I was elected to
do this speech by the democratic ruling of the council, also know as “Mr.
Mackenzie. And, like so many in the past and so many shall be in the future, I
found myself in the common predicament of not having a topic. Perhaps something
that I was passionate about? How about a teacher-pupil issue? Or the faults of
teenagers? Alright then, how about the complete antipode, perhaps the way
everyone’s always labelling teenagers, then? I could do the environment, about how
the world’s going to the dogs. But if you look back [in my case, it would be
mainly through books, of course] people have been thinking that some new
invention is going to upset the balance of the world since the dawn of time. And
you’ll always have the old men that say that the world isn’t like it was when they
were younger. It’s almost a definition of the old and decrepit. You’re not old
and decrepit if you don’t complain loudly about how much better life was when
they were young. If you found yourself abducted by aliens and taken to their
planet, there would be some old and spotted green creature with too many legs
saying that the universe wasn’t the same place it was when it was a lad. The
world has been going to the dogs for centuries. But we’re still here, which is
probably a glitch in the system, but we don’t mind it particularly. Alright, we
might be filling ourselves with harmful chemicals from everywhere possible, but,
inevitably, we’re still here. Perhaps the end is nigh, but, quite frankly, who cares. I’m not saying that you
should go out and continue destroying the rainforests and driving ridiculous
SUVs, quite the contrary, I believe conservation is vitally important, I just
think there’s no need to be pessimistic about it.
And what about
all the complaining about lack of respect towards one another? Yes, I do agree
with that, before I make any enemies with the teachers, but is it really such a
big problem? Quite frankly, we can blame that on hormones and bad parenting until
we get old enough to have teenagers of our own to complain about and be blamed
for inadequately raising them. Hormones are always a nice excuse.
It also gives
journalists from family tabloids a fall-back topic for when nothing else
particularly interesting (i.e. tragic) happens.
It always has been
human nature to try to find the answer to life, the universe and everything
[which, by the way, is not 42, nor 23 but actually 96]. We have always wanted to
take apart the frog to find the croak. And once we do this, we need to find a
way to protect ourselves from it. Doctors, disinfectant manufacturers and
psychiatrists, who think they’re saving us from the world.
Even me, giving
a speech that no-one in particular is going to listen to or remember, trying
with inexpert tools to analyse us all. Looking back at this, I seem to have
done everything I was complaining at, (which is more of the built-in, read-only
programming of human nature).
But then again,
hypocrites have more fun.
2009, age 14