“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
How many of us who have brought children into this world, reared them and guided them toward adulthood have shared those thoughts are something like them along the way? My hunch is that we all have.
The quotation I have posted here is attributed to Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived from 470 until 399 … B.C. That’s more than four centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ!
I want to offer this quotation as my brief statement of faith in the future of our world. I believe that humankind is going to get through all the things that seem to trouble us today.
I mean if Socrates can express these misgivings about the youth of his day and the world can survive as it has done in the two millennia since the great man’s time, who are we to worry about the future of our species going forward?
I continue to think well of our young people. They have answered the call to arms. They are continuing to behave like good citizens. Our great nation and humanity will survive … even as old folks far into the distant future will bitch about young people.