The Era of Reluctant Enlightenment

As the 1970s came to a close, so did the Cold War and the looming threat of a Soviet invasion.  The 1980s would prove to be a much different time than the 60s and 70s had been.  Instead of war protests and race riots, MTV and Reaganomics took center stage.  By 1991, the USSR was gone, and with its fall came a new sense of security and prosperity in the United States.  The technology industry blossomed and gas prices were the lowest they’d been since the late 1950s.

This was the time that I grew up in.  We listened to the care-free sounds of Third Eye Blind and Britney Spears.   The 80s and 90s raised a generation of youth content with their position in life and looking to simply have fun.

In 2001, all this complacency came crashing down with the attacks of September 11th.  Since that day,  Generation X has been forced out into the light of the real world.  No longer do we get to drive around blaring Smashmouth.  Instead, we use our Priuses sparingly and listen to Coldplay or Green Day (who suddenly took up politics).  The youth of today have become more globally aware.  The youth of America have raised thousands of dollars to save Darfur and combat global climate change.  We may still keep our iPods on all the time, but we also recycle.

Some alarmists have recently been waving red flags and decrying the ‘fall of the United States’, but I say don’t count us out yet.  The Organic Movement and the nomination of a young, black American for president are just two of the indicators that the youth of this nation are willing to take on the world’s problems.  Sure, we’d rather be on XBox Live, but when it comes down to it, we are capable of solving the world’s problems with the same American ingenuity and vigor as all the generations before us.

Seeking: Minds of Intellect, Philosophy, and Ethics

For 9 months out of the year, I go to a small, midwest liberal arts college.  For the other 3 months, I am stranded in the intellectually defunct wasteland that is small town home life and menial summer employment.  This is what has inspired me to create this blog.  My brain is teaming with thoughts, theories, and ideas that need to be explored and shared.

The art of intellect comes in four parts:  inspiration/observation, conception, sharing, and implementation.  The point of this blog is to help me achieve the third step.  All ideas must be put out in the open and subjected to the tests of criticism and peer-review before they can do anyone any good.  So I invite you, Reader, to test anything you read here.  Refute, me, prove me wrong, support me, I don’t care because the point is that maybe of the hundreds of thoughts I record here, one or two will turn out to be worth pursuing (and hey, I have a senior thesis to write, all this material is fair game).  I also invite my colleagues and friends to start blogs of their own.  Blogging is no fun if you have no readers, and we could always just read each others’ and discuss our musings for the sake of intellectual development and personal improvement.

So please, my fellow human beings, join me on my humble endeavor to scratch some meaning out of life and to possibly even discover some ways to improve the physical, pschological, or ethical lot of the world around us.