Are we a Wasted Generation?

The United Nation’s definition of youth defines youth as those who are between the age of 15 to 24. By definition, then those who are below the age of 14 are considered children. However the Article I of the United Nations’ convention on the rights of the child defines children as persons up to the age of 18. Some countries define youth at the age at which a person is given equal rights under the law, which is often referred to as the “age of majority” and in many countries age of majority is 18. Once a person passes this age he or she is considered an adult. There is also a noticeable division between teen agers (13-19) and young adults (20-24). Approximately 1 billion youth live in the world today; 18% of the world population. This means that one person out of five is in the age of 15- 24. Interestingly this is the first time in the world history that the world witnesses such a high concentration of youth on its surface. The majority, 85%, of the youth live in the developing countries with 60% living in Asia alone and a remaining 23% in African countries. It is calculated that by 2025 this 85% would augment in to 89.5%. But what is most important to comprehend is that the notion of youth is subjected to different socio-cultural, political, economic and ideological variables and it is these factors that determines who is a youth despite of all the definitions provided by any institution.

Now let us take a look at the Maldives definition of youth. In general perspective the youth fall in to the age category of  18 to 35. However the intriguing aspect of defining the youth in Maldives is to touch on the ideological perception of them by the masses. To put this in to simple language, what comes in to your mind with the utterance of youth? For most, youth is the icon of trouble. Youth is defined as an unemployed, druggies, restless minority constantly struggling along with violence to achieve their rights. Youth is also defined in terms of school dropouts and this population is one of the overtly representative fractions of the youth in Maldives. With all the hullabaloos that have been continued by this lot in the history of Maldives, the general pessimistic perception of the Youth by the masses can be justified.

With all these in mind, I base this article on a discussion we had few weeks ago. Are we a wasted generation? The question was quite shocking; something which we have not contemplated ever before but gave away few fascinating point of views of different genres.  Half of the people stated that we are a wasted generation and a few justified that we are not but most interestingly some were neutral of which the reasons and threats will be discussed later on.

One of the major arguments dragged in to justify that we are a wasted generation is that we have nothing to gain by a struggle; political achievement, and struggle obviously does not mean a physical one. Most of the young people do believe that there is no prospect for a major political revolution in the world per se. No opportunity to revolutionize the whole system as Karl Marx or Lenin did. Thus this political opportunity absence has convinced them to believe that youth has no important role to play in the political arena. But what is tragic and ironical here is that they do not grasp the importance of rightful, adequate and substantial political involvement by youth which is indispensable right now to Maldives.

The free market economy is explicitly a dominant feature of our lives. It is not exaggerating to state that we do not decide for ourselves any more but it is the free market economy which decides for us. My argument at a first glance would appear intimidating. But the explanation to this phenomenon is as follows. The term “free market” designates the fact that it is “free” and the consumer has the power to control the market by “demand”. Yet what we do not perceive is that our demand is conditioned by the “supply” it self and therefore our scope of independence in the free market is limited. Thus the supply decides what we should consume. On the other and most sophisticatedly the free market uses advertising to condition our decisions. The conditional psychological techniques executed by the advertisers unconsciously decide for us in all most all aspects of our lives. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist once did a research using a dog to investigate how external factors contribute to the gastric function of a dog and results in salving. He rang a bell before giving the food to the dog and eventually the dog started salving to the sound of the bell even without the food which is now known as “ring a bell“theory. This simply means how external factors condition a beings internal urges. The free market economy advertisers use the same theory. For instance they show us a guy using a perfume and then get a hot a girl. The condition of this phenomenon is that “the perfume” is necessary to get the hot girl and therefore urges the viewers to purchase it in order to get the “hot girl”. Thus the desire of the Other becomes the desire of us. Therefore some of the youth believe that we are denied the right to free decision making by the unconscious conditioned deciding factors of the free market and thus we are, in fact all of us are, a wasted generation.

Another cliché tic argument of the youth to justify that we are a wasted generation is the unemployment experience by the youth and the less opportunity to “higher” education especially in Maldives due to various reasons. It is on one hand a fair argument to produce because of the high rate of unemployment among the youth of the country. However this has been discussed enough and I do not wish to explain it further.

And now let us contemplate on whether we are actually a wasted generation. In my personal opinion why do we have to struggle to prove that we are not a wasted generation? Is “struggle” and indispensable part of youth? It is this ideology and discourse of youth being a noticeably a radical group that has lead us to this conclusion. Yet there are enough opportunities for us to struggle in this country. There are hundreds of political injustices and human rights violations taking place but how many of us do notice them. It is here that we again come across the irony of our youth. Most of us are blind to the ongoing political discourse or are not rational enough to analyze the political situation here, not just political but our society’s concerns. Most of us are neutral to socio-political happenings of the country and then complain that we need a revolution. Thus isn’t it our fault that we are wasted?

But now let me entertain you in the most crucial part of this article. It is the first and the only time in the world history that we witness such a vast concentration of youth on the surface of the planet earth. More than three fourths of that population lives in the developing countries and more than half of that population lives in Asia. This on one hand is a very unique and on the other hand extremely risky situation. The high concentration of youth in Asia can be translated in to so many controversial problems starting from augmenting the present unemployment rate.

However I would like to concentrate on socio-cultural perspective of this massive phenomenon. The high concentrate of youth, without doubt, predetermines a series of socio-cultural issues not necessarily pessimistic. One of the main points pointed out by the UN is that this new generation is highly sexually active. This means that there will be a high birth rate in the future which will lead to a massive apocalypse of human population and therefore the means of full filling the basic needs of this next generation should also be given a thought. Furthermore this high sexual activeness would invariably lead to unwanted pregnancies which will result in a high rate of abortions. This will also lead to the spreading of HIV/AIDS epidemic and other STIs among the youth which will lead to a desperate destruction of the youth generation. Thus as the youth, there is a struggle for us to initiate. It is time for us to contemplate on the possible solutions for the expected issues. Our youth do lack the basic sex education. Even though a diminutive syllabus is included in the education system the lessons are either not taught or loosely dealt and consequently the lack of sex education has lead to many unsafe sex practices which is even apparent right now. Thus we need to find methods to extend the sex education among the youth. Furthermore awareness of HIV/AIDS and other STIs should be given in order to decrease the high rate of epidemic infection. We would also be responsible to find solutions to feed a massive young population in the near future about all this and drugs. Following this issue there will appear other problems such as housing, health, infrastructure, education etc when accommodating a massive population.

Thus we have to question again and again, are we a wasted generation. It is as important as this to analyze the arguments of those who claim that we are a wasted generation. But above all the personal perception of this issue by the youth itself matters overtly in examining this phenomenon. The majority of this young population lives in developing countries and in Asia. Thus the responsibility that we as youth have to share is enormous. The solutions for upcoming problems must be predetermined in excess and strategies must be implemented in advance. Thus calling us a wasted generation for not having apparent struggles or simply because of the consequences of free market is highly problematic and illogical without contemplating on the future issues of the young generation. The old school theories should be dealt with proper integration so that they would not influence us pessimistically to look forward to the future. Finally, children will become young one day and young will become old and it is our duty right now to get prepared to accommodate all on the surface of planet earth despite our intensely self occupied prejudices.

Cont: Kids lost their childhood?

Ps: Im not a parent nor I look after kids or what so ever!! but i live in this world where everything happens right infront of me, and I cant just Shut up and let it happen..

I sometimes fear that far from feeling carefree like butterflies and enjoying their childhood, our kids might actually be glad to leave their childhood behind them, considering how many of them are being pushed to excel by today’s parents!

Compared to the carefree times of my childhood, today’s children are living under constant stress: the stress of carrying on their slender shoulders the aspirations and lofty ambitions of their parents; the expectations of their teachers; and the incredible load of curriculum. They are living in a world where learning is always equated with competition; activities are all about winning a prize; and classes are joined not based on the kid’s skills or interests but on their snob value. Add to this the tough school schedule, loads of homework, projects and tuition, and the poor child just keeps getting pushed deeper and deeper in the vortex of stress and struggles to cope.

Welcome to the world of ‘helicopter parents’ —  those super-informed, super-involved, on-the-move parents, shuttling their kids from one class to another with the ease of a skilled acrobat! These are the parents that hover around their kids in a colony contest, desperately prompting the child, with a camera in tow elbowing out anyone who comes between them and their super achiever kid. These are the parents that worry about every germ that the child encounters and run after the poor kid with sanitizer in one hand and low-fat, high-protein smoothie in the other. They fill every second of their child’s existence with ‘constructive’ activities.

But if they really do have their child’s best interests at heart, they should stop obsessing over their kindergartener’s handwriting and micromanaging their lives in general. Else, the poor, mortified child would end up a super dependent adult, always seeking approval and unable to make even the smallest decision in life.

I really mean it; lay off parents! Give your child some fresh air to breathe and some space to thrive. Children are so creative and intelligent, they will surprise you with what they can do. If anything is holding back your children, it is your obsessive involvement and not their limitation! Set them free!

Isn’t it a matter of concern that children as young as five are falling prey to depression? There is a very fine line between stimulation and exertion; motivation and pressure. And most parents in my generation are going overboard. What is the need to keep the child ‘occupied’ at all times? Does it truly lead to all-round development? More importantly, how many parents even care?

For, we also have a breed of parents that is the opposite of helicopter parents: the under involved parents! All they want is for the kids to be somehow taken care of by someone because they are struggling to fit in too many things in their own lives.

For these parents kids need to be kept engaged because they do not have the time or inclination to provide them the attention they need. It has nothing to do with both the parents working. I see stay-at-home moms lounging in front of television sets or engrossed in their own social activities, even staying online for hours. In effect, they are unavailable, uninterested and even irritable when the child comes home. They have no time to spare for the child. So, they push the child to go for tuition even at a very young age when they can very well teach the child at home. In addition to this, there are the sundry classes like piano, art and music.

Did the parents once find out what the child wanted? Is she happy doing this or does she have the talent or attitude to cope? Is the child too tired? Can’t she play with friends or engage in a favorite hobby like gardening that is more fun?

And, then we complain that kids are growing up brash and disrespectful and don’t bond with us. Did we spend the time to nurture the bond? Were we there to guide the child, to console her when she needed it, to hug her and tell her that it is okay to lose as long as she tried hard enough, that we love her for being her and not because she won a medal, and that we are always there for her no matter what! The question is, do parents have a couple of hours in their day that they can dedicate to their child without being distracted by their mobile or computer or TV? Do they take time out to talk and laugh together? What has happened to family interaction? Do the tired parents and tired children have time to share their lives, ask for guidance or discuss their fears and aspirations?

I hope each parent pauses for a second and thinks: What kind of a parent am I? Am I taking away the ‘child’ from their childhood?

We can earn all the money we want and do other ‘important’ things, but the time and love lost are gone forever. I wish that parents would not have kids if they did not understand the magnitude of the responsibility that the task of raising them entails. The damage cannot be undone once they are older. It is not possible to rebuild the relationship in their teenage years. There is no greater joy than to raise a well-mannered, loving child, who need not necessarily be a genius.

Let us make the change while we still can!

Kids lost their childhood?

I don't see any kid jumping over the compound walls, playing running around, and catching butterflies with street sweeper Illoshifathi, playing hide and seek, see-saw or anything like this now a days. I don't see them running from the neighbor’s house after playing with friends;  kids go out, but to their tuition classes. They don't climb palm trees, not even a ladder, do they?  Not in my locality. We used to race in our bicycles, these days the kids ride bicycles, but only in beach or maybe on Lonuziyaarai kolhu plat form. Come on!

Whenever I see a kid they carry a big bag, big enough to create a hunch as they grow up coz they bend so much due to the weight. They are either stuck to the frigging television or the stupid PSP, iPad. When I ask a 6 year old kid what he does during his free time. He lines up a bunch of classes he attends and I start feeling sick.  I think the parents of our generation are getting over protective, they don't play in the sand; don't eat roadside food, like you never ate when you were a kid! Carry a sanitizer with you. Duh! Years back we didn't even know such a thing existed; they were a thing at hospital used by doctors. I used to have so many wound marks on my knees and arms. I love to use “Rai beys” all over, I used to be very proud of them and my parents they never cared about it, and they don't panic like I had broken my limb, if I had a little scratch. When I see my relatives now, even if the kid is about to fall they are going through a stress attack, really! I am not exaggerating. Few kids are really huge, they are obese. Don't tell me its puppy fat for God's sake! The parents buy them all the junk foods to keep them shut and they gain weight because there is no way they are burning that fat they gain, you push them into some abacus class or music class where they sit and sit and sit. 

Before making further accusations, (I felt that will be the right word) I am not a very old lady complaining about the parenthood of this generation. But I really find it so funny! Why are we being so cruel with those little ones? Don’t force your so-called luxury and disciplined lifestyle (bwahaha) into that kid. Can’t you see they are suffocating!

Please know that you are responsible for your kid losing his/her childhood. When he/she grows up to be an adult they will have no childhood memories, what do you expect them to say? When I was 5 years old I would come back from school and get ready ASAP to go to the tuitions, after tuitions I come back home and finish my home works by the time I would be very tired so I would go to sleep. Over the weekends, I had a bunch of other classes to attend training, vocal, concert practice, koya, literature club, netball and then I would go to the beach but will not play in the water because it used to be extremely dirty contagious you see, so I just watch others play and come back.  I read lots and lots of books that I started hating even the story books. How exciting does that sound? But this is how your kids will answer.

I am not saying that they shouldn't go to classes or not read books or not study at all but come on! don't take their childhood away from them by laying stupid protocols like when you go to beach ,"don't go to the water, stay within the mat" why at all take them to a beach then? Lay a mat at home and have fun! All you want is to sit in the mat. Please don’t introduce them to the computer. Say a BIG no to mobile phone usage and playing PSP. Over the weekends ask your kids to get out of the house at around 3.30 PM and tell them that you will not let them in until it's 6 PM. Let them socialize! Teach them the games you played when you were a kid not the indoor games or the games like scrabble, chess, word building and carom that would improve their IQ and logical thinking. You can please have that for the latter part of their life. Teach them the crazy games like running and catching, hitting the ball, hide and seek, yell, sing, blindfold. I think a kid is more cute only if he is dirty and if he plays in the mud, eats ice corn and the roadside foods, let them go crazy, talk to them a lot about the crazy things you did in life and inspire them, let the neighbors complain about them and just say, ‘What would you expect from a kid?’ And if you hadn't done anything crazy please give them an opportunity to tell their kids about the crazy things they did as a child. Let them catch up fever, cold it’s OK they are not dreadful diseases, trust me, they will get immune. 

Don't take away their childhood from them. Stop burdening them. I know this is a competitive world but don't kill the beautiful phase of their life, "childhood". 

Afterall, tomorrow is just a myth! Let them go crazy, they should know how to "live" life!

"Eff-word, "Ess-Word? Say It.. Just Say It..!!

No! No! No! It is not porn. Don’t get the wrong idea just because I used the word ‘fuck’ and because I didn’t take the trouble to substitute the middle letters with fancy characters. (Please guys don’t expect stars in this, we are not kids we know what the stars stands for no inhibitions here people) I was not expecting children for readers and I firmly believe all who came up here are mature enough to distinguish fuck from ‘fuck’. So anyhow if it’s getting too uncomfortable, If anybody did drop by expecting sleazy stuff then I do request them kindly to go somewhere else, not because I don’t want them to read my article in fact I would like from you to read it all and leave a comment and have a nice time. But I do not want to disappoint anyone so I may as well give a heads-up.

Once I was insanely irritated, so I Tweeted “What the fuck” and it turned out to be a really big deal for some people they started criticizing. Anyway I’m not here to please anyone or live up to other people’s expectations.
Later that day I met someone who knows me personally and who knows my family and so on, and this person ended up telling me how gross it’s of me to use “such” words in a social network like that.  “LOL” was the first thing that came out of my mouth. I still want to laugh about it, seriously! “Well, dude it sounded horrible for you when I say WTF, and it was exactly the way I was feeling, so congrats! You may say its filthy mouth! I don’t mind, now listen, don’t you dare tell me what I should and shouldn’t use when I talk!” What is the big deal, people? If you don’t like something you don’t use it, I won’t stop it just because you don’t like it.
And just because someone uses it in every other sentence does not make him/her a 'bad' person and I would refrain from judging or slinging it back. End of the Story!

There you go: According to Osho, 'fuck' is the most enriched word in English Language.

Here is a transcript of one of his speeches:

“Fuck is one of the most beautiful words. English language should be proud of it….

“I don’t think any other language has any such beautiful word.

“One Tom from California has done great research on it. I think he must be the famous Tom. Of Tom, Dick, Harry fame…

“He says one of the most interesting words in the English language today is the word Fuck. It is a magical word. Just by its sound it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love.

“In language, it falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive—John fucked Mary—and intransitive—Mary was fucked by John. And as a noun: Mary is a fine fuck!

“It can be used as an adjective. Mary is fucking beautiful. As you can see, there are not many words with the versatility of the word fuck! Besides the sexual meaning, there are also the following uses.

“Fraud: I got fucked at the used car lot!

“Ignorance: Fuck if I knew!

“Trouble: I guess I’m fucked now!

“Aggression: Fuck you!

“Displeasure: What the fuck is going on here!

“Difficulty: I can’t understand this fucking job!

“Incompetence: He is a fuck off!

“Suspicion: What the fuck are you doing!

“Enjoyment: I had a fucking time!

“Request: Get the fuck out of here!

“Hostility: I’m going to knock your fucking head off!

“Greeting: How the fuck are you!

“Apathy: Who gives a fuck?

“Innovation: Get a bigger fucking hammer!

“Surprise: Fuck, you scared the shit out of me!

“Anxiety: Today is really fucked!"

And it is very healthy too. If every morning you do it as a transcendental meditation.  just when you get up… the first thing… repeat the mantra, fuck you, five times… it clears the throat… that’s how I keep my throat clear… (:p) enough for today!

PS: It is not like saying 'God' ten times makes a person saintly!

Diva-fication

Waiting my turn at the community microwave at work a few days ago, I leafed through the pages of an old Newsweek. A line in an article on the pre-mature diva-fication of little girls made me pause. The author quotes a mother  :

"My daughter is 8, and she's like, so into this stuff it's unbelievable," says Anna Solomon, a Brooklyn social worker. "From the clothes to the hair to the nails, school is like No. 10 on the list of priorities."

No matter how hard you try to pin the blame on media and society at large , the problem clearly lies with the parent and not with the child who has placed education number 10 in their list of priorities.I know mothers who take their kindergartners out to get pedicures and manicure to say nothing of professional hair styling on a regular basis. The kids are not begging their parents for any of this. They are quite happy being kids. It is the parent that is not allowing them to do so.

It seems that it is the vanity of the parents (and maybe their own lack of satisfaction with their physical appearance and/or social status) that nudges them toward diva-fication of their children. Over time the situation spins out of control. A few years down the line, the kid will throw a fit if their hair is not styled right and their French manicure is lacking in quality - they are merely being creatures of habit. If the parent had taken a detour from the diva route and got the child interested in other things - education, art, sports, music - come to mind but a slew of other wholesome options exist as well, they would have ended up having entirely different set of priorities. 

It is a pity that authors of such articles don't take the trouble to make the responsible party feel like they have a big part in the problem and have the ability to fix it even as the tween pageants dominate prime time television. Instead we have this ludicrous hand-wringing on behalf of parents who don't deserve any of the commiseration.

So While a lot can and is attributed to the portrayal of girls and women in their air-brushed perfection, parents play an equal if more greater role in allowing girls to become fashion victims while they are so young and impressionable. If a woman has a positive body image and is at peace with herself, chances are that she will be able to pass on that confidence on to her daughter.

There are plenty of little girls who look and act their age even though they are exposed to the same kind of baleful media influences as those who strive for the impossibly perfect look with the tacit consent of their parents.

These are challenging times in that media is as intrusive as it is ubiquitous - if you live in society you cannot escape what it is relentlessly projecting. However, that does not make it inherently impossible for parents to have their own guard rails or set an alternative standard or example that their children can follow.

Want Of Good Life

Life is the strangest thing I have ever come across. A few years of existence on this planet. An existence so strange. In these few years, we go through so much, born as little infants, to being young kids and then teens and later matured youths to an understanding adult and then comes parenting, grandparenting, growing old. After all these, all of a sudden this life stops, its like a fullstop to your existence. Death. The weird unsolved mystery.

 There have been people who have quoted about living a good life and experiencing a good death. Strangely, its absurd to accept the fact that, after living such a beautiful life, we are bestowed with death! Frankly we have no idea what death could be. Maybe death is the transfer of our soul from one individual body to the other, maybe death is a never ending beautiful dream, o maybe death could be a freedom from all earthly attractions and worries. it could be all what a human mind can imagine.

After death what happens to our identity is a thought we often think about? Would people remember us? What would they say about us? Have I lived a worthful life? Why not find an answer to these thoughts?

Spending quality time with your heart and brain shall give you the answers you require.

When we were born as small infants, we were born without thoughts, motivations and relations, Its the growing period of life that made us aware of all these pleasures. Your thoughts and nature are the qualities which decide your stand in the human race! So purer your emotions, more the number of people shall desire your existence. The gifted life, where we are presented to go through various developments, and going to through different relations has to be cherished. Make sure atleast one person sheds a tear of true love when you reach the graveyard!

I am sure God never gave us the negative vibes, greed, lust, jealousy factors. They are man made. If man can create a thing, a Man can surely demolish it too. Think over this, why make enemies when we can make friends? Love and be loved.

This life was not given to us to create negative feelings with other humans, destroy lives and make living a difficult job! This life was given to us to see the beautiful nature and experience its million emotions.
The amount of negative changes a man is accepting, the day aint near when there shall be no pure relations, no true friends and no feelings of faith and trust. Start mending before its late to reap.

Be the change. Think good. Forgive the wrong. Appreciate the talent. Encourage the ones who have lost their path. Be human with the less blessed souls. Spread the humanity.

Every day millions of people are born and millions die. In the past 1000 years so many people have lived and died, yet only a few are remembered. The good ones who brought a change have always been respected. Role model them and try doing something fruitful in your life. Possible that your actions may not get noticed today, but years later sooner or later, it shall have a recognization. Maybe the future generations shall heart your name with all the due respect.

Careless much??

We, always complain about how dirty roads of  Male' are when compared to the other Islands but when it comes to doing our bit, we do nothing. We throw wastes anywhere and everywhere we feel like-be it pavement or on our neighbor’s doorsteps. And when somebody complains about our wrongdoings, we ignore them by saying that they are just trying to be righteous, instead we could ponder upon our actions.

Let’s exclude not-so-learned men and also women for awhile. It’s really painful to watch well educated people throwing wastes out of their homes and keeping it on the road surface, or just throwing empty Jugo cups anywhere they feel like. Would it hurt them to dump the wastes in the right place “dustbin” instead of throwing it out, carelessly? Don’t they realize that it could make a rider lose his vehicle’s balance and meet with an accident, if the waste falls on him out of blue? Is it alright to risk others’ lives just because we are too lazy and careless? Do they even care the bad smell that comes out of it?

We don’t have to carry broomsticks on our backs and clean the city but we can always avoid dirtying it more. 

Walking on the pavement and following traffic rules, throwing wastes in dustbins, being humane towards weaker beings-these little things make huge difference if practiced regularly. We never know who’s watching us. People might pick up our good habits and then that might lead to a greater good.

Let’s be responsible.