Do you think there is such a thing as a great malaise of our era, and what is it in your opinion, if it does exist?

As far as i can see in my country ignorance and sheeple mentality are BY FAR the greatest malaise we suffer, then again i live in italy so my experience doesn’t necessarily apply to everywhere else aside for the shitter of western Europe.

All generations think their malaise is unique. All generations have some form of malaise.

Do you not think there was malaise when the world was going through WWII, WWI. the Great Depression?

Chronic boredom is something I have no sympathy for, because it is a state of self-induced, self-limiting choices. There is no reson for anyone with imagination and compassion to ever be bored.

Wow Jo, long time no see!! How are you doing?

Funny, I watched an old movie (a Tarantino movie: True Romance) this week-end, and it made me think about today’s youth and modern relationships. Whatever happened to love at first sight? People hook up, become friends, and maybe develop more than a friendship, become boring old couples before they even fall in love! And with 24/7 connectedness, Facebook, IM and Twitter, groups of friends become loud and unforgiving judges. Whatever happened to spontaneity? Now, spontaneity has to be scripted and carefully rehearsed. If it was not “acted” on The Hills it’s out.

It seems to me young people are both jaded, too aware of what happens behind the scenes of life for their own good while, at the same time, dependent on media entertainment to teach them how to live. They can’t count on their parents for that, as parents now count on their kids to teach them how to be cool and validate them. People have always been influenced by what they saw on the small screen, but never as much as today which is ironic considering the fact that the internet is supposed to distract young people from TV. But the opposite seems to have happened.

Or maybe I’ve become a whiny old man!

Marina,that wasn’t malaise. That was angst.

Take all the young people’s electronic toys away and make them use their imaginations, and let’s see how bored they get.

I just don’t understand when young people say “I’m bored!” Holy shit man, when I was a kid, we had to get up and walk across the room to change the TV channel, we only had 3 channels to pick from; we had no computers, no game systems (unless you count board games and playing cards) and our phones had these big dials on them and were attached to the wall. If we were lucky, we had a radio or a record player in our rooms.

So when today’s kids complain about being bored, I just laugh at their sorry asses. Little shits don’t know how lucky they got it.

@evelyns_pet_zebra ~And we had to walk three miles to school, uphill both ways through 5-foot snowdrifts~

But seriously, I know what you’re saying. Sounds like we grew up in the same era. I remember being out on my bike for hours at a time, stopping at a lake or a stream; or just riding in one direction as far as I could until I had to turn around and get home in time for supper.

@Yetanotheruser well, I never had to walk to school, but yeah, growing up when the word ‘cell’ was what you learned in science class, ‘web’ was something a spider made, and ‘computer’ was something you saw on television with hundreds of blinking lights, tapes on reels and took up entire rooms, well that was a great time to be a kid. I rarely remember worrying about being bored.