I want to be an adult! No, wait…..I just want to live without responsibilities, but with all freedoms. And excuse me: my youth is not a form of social deviance! It would be so nice to just live and do as little or as much as I want, without having to worry about bills, and not having to do any work (that means anything I don’t actually *want* to do).

Alas, this is not to be. Society has not been built that. But one thing that struck me as I began reading my textbook by Reg Bibby was that a lot of young people keep saying that governments should listen to them because they’ll be running things soon. Bibby astutely points out that this is not so, they get added to the system which is already in place and is inherently inter-generational. Okay, so that’s not a reason to listen to young people. But frankly, I would advocate a policy of listening to them just for their differing perspectives.

Youth is still idealistic and much further removed from the system. True, they have less education, so they might have less useful ideas because they’re simply so outlandish. But what about the one in hundred ideas that is so simple and such a perfect solution but would never be thought of by the older generations?

And by the way, just because you have more formal education and are older, doesn’t mean you know best: thanks to the older generations, we get to try to fix the planet that they started killing.

Appreciate it. Really.