Anger, anxiety, and adolescence

When I was a kid, then a tween, and then a teen, I was angry and anxious about a whole bunch of things.  There was one issue that was a non-issue.  It never even blipped in my radar.  There was simply no need to.  It is like asking me whether I was addicted to Instagram during my high school years.

That non-issue is a huge issue for many of today's kids, tweens, and teens: Climate change.

Young people, absorbing the gravity of these warnings, have become the defining face of the climate movement — marching, protesting and berating their elders for bequeathing them an uncertain, unstable future. Underlying their anger, though, is another a-word: anxiety. And it’s something they’re increasingly voicing. Teachers hear their students talk about panic attacks when wildfires break out, and psychologists face young patients weeping about their fear of never having a family.

I would think that most of these kids are not from Republican families--after all, their Dear Leader comforts them that there is nothing to worry about an issue that is nothing but a hoax!

As climate change continues unabated, parents, teachers and medical professionals across the country find themselves face-to-face with a quandary: How do you raise a generation to look toward the future with hope when all around them swirls a message of apparent hopelessness? How do you prepare today’s children for a world defined by environmental trauma without inflicting more trauma yourself? And where do you find the line between responsible education and undue alarmism?

For years, when I have discussed in my classes impacts on the natural environment, I have suggested to students that it will be an issue through their lives and not mine because I will soon check out.  I have also reminded them that the issue is not about the science but is all political, which is why students have a much greater responsibility in working on this outside of the classroom.  I often remind them about this:

Transportation (cars, buses, trucks, and planes) leads in greenhouse gas emissions, while electricity (coal and natural-gas power plants) is a close second. Industrial goods and services are third; buildings, fourth; and agriculture, fifth.
This way of measuring blame, however, misses something crucial: people. These industries are spouting carbon because customers demand their products: travel, electronics, entertainment, food, all sorts of stuff.

Almost always, I end up talking about carbon pricing.  But then, who listens to me, eh!

Source

"“Eco-anxiety” or “climate depression” is playing out in real terms among young people, sometimes in extreme ways":

Sarah Niles, an 18-year-old from Alabama, told me that her fears about climate change have simply become a part of her life. “I feel like in my peer group, you just go right from talking about polar bears dying to ‘Did you see what Maya posted on Snapchat?’ Nobody has a filter to adjust,” Niles says. “It’s like, the ice caps are melting and my hypothetical children will never see them, but also I have a calculus test tomorrow.”

Frankly, I have no idea how to be encouraging to kids, tweens, and teens!  I do my best to remind them that they have immense power to effect change--as consumers in the marketplace, and as citizens in the political domain that also has the power to regulate the marketplace.  But, like Sarah Niles, most students seem to operate along the same lines of talking climate change and Instagram and midterm exams all in the same breath.

As much as a cynic I am, and a decorated General Malaise I know I am, I am far from being an alarmist when I talk with students.  If anything, my faculty colleagues seem to think that I am one of those right-wing Republican nutcases who doesn't worry about social issues!  In my classes, I often point to a range of solutions. Not pie-in-the-sky ones, but feasible solutions.  Which is why I agree with this professor's approach:

This past fall, she added a second lesson about solutions, highlighting the drop in the cost of renewable energy and improvements in battery technology for storing clean energy. It’s a strategy Duffy says is necessary for any climate communicator, but especially one working with young minds. “There’s a danger in having the instruction emphasize climate catastrophe,” she says. “It’s tempting to say how bad things are, how much we need to stop it. But at some point you’ve accidentally said this is a foregone conclusion. We can overemphasize how scary it is to the point where people feel hopeless and panicked.”

Yep.  One of my favorites is to show them how rapidly the energy sources have changed in a mere 150 years.  I encourage them to extrapolate from those trends.  And boy that seems to change their frameworks!

The kids are alright.  We older adults are the ones who have created problems for them.  Especially the really old adults in one major political party here in America.  They will, forever, stand accused!

Sweet life

Soon it will be Deepavali.

For a guy who lives a secular life, it seems to be quite a preoccupation with tracking the major religious observances--even of the Jewish kind.  Maybe I need a therapy of sorts to bring out my inner, repressed, religiosity.  And then maybe I, too, will become a "sadhguru" but without having killed anyone.  Nah! ;)

There was one thing about Deepavali that was heavenly for me--the sweets that my mother made.  When we were kids, my brother and I were hell bent on figuring out where mother had hid the Deepavali sweets from our greedy eyes and mouths.  We always succeeded, and enjoyed the sneak-previews of the delights that awaited.

My favorite was the phenomenally awesome sweet that mother made with cashews.  And, those days, it was pretty much home-grown cashews--most of the nuts came from the tree within our compound. I could--and did--eat them all day long.

But then, somewhere in my growing up, I became duller and more boring than I have always been. I became the party-pooper.  The killjoy.  Major Buzzkill.  "No, thanks" became my middle name, and my consumption of sweets dropped! ;)

The more I live and learn, the more I am thankful that such an attitude change happened, and that I became sweet- and food-conscious.  Else, there is a fair chance that I would have become a part of the ever growing reports on obesity and diabetes.

Sugar is a major cause of this pubic health issue.  Not only in the United States but all over the world.  Sugar in the traditional sweets, which one can buy every single day, unlike the rarity of the old days.  And, sugar is seemingly an additive in everything that we eat and drink.  Which is why the evil industry is trying to get more sugar into baby foods too.  Bastards these companies are, yet again demonstrating that market and morals rarely ever intersect!  Like this:

A yogurt-based Happy Baby snack for children contains a teaspoon of sugar per serving, with four servings per pouch. Happy Tot’s organic bananas and carrots fiber and protein bar contains 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving.

In order to truly understand the seriousness of this, go to the kitchen and measure out 2 teaspoons of sugar.  That itself will shock you.  And then put all that sugar in your mouth, and imagine what that might do if a 2-year old were given that much sugar.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nearly 14 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are obese (above the 95th percentile for body mass index), a percentage that is higher for African Americans, Hispanics and low-income Americans. A new study says that in the United States, childhood obesity alone is estimated to cost $14 billion annually in direct health expenses.

If your defense at this point is that parents should know better, and that we should not blame the industry, it means that you are a big part of the problem.

Caption at the source:
A milk-based "toddler drink" contains 3 1/2 teaspoons of sugar per serving. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Oh well ... General Malaise will do what he can--continue to blog and rant!

The kids are alright

I often quote the Philip Larkin line, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad. | They may not mean to, but they do."  It is a metaphorical line about parenting.  Parents do the best that they can, and many like me are guilt-ridden over the tiniest mistakes that we make.

Parenting in today's world has gotten even trickier.  And, therefore, when children misbehave, it is even more a hassle for parents.  Take, for instance, a 13-year old sexting, which parents even a decade ago did not have to worry about, right?

It is not merely my middle age that makes me wonder whether kids these days seem to be misbehaving more than before.

Childhood — and parenting — have radically changed in the past few decades, to the point where far more children today struggle to manage their behavior.

Am I relieved that I don't have young ones at home to worry about!

There is one reason that Katherine Reynolds Lewis talks about that greatly interests me: children today are too "unemployed."

To be straight-A students and athletic superstars, gifted musicians and artists — which are all wonderful goals, but they are long-term and pretty narcissistic. They don't have that sense of contribution and belonging in a family the way that a simple household chore does, like helping a parent prepare a meal. Anyone who loves to cook knows it's so satisfying to feed someone you love and to see that gratitude and enjoyment on their faces. And kids today are robbed of that.
It's part of the work of the family. We all do it, and when it's more of a social compact than an adult in charge of doling out a reward, that's much more powerful. They can see that everyone around them is doing jobs. So it seems only fair that they should also.

As I recall my childhood, yes, of course, there were plenty of daily and occasional chores where I could feel a sense of responsibility, of contributing.  Biking to the grocery stores. Depositing checks and withdrawing money. Sending registered letters. Buying grandma's medicines. All these even when I was barely a teenager!

And, I also learnt how to use my mother's sewing machine.  It started with helping her out, and eventually I figured out how to work that damn bobbin too!  Why is this a big deal?  Apparently all these helped me break away from the male chivalry and machismo:

Dr. Kane stresses the importance of breaking gender stereotypes in small, everyday practices. For example, she recommends assigning boys the kinds of household chores typically given to girls, like mending clothes and dusting furniture and nurturing younger siblings.

Lots of chores that back in the day boys in traditional households like mine might not have done: Helping in the kitchen, putting clothes away, the weekly house-cleaning (until the dust allergies sidelined me!) ... "if parental values are imparted in a loving way, most kids will eventually adopt their parents’ beliefs" ... yep.

I love to laugh ... so should you

"Have you seen 'Inside out?'" asked the young fellow, when our paths crossed on the trail.

The eight-year old kid's smiling face easily revealed that he was surely up to mischief.  But, what could be the mischief about a Pixar movie?

"The movie, right?  No, haven't seen it."

I will spare you his reply--in case you have not watched the movie yet.  Yes, a major spoiler for me.  But, I was happy for the kid.  A kid was being a kid, like how kids are supposed to be.

I was reminded of another kid, who was about nine when he loved asking anybody--even strangers--a prank-question that he could never ask with a straight face.  With mischief written in big, bold letters in his expressions, he often sweetly asked the person next to him, "where you born during an earthquake?"

Of course, we elders like to engage with kids.  We want to humor them.  And this is a puzzling question as well; I mean, how often do you expect a nine-year old to ask you whether you were born during an earthquake.  And, with a rare exception, we would all reply that we were not born during an earthquake, right?

Upon hearing that reply, the nine-year old's eyes danced around with glee.  With a magnitude of excitement and delight that we old folks have forgotten, the kid would blurt out, unable to control himself any longer, "then, how come you have a crack?"

And then he would laugh as if that was the first time ever he was cracking that awful joke.

We, too--yes, I am including you also, dear reader--were once kids.  We delighted with the silliest of jokes, did we not?  We laughed, sometimes to the point of our eyes tearing up.  And then something happens.  We grow up.  And, for the most part, we stop laughing.  We think it is not adult-like to engage in silly humor.  We even tend to tell those adults who enjoy themselves with such humor to "grow up."  We want them to read depressing Russian writers and understand the human condition.  We force feed Kafka to the happy ones.  Killjoys we are! ;)

A mural along the bike-path that I frequent

I know, I know, there is a place for everything.  There is a limit to everything.  But, my point is this: shouldn't there be a place for that kind of silly and simply delight even in the everyday lives of the middle-aged and older?

A few years ago, I attended the son-in-law's graduation from medical school.  Their dean advised them to always have in their proverbial back-pockets a bunch of silly jokes that we might consider to be at a third-grade level.  Appropriately used, it can work well for any age group, he said.  The joke he used as an example was this:

Q: What did a fish say when it swam into a wall of concrete?
A: Dam(n)!

Get it? ;)

You read till here?  Good.  Here is the piece that I left out about the kid on the trail who delighted in that mischief about Inside Out.  One of his legs seemed to have a natural deformity--it appeared about six inches shorter than the other leg.  It was not a case of any amputation--the leg ended in a foot and toes.  I am guessing it was a birth defect.  He was wearing a shoe that seemed connected, via a brace, to the back of leg, and his foot and toes were kind of suspended in between.  Aren't you now all the more delighted that he was a fun-filled kid who was grinning from ear to ear that he had pranked strangers?

Laugh away.  Life is short.

When kids lose their privacy ...

I might have rebelled--well, ok, I did rebel--against traditions as I transitioned into the teenage years.  But, I was a good kid.  Didn't get into trouble at all.

If I were a teenager during the iPhone era--as in now--I would have had wonderful outlets for my teen angsts of a gazillion kind.  I can imagine a teenage me tweeting pissed off comments about the principal, the English teacher, about the government.  And would have blogged and tweeted about my leftists feelings. Oh, of course, I would have tweeted about that high school love, too ;)

It is a good thing that I didn't grow up with all those technology gizmos.  Which is why I feel sorry for the teenagers and the youth of today.  So, what is the hassle if they use these, you ask?  Hassles are in plenty, my friend!

A few months ago, I got a Facebook friend request from a name that I could not recognize.  But then Facebook said we had mutual friends.  So, I went to the requester's page and, yes, it was easy to recognize the fellow.  I accepted his request, and sent him a message inquiring about the name change--the first and last names were nothing like his "real" name.

Turns out that the fake name was a recent one, and was strictly in Facebook alone and only for one reason: admissions.  He didn't want a web search for his real name to reveal his antics on Facebook.  It is a growing trend among the young to worry about those issues for a good reason; for instance, among the exclusive private colleges:

Of the 403 undergraduate admissions officers who were polled by telephone over the summer, 35 percent said they had visited an applicant’s social media page — a 9 percentage point increase compared with 2012.

This is atrocious.  What a young person has in words or photos should not be of anybody's concern when it comes to admissions.  Yet, it does.  Which is also why the smart ones are cleaning up the public presence (using the fake name is an easy way, right?)

only 16 percent of them said they had discovered information online that had hurt a student’s application — compared with 35 percent in 2012.
“Students are more aware that any impression they leave on social media is leaving a digital fingerprint,” said Seppy Basili, Kaplan’s vice president for college admissions. “My hunch is that students are not publicly chronicling their lives through social media in the same way.”

Students are now a step, or more, ahead of the admissions folks.  Good for them.

Mr. Dattagupta said he looked favorably upon applicants who posted positive comments about the college and about themselves. But he said he was troubled by applicants who publicly disparaged his college or any other on social media using offensive language.
“That’s a big turnoff for me,” Mr. Dattagupta said. “I wouldn’t want a student like that here.”
The college, however, doesn’t notify students if their social media posts hurt their applications, Mr. Dattagupta said. “We don’t have a mechanism to let a student know they were not accepted because of that particular tweet,” he said.

There is something seriously creepy about Dattagupta's take.  Even creepier it is to think that there are a lot more like Dattagupta than I would ever want.

What is a youth if there cannot be youthful indiscretions and exuberance?

Jaron Lanier talked about how it might get increasingly difficult for the young to erase their past indiscretions.  You can imagine how easy it is going to be to do opposition-research and dig up dirt from when a candidate was a mere sixteen years old.  Especially when you think about something like sexting--when kids sext!

The older I get, the more I worry about the ways in which technology is negatively affecting our lives.  I don't think this is merely the effects of age as I look at the horizon.  There is something seriously creepy when high school kids and college youth have to worry about cleaning up their digital tracks; don't you think so too?