Ell said:
Hey all, Im 26 and have had an avid interest since I was probably ???
It just strikes me in my perception that there is a lot of 'youth bashing' lately.
One more thing, we all see what we look for.....
And to be honest, along with perhaps 1 or 2 other friends open to this, I was pretty much alone in my passion and interest in this area, so its probably always a marginal thing.
For my first post here I will reply to another who has only posted once.
I'm in line with the above statements I've quoted. I'm also 26 years old.
I think the general problem with the youth today is the lack of available information. For a generation that has been born into their non-reality, and been made into just another cartoon aspect of modern culture, their appeal and mysticism is surely lacking to those of my parents generation and older. The older generation then gets just as jaded as the kids are apathetic, because of the insane amount of work the old-timers in the UFO research community have done. My generation in general has less appreciation for hard work I think, though someone like John Greenwald may be a curious exception.
For another thing, the youth are less interested in discovering the nature of the saucers. As others have pointed out, they have no interest in the illustrious back story of Los Angeles battles, Life magazine cover stories (I want that Marilyn issue in large poster format framed, anyone???), Betty Hill, Church Committee, Gulf Breeze, whatever.
For a nation that watched Geraldo episodes with our mothers about Satanic Ritual Abuse when we were single-digit ages, and weaned on the modern fantastical ET images with great movies like ET and CEIII and Independence Day (see below), our perception of reality is so out of whack and predetermined by pop culture that truth/disclosure/whatever is nill in our lives. My peers aren't fighting for the same things because our fates are a little late dawning on us, I THINK.
Anyway, I don't see the point in complaining about the youth. There will always be important work done throughout all the generations, some people are driven and others are not. Some people work hard but need to be told what to do, and lacking that they can fail. Part of the blame needs to be placed on the previous generation that ostensibly should've been imparting values upon us.
On September 11, 2001, we all got the day off after it happened. Out of idle behavior, a friend and i went to the local mega-mall. In Best Buy, this actually occured: I was standing watching the news on their big-screen TVs on display. The news was not set to every TV their, obviously. Just one big TV with CNN or something showing video footage of the towers collapsing. On an adjacent TV, movie trailers were playing. Will Smith's debut on the alien-propaganda scene was shown as buildings were being blown to bits in Independence Day. Right next to the twin towers collapsing. It was so surreal and strange I just started laughing, which earned me a severe look of scorn from an older woman standing near me and also watching. She didn't confront me, nor I her certainly, but come on. Innocent people die like that in wars every single day all year long. I think it's all just special effects spectacles to us at this point. Death is all around us, in video games, movies, music. Natural as the sun in the sky. It won't matter until it's personal.
When CNN starts showing the first alien spacecraft landing, the people will just eat it up in the same way. Another Alien Autopsy. Maybe they'll even forget about it a week later when their favorite coked-out popstar gets arrested again. I don't know, but the lack of available information, as mentioned earlier, along with an abundance of controlled information being disseminated yields poor results for critically thinking young minds.
I'm sure there will be hope, though. Don't ask me why.