Wikipedia attributes this observation to Robert Kennedy, 'This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.' I am quite confident Bobby was right when he said it. It may even be an apt observation today. I believe, however, other "demands" may be more apropos, including a reassessment of Bobby's premise concerning the qualities he attributed to youth.
Today's youth is roughly two generations removed from the youth familiar to the rather youthful Bobby Kennedy and his clan. Having been a youth during Bobby's campaign for President (and enthusiastically planning to vote for him) I have the experience to make a comparison, albeit not an infallible one, between the youth of the '60s and today's youth. I readily admit that my memory is not as good as it used to be, however. And I am obliged to limit my unscientific and very broad-stroke comparison to middle class American youth.
I will, moreover, impose further limitation on the scope of my comparison, befitting a blog post analysis such as this, by acknowledging that 'a predominance of courage over timidity' and 'the appetite for adventure over the love of ease' remain enduring qualities of youth. Furthermore, the quality Bobby referred to as 'a temper of the will' is much too difficult to assess because it lends itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations. Thus, only 'a quality of imagination' remains, and that is where I do observe a noticeable difference.
I have the sense that in my day, we relied much more on our imaginations in dealings with the world around us. This was undoubtedly true in entertainment, from childhood to adulthood. Toys, games, sports, in fact all manner of play had imagination as its primary ingredient. Today's toys, games, sports, and all manner of play require first and foremost a goodly supply of extra batteries. And it is not much of a stretch to conclude that besides the so-called brain drain, there has been a significant concentration of the finite supply of human imagination into the electronics and computer technology industries.
Today's youth, it seems to me, requires imagination as much as any preceding generation did. The difference, as I see it, is that our generation's supply was largely self generated. Today's youth shops for theirs.
Today's youth is roughly two generations removed from the youth familiar to the rather youthful Bobby Kennedy and his clan. Having been a youth during Bobby's campaign for President (and enthusiastically planning to vote for him) I have the experience to make a comparison, albeit not an infallible one, between the youth of the '60s and today's youth. I readily admit that my memory is not as good as it used to be, however. And I am obliged to limit my unscientific and very broad-stroke comparison to middle class American youth.
I will, moreover, impose further limitation on the scope of my comparison, befitting a blog post analysis such as this, by acknowledging that 'a predominance of courage over timidity' and 'the appetite for adventure over the love of ease' remain enduring qualities of youth. Furthermore, the quality Bobby referred to as 'a temper of the will' is much too difficult to assess because it lends itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations. Thus, only 'a quality of imagination' remains, and that is where I do observe a noticeable difference.
I have the sense that in my day, we relied much more on our imaginations in dealings with the world around us. This was undoubtedly true in entertainment, from childhood to adulthood. Toys, games, sports, in fact all manner of play had imagination as its primary ingredient. Today's toys, games, sports, and all manner of play require first and foremost a goodly supply of extra batteries. And it is not much of a stretch to conclude that besides the so-called brain drain, there has been a significant concentration of the finite supply of human imagination into the electronics and computer technology industries.
Today's youth, it seems to me, requires imagination as much as any preceding generation did. The difference, as I see it, is that our generation's supply was largely self generated. Today's youth shops for theirs.
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