Candy and Coffee

                                            Candy & Coffee:
            The problem and solution to children trapped in the bodies of adults


         Forgive me for making what may appear to the uninitiated eyes to be a broad and incorrect generalization about one specific group of intelligent, selfish, no good people, but I would be remiss if I did not say something of this growing American tragedy. This group of intelligent, selfish, no good people is rising from a shrinking population, one which is the very backbone of America, the middle-class. And if you do not think this group of intelligent, selfish, no good people is dangerous, believe me when I say that it is having more of an adverse effect on the American middle-class than all the taxes, housing costs and lay-offs put together. If this intelligent, selfish, no good drain on society continues unabated with each succeeding generation, believe me when I say the middle class will completely evaporate.
         I can make this broad generalization, perhaps, because I am more painfully aware of this group. I am one of them. I am guilty, and because I am one of them, I know that most of my kind remains unaware of the affect they are having and how they came to have this affect. I further know that we are not a group that can be easily brushed aside or corrected softly. We are too smart for that. We must be controlled and not correct with a gentle suggestion, but with a wrap on the hand by a regulation, old fashioned, wooden ruler.
         When I speak of us, I am speaking of those that are part of the Elongated Adolescence (EA). Adolescence, one should assume, is a time in ones life that should end by the mid- to late-teens, and in the past this would be true. Some of us have recently found adolescence to be, in actuality, far more difficult to escape from. It has become a continuous state of being for many of us, one lasting past the teens and well into the twenties; for some of the truly tragic cases, adolescence is continuing into their thirties and beyond. How are we able to continue in this state? This rag-tag society moves in and out of universities, in and our of their parents’ basement, and in and out of temporary jobs, never believing we are accomplishing great things, whilst mentally surviving off a dream  state of glories that we foolishly believe are mere moments away.
         I have heard that thirty is the new twenty. I have heard it in coffee shops, at parties, at temp jobs, and each time I hear it, it sounds like one of those glib quotes from some woman’s fashion magazine; some horribly obvious attempt by the write to make the 30-something reader of the magazine feel something less than ragged about being 30-something. I thought it was something fashionable slogan, something to sell magazines, but upon further reflection, the comment, despite its appearance, is true. Thirty is the new twenty not because the 30-somethings have found some new vitality that previous generations lacked, or that today’s 30-somethings look young than earlier generations, but because the 30-year-old of today has accomplished as little or less as the 20-year-old of previous generations. Consider for a second what your parents had accomplished by their thirtieth birthday and compare it to what you have accomplished? Is it as startling as it is for me: marriage, two successful careers, children, their own house, two successful cars. Now, is the difference between their accomplishments and yours due to laziness, a characteristic so commonly attributed to our generation, or have other influences stunted our individual growth with regards to professional and personal gains?

         Many of this group may be reading this now, and it would not surprise me in the least if, while drinking their expensive coffee and adjusting their tortoise shell glasses, they had no idea that they were part of this group. There are no telling signs when attempting to spot these people or spot you as one of these people. There’s no style of walk, or accent, or way of thinking, so let me take a moment to explain the EAs. The EA is, essentially, the result of the desires of a middle class mixing with the realities of American higher education.
         The effect of this hyper-education on the psyche and the cost of college on the bank accounts is a generation of young men and women that are both too confident in their own intelligence or future greatness to accept any normal form of employment, and too poor to live on their own. Our intelligence and our dreams are only matched by our resultant uselessness; the holy trinity of selfishness. Our very uselessness began innocently enough, with us staying in school longer than most, majoring in a subjects that are more useless than most, and finally finding our careers later than most. We then move out of the house later, being a drain on our parents’ finances longer than we should, find mature relationships later, get married later, and start families later. This is what is killing the middle class.
          But how did this happen? How did a generation and cultural bracket of such potential get stuck in this elongated adolescence, this state of dependent inertia? Certainly it cannot just be our intelligence or our desire to go to college; our parents did that. The only honest answer to this question may be because adolescence is easy and because it is available. But the true answer is three fold: educational demand, educational cost, and educational impracticality.

The Requirement of College

              The middle-class requires their children to go to college. On the surface there is nothing wrong with the requirement of college; more education leads to better critical thinking, leading to us being better prepared for the difficulties that are apart of any job. The economic realities of college, however, prove that something is wrong. The elongated adolescence is not merely a generational problem, but an economic one. It was not until after World War II that the population on college campuses skyrocketed. Before then, college was understood as a place for the select few, but the GI Bill made it a place for the veteran. The veteran became the worker’s grandson and granddaughter became stuck. After four years of college, a 23-year-old finds him or herself trapped under a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt.
         We did not have the regularity of conscription, which would have led to the regularity of the G.I. Bill, but for a certain segment of our population, college was something one must do, with no family generational wealth or government program to pay the way. With the growing cost of college, higher education remains a location for the relatively well-off. For the rich, they do not have to worry about paying for college, so the social requirement for them to attend a university is not a problem. For the poor, the fact that college is meant for the well-off is well known. For the middle class, however, the need for college to merely maintain their middle class existence runs counter with the middle class’s ability to afford college. To put it bluntly, we have the expectations of the rich with the economic security not much greater than the poor.
         The middle-class is good at everything, and that’s the problem. Consider it this way, those from the poor classes do not fall for the same dreams as we do – they may have them, but they do not let their dreams destroy them. The reality of life they have known their whole lives forbids them from falling for such con-games. They know the rules and they know how to survive. They get a job and make their way through life. Then there is the upper class, and they are like the ones that are great at everything because they can dream and buy the fruition of their dreams. They can do whatever they want because they are rich. But then there’s us, the middle class, and we are just good at everything. Good enough to have the dreams and foolish enough to think we can reach those dreams. Good enough to get somewhat far in whatever field we choose, but not great enough to reach our highest dreams without falling into serious debt. We are not great enough and we are not realistic enough. We are trapped in the mediocre middle and not knowing this has stunted our development, tapped our finances and left us twitching uncomfortably in an existential funk.
         For the children of the middle class, we may very well obtain a job following graduation that affords us a place to rent, utilities, food, and a chance to put a little away for savings. If we did not major in business, engineering, or computer science, we may very well make enough to do that, but not after our student loans kick in. Then, suddenly, our couple hundred dollar of disposable income a month, along with an additional four hundred a month, get taken alive by the federal and private loans. If one graduates in May, we are given six months to defer, making the holiday season that perfect time to return home. Our new financial reality forces a move home until our career has advanced enough that our debt becomes manageable. Hoards of 20-somethings returning home, where they just were four, five, maybe eight years earlier if they went on to graduate school; older, more mature, hardened by life, embittered by circumstances, poor, hyper-educated and still as immature as the day they left (only now they are more convinced then ever of that they are absolutely right about everything because they have a degree.) Thus, with stubbornness, debt, and moving back home, the elongated adolescence begins.

The Philosophy of College

         Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have known any trouble that an hour reading would not dissipate.
         Montesquieu 1689-1755

         Montesquieu never had student loans and never lived in the days of computers.
         As America’s industry continues to move towards the technological fields, the leisurely study of a thousand different fields becomes more impractical. Over the twentieth century, America has gone from an agricultural economy, to an industrial economy, and now to a technological economy. Unfortunately, pure intelligence alone never sparked these transitions from one lifestyle to the next. It has always been practical knowledge that sparked the change. Always left in the lurch has been the liberal arts major, who was forced to redesign their intelligence to better work within the fold of the new industry.
As stated before, only those middle class students with the inclination to major in business, engineering, or computer science are seeing the bright future they were intended for. For those unfortunates that felt a liberal arts education adequately satisfied their creative and intellectual curiosities, along with their professional endeavors, very little was left for us. A liberal arts education, while encouraging and forging intelligence, adds little to one’s practical knowledge base.
College is something one must do, and because we are merely middle class, we have to take loans out to attend, and when we chose a liberal arts education, we are left to regret it when we learn that our education affords us little more than a clock-watching job at some financial firm. The economic realities of college compared and contrasted to the economic realities we face once we are awarded the diploma make our ability to compare and contrast Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Palahniuk’s Fight Club something a little less than useful.
         On average, the starting salary for a person with a liberal arts degree is nearly $9,000 less than someone who earned a degree in business, and over $17,000 less per year than someone with a degree in engineering.  You yourself may have noticed the articles popping up on the internet news sites while avoiding some menial office work. These articles have professors defending the liberal arts education as being more than useless, but has the need to defend something ever been a good sign?  Most often it is a professor of one of these liberal arts concentrations, and most often they sight the well rounded education as proof of its important. These defenders of the degree, however, fail to understand whom they are educating and why these students are being educated.
         The majority of their students, unlike the professors, will not go on to become professors or teachers, the only professions for which the liberal arts focus is of value. It is my opinion that those very professors became professors because they could not survive in any other environment, and they often cannot understand those that do survive in those other environments, giving them more of a disconnect from the majority of their students and making what they as teachers have to offer even less useful. Education should be something of use.
         In the past the university system could get by with teaching only philosophy, math, literature and theology, and those students could go on and do great things with that core knowledge base. In those days, the days of the founding fathers, those were the technical fields, with jobs waiting for them when they graduated. Today, these fields do not procure the brightest futures. They have become, instead, the fields of the professional student, not the professional.
         While a well rounded education is nice, the leisure time for deep thought it requires being of any worth is hardly something the middling class can afford. If Thomas Jefferson could wile away his hours in study of Locke and the latest French philosophers, thus help establish this great country of ours, that is fine, but remember that he had a plantation full of slaves bringing in the money, and in addition to his loftier academic interests, he was a pretty fare architect as well. The liberal arts education, the sifting brandy by the fireside while debating secular humanism field of study, is a worthy pastime only for those able to afford a pastime. Consequently, the middling people require a practical education. If, and only if, the practical education leads to unimagined wealth can we then afford to partake in the liberal arts education. Perhaps it can be seen as a retirement venture – better than playing golf.
         By saying this, am I say the middling class should be less intelligent, less worldly, or more practical? By saying this, by calling out to my middling brethren, am I telling them to give up, or am I telling them to quit the suffering that comes from the unholy mixture of the expectation of college with the uselessness of college? By saying this, I am trying to save that roving, bleary-eyed generation that finds themselves jobless, futureless, unable to use their grand intellect, and averse to accepting the earnings that are waiting for their particular brand of knowledge. They are not accepting jobs, their life or their future, always pushing standard markers in the progression of one’s life further and further into the future: marriage, children, retirement, and even death, as medical advancements are allowing us to live longer lives. But there is a limit, and in time people will simply accomplish less. They can ignore me and continue to live in their parents’ houses, while arguing politics as they smoke and drink too much, and constantly threaten their friends that they are going to start their own blog.
         I only partly mentioned a major problem with the EA just now and that’s the fact that they are not accepting the jobs offered to them, and understanding this requires a slightly further look into exactly what the liberal arts education is putting into our heads! Today’s requirement for a practical knowledge base has not gone unrecognized by the EA, and this mixed with the cost and shallowness of today’s society has many of our ilk dreaming of days of yore. Despite our thoughts of the past, we are completely connected to today’s society; so much of who we are has been determined by social movements that came during the twentieth century. We are so connected to this era that I have a difficult time imagining us existing at any other time, and yet we are always dreaming of different times.
         In our vague, surface level understanding of history, these past societies always appear more romantic, and, without a doubt, it is a result of our Liberal Arts education, which involved teaching us about those great historical figures that seemed to accomplish so much with their ideas. Their accomplishments become our dreams, and when our dreams appear to be failing, we look back at those old times as if looking back at our old fantasies. These dreams that were created in college then cause us to avoid jobs that signal to us the end of any future dreams.
         College is a perfect environment for us. Where better for young know-nothings to feel more alive, more empowered and more intelligent than all the greatest geniuses put together than in college? Where else can the egotism found in a crying infant or a hormonal teenage boy be found again but in the keening of the college student and liberal arts professor? Too often we are taught ideologies of long dead, highly manic, highly influential intellectuals, and, whether we agree with the ideas or not, we are shown a new kind of celebrity. This kind of celebrity is not the kind enjoyed by a pop song or dance group, or some young athlete who can jump farther than you or I. No, this kind of celebrity has nothing more going for it than being an idea that a passionate group of underlings have chosen to follow and spread to other classrooms. Furthermore, this was an obtainable celebrity status, because we can all see ourselves being the best and brightest. With our minds full of these new celebrities, and our belief that we too can obtain this level of celebrity, is it any wonder that we then avoid the real world, where there is no celebrity status to be obtained and where there is no celebration of your or my ideas?
         So much more would have been asked of us in an earlier time, and maybe that is why we hold some romantic love for earlier times. We want to be challenged to do something great. We want to be challenged to change the world like the Franklins and Jeffersons were challenged. In today’s world, we are so removed from even the possibility of doing anything great with our ideas because of our lack of practical knowledge that we instead dream of some revolution. We want to create a more perfect union between society and our minds. As it is, we rarely feel as if we are being asked to do something great. As it is, we are left to ask ourselves, “Why here and why now?”, because no one else is asking it of us. We ask ourselves these questions as some form of our own grand inquisition that looks not only into the meaning of our lives, but the purpose of it as well.

Solution

              Again, it is important for all to understand that this is not a call to lament for the poor and unfortunate offspring of the middle class. One of the very points needed to be made is the selfishness of us. We are not lazy, we are selfish. We are not jaded, we are dreamers. We are not dumb, we are just without talent.
         We lack a familiarity with reality, and this lack of familiarity led us away from the MBA and towards the degree and graduate degree in one of the social sciences: American Studies, African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, Philosophy, English and maybe even on to the dreaded Master of Fine Arts (MFA). The EA can be tragic if allowed to fester past college, and if it enters graduate school, the EA could be a lifelong struggle. There, in graduate school, our masterbatory thoughts, if done well or done bad, will in time produce a small white scroll of lamb skin that is good for nothing except as evidence of what you had completed in your past. The spewed white lamb skin offers nothing for the future except a more gilded elongated adolescence.
         “You know that guy in the park that made a huge pair of butterfly wins,” I once asked a friend. “He attaches them to his back and walks around the park so people will look at him?”
         “Yeah, I’ve seen that guy.”
         “He has an MFA.”
         The EAs know we cannot keep this up forever, and we will have to end our dreams at some point, or accept our lives as intelligent paupers. As we enter our later 20s and early 30s, and our lives continue rudderless, we begin to believe that our window of opportunity is closing, and our ambitions move from what we can accomplish in our lives to the though, “Why should I be poor and miserable in New York City when I can be miserable in Belize?” And while this sense of reality is refreshing, it is still whimsical in nature and lacking any valuable solution. It’s this lack of a realistic solution that finally proved to me that we require a more serious answer to this great American tragedy.
         How can this selfish segment be cured of their disease? Before considering the cure, it needs to be understood that the EA is not a form of slacker in any sense. The slacker is that lowly segment of the previous generation, but even if they were of our generation, their mentality is quite different from the EA. Slackers were never stuck in an elongated adolescence, which should, if done properly, come with accomplishments and a hope of accomplishing more. Slackers were and never will be interested in more. Slackers, I can only assume, have simply settled for less. The EAs are what they are due to the fact that they want more and push for more. The EA gambled… and lost. Slackers are selfish and lazy, where the EA is selfish, driven and hopeful. And while the best solution for the slacker would be to round them up and shoot them, that solution would be a waste of what the EA can offer.
         To cure the disease and use what the EA does have to offer requires a special solution. You must remember to always look at our need for intellectual, personal and professional stimulation and freedom as an illness, the same way we now look at obesity as an illness. We cannot help our I.Q. or our penchant for liberal arts education any more than the obese man can help his metabolism, or the pervert can help being sexually attracted to someone or something he, she, he-she or it should not be attracted to.
         How do we cure obesity? We cure obesity by taking food away. How do we cure perversion? We cure perversion by removing the pervert from the place where the temptation exists. And, logically, how should one cure our need for ultimate freedom, by taking our freedom away. I considered a class system like they once enjoy in England, where the place you were born dictated the place your future would exist, but that would not work in America. I tried to consider what the government can do for us; as a liberal, I believe completely in the government’s responsibility in the matter, but what would the different be between the EA living off his parents, and the EA living off the government? There would be no difference, so the condition would remain. I considered a writers work program like so many artists enjoyed during World War II. With this solution, the EA would be providing a service, and the government would be providing a salary, but the government should not be expected to pay “artists” for their work when so many of the artists in the EA are fooling themselves and really have no talent whatsoever. The artistic aspirations of the EA should remains outside the realm of the government, or else the government would control our forms of expression.
         More extreme reforms also will not work. Therapy, both group and shock, would not remove the very core of the EA. Jail or some kind of detention center seems a little rough and still fails to use effectively what we do have to offer, our drive. Charity would not work because there are already so many deserving charities, and while the condition of the EA is a disease, it’s hardly AIDS or… diabetes.
         Therefore, I suggest conscription. If we are willing to tax those with more money, should we not be just as willing to challenge those with more smarts, more drive, and more spare time than most, at least while they’re young. What better challenge is there than the military? What better dose of reality is there than the military? Not only have some of our greatest works of literature been inspired by the writers military stint, Naked and the Dead, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Jarhead, but some great works of art have even been, in part, funded by the military; would there be Jack Kerouac’s On The Road if he did not have his military check each month for his time in the Merchant Marines, which allowed him to aimlessly travel for seven years?
         With one five year stint in any arm of the armed forces – even the Coast Guard – the government should forgive all federal loans and greatly reduce all private loans accrued during college and graduate school. This will mightily free up a large portion of the EAs post military salary, creating more disposable income that could then be put back into our free-market economy. The EA, in return, would help the military’s lagging recruitment efforts. What the war effort needs is a little bit of creativity.
         After the horrors of war, if the money does not lead to more freedom, as it did for Kerouac, or more inspiration, as it did for Hemingway and Mailer, the memories of war would easily cure the boredom of a ‘regular’ job. War would be the ultimate smack in the back of a head, with the words, snaps out of it. Let us see death and we will cherish everything just a bit more.