Do we know too much?

I was just reading an article from the Globe and Mail website. It offers a litany of concerns about the modern young underachievers. While they clearly represent a minority the authors seem inordinately concerned about this small but slowly growing segment of our population.

It goes like this. Only child or small family. Successful well educated middle class parents. Above average intelligence. Pot smoking, high school/ college dropout or college graduate slacker who has lots of ambition but lacks the drive or motivation to actually try something, likes to travel and lives at home with parents. Now apparently this is a new phenomenon in relation to their parent's generation who were hard working, driven and successful.

Now is this a brand new era in western society that we must be very concerned about? Maybe. But I think a little reflection might give us pause. First, there has been slackers in our society ever since families had disposable income. Sure they might not have been very common but the Remittance Man of the 19th century was the iconic model of the slacker. Typically a younger son who would not inherit the family business or did not want to, they got themselves into scandals and were shipped off to the colonies where they were supported on the condition that they stay there, out of sight and out of mind.

No one really bothered to study them as some aberrant form of behaviour or as the topic of research that could support a lifetime of book publication, lecture and talk show appearances or newspaper columns. But in a world hungry for information, any information and in a society kept anxious and unsettled by the media [tension and worry sells papers] teenage angst is hot stuff.

Maybe, we all need to chill out a little. Yes, I know it is difficult for parents whose kids still mooch off them but hey, they could just give them the old heave ho. And if the kid is not paying rent well whose fault is that. Anyone offers me free rent - I'm there. A little backbone in some parents would go a long way but I didn't that advice anywhere. I mean why kill the golden goose?