Westlake Word

“The people of this generation can have everything handed to them.” Surely, anyone from ages two to twenty-five has heard the tumultuous phrase in some variation or another. People might work hard, but they will never work as hard as the people a century ago. This is so because we are given too many resources; instead of exploring life ourselves, we Google incessantly.

 

This is not a problem that stemmed from a modern day event. Rather, Americans have always had a materialistic mindset. People could start with nothing and end up a millionaire mogul, which was the ideal for all the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” in other words the destitute population of America. They learned to put ambition first, to take things instead of asking for them, to provide for their families or die trying. That double-dealing truth was the American Dream.

 

Years later, this mentality has been passed down by generation. But in the age of Amazon and Netflix, aspiration turns into greed. People buy the things they want because they can: and what is stopping them? At any given moment, you could order something and it would be on your doorstep on the same day.

 

Machines make everything for us. The Internet can give us any answers we are looking for. Our purpose has been outlived by inanimate programming, so we lose our sense of self and buy things to fill that void. Too dark for a reality check? Maybe, but we need to hear it.

 

Personally, my father emigrated to America from Nepal (a small country in Asia) when he was seventeen years old. Since he came from an underdeveloped country, he strived to provide for himself and live comfortably. He sat down for an interview, and stated, “Coming from Nepal, I had one pair of jeans. Very quickly, when I came to America, I had money, and I could go to Walmart and buy cheap jeans that I could afford. I had - unthinkable - ten pairs of jeans...that was, in Nepal, the necessity and affording capacity that we couldn’t afford and one or two pants were enough. You would wash it, you would dry it, and wear it again. Here [I had] the mentality that I deserved it.”