The depressed generation or the anesthetized generation?

The psychological repercussions of the crisis.

In these times that occupy us, it is normal to fall into speculations (more or less accurate) about the situation of the youth. I found this article published in El País. The phrase is great, but I have serious doubts about whether it is exactly depression the subject at hand. Although as a young man I have three festivals left, I include myself in the group, and I share with you without further pretensions my vision and personal reflection on the matter.

A generation marked by carelessness

The generation of the happy childhoodthe carefree adolescencethe studious youth. Living without many problems (I am generalizing), in an overprotected environment in which the problems of the world were placed in a third world that seemed far away. Even today we still refer to Africa when we talk about poverty, understanding the continent at our doorstep as an entity in space, which only exists in the news. "The poor have no homeland", someone said two centuries ago, maybe we should read more. Today's youth have grown up according to dogmas that have turned out to be a lot of nonsense: "study and you will work", "do what I do", "with effort everything will work out well"....

Training (especially post-university (especially post-university) is nothing more than a business of the usual people to profit at the expense of the hopes of a youth who have lost their time and the money that mom and dad (or students working in the afternoons/evenings) earned to pay for it.

Depression in the youth or anesthetized generation?

There is no sadness. People are not are not depressed in a strict sense of the word. People are anesthetizedwhich is different. An anesthetized generation has been born, not something else. There is a latent anxiety due to the fear of a future that, already today, has normalized working for free, sharing an apartment, not being able to leave one's parents' apartment, not being able to plan to start a family or continue to go binge drinking (to say something less serious) until the age of 40. There will always be those who are fans of voluntarism and other nonsense who will say "if you want to, you can". But if the conditions don't exist to be able to, you're not going to fucking be able to.

Jordan Belfort, the yuppies, the big businessmen who worked long hours (of "work", according to the legend that pretends to exalt people who have normalized speculation at the expense of anyone and the increase of surplus value at the expense of wages). Those were the examples of anxiety. With its coke, amphetamines and stuff. An anxiety to have, supposedly, a lot of work.

Not today. Today there is an anxious youth for not being able to do anything.. Or for doing too many things and not getting any of them right.

Fear of the future. A future that is too close.

With a wink to that great movie that was Mondays in the sun, we could say that we are spending the best of our lives in the sun. But alluding to another great series of the present, the worst thing is that winter is coming. winter is coming.