young people's lives is having said "belated birthday". Young people don't know anything: I'm young and I certainly don't. I met a young person the other day who didn't know what a brillo pad was. In comparison, older people know how to do things like building bridges, conducting public spending reviews and putting up shelves. Nor are young people funny. The comedian, Russell Howard, of BBC2's superfluous, scripted, improvisation show Mock the Week is known for being very young and he is one of the least funny men in living memory.

In short, young people spend there time wondering if its already too late to get involved in the man cardigan craze and their more mature counterparts are of worth to society. Young people are insipid twats and there is, at least, a chance that an older person might have something to say. Shakespeare may have agreed with me: in "A Winter's Tale" an old shepherd says,

"I would there were no age between ten and three and
twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is
nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging
the ancientry, stealing, fighting-"

So there you go. Sorry about the pretentious ending...