My kids are f*****

Chad Kultgen is the Bret Easton Ellis of the Facebook generation. His three novels are blunt and coarse, beating you to death with a hammer in regards to “the point.” The point being that the modern person is growing up unhappy, sexually frustrated, emotionally immature, and overall damaged. None of his works encapsulated this more than his third novel “Men, Women & Children”.

MW&C is technically broken into two groups. The first is the children of five families. They are about 13 or so in the eighth grade. They are bound to social networking with a furor. They are cliquish and submit to the popularity food chain. They are emotionally immature yet knowingly push each other into sexual situations they are not ready for in a game of petty one upmanship with their classmates. They think not of growing up at a normal pace. They want it all, and they want it now, fuck the emotional consequences later.

The parents are no better. They are stagnant and unhappy with their marriages. Most turn affairs in order to feel alive again. They are poor parents; most of the time they are negligent to their duties. When are they are there they give piss poor advice and their behavior in comparison’s to their kids comes off as hypocritical. They act differently then their kids but are common in one retrospect; no one is being an adult.

Going back to the kids, it is a marvel that anyone can consider to grow up normal in that environment. Two of the teen characters are actually the most well rounded of the groups and find solace in each other. So it is no surprise they are the ones punished and left unhappy at the end of the novel. Meanwhile, the other kids end the book in the process of making extremely bad decisions. One most take note that none of their bad behavior is discovered. They are not punished and they do not see the errors of their ways. Their behavior is in actuality CELEBRATED and ENCOURAGED by the world order that is presented. Something quite in rotten in Denmark indeed.

The point of all this rambling about Kultgen’s book is that this is presenting nothing new to me personally. I had seen myself warning signs of these trends when I was a teenager. I luckily steered away from most of it the negative influences and you know got to grow up somewhat normally. But the die seems to be cast for the new generations. Most will be spoiled and self absorbed and incapable of normal emotional connections. In closing it seems that my future sons and daughters are fucked. And for my kids, I apologize but there was nothing I could do. I hope for your future but it seems like instead of sun there shall be only overcast of grey.

But then again, perhaps not. One can hope. It is all one can do in this situation.

Until next time, fly high and fly well.