What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation.
– Hunter S. Thompson
I’ve seen the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by mediocrity. In a world of junky street preachers and politically correct doomsayers there is little a man can do. We’re becoming one squealing mass, like hogs at a trough. Back in the beat generation people were finding their own voice and a handful of poets and artists stood out as greats amongst a dull post-war backdrop of conformity and xenophobia. Now here we are, the new silent generation, the new beat generation, the fear generation. Wars are raging and thanks to the internet and television networks that care little for the truth every manic street preacher and soap box artist can broadcast his unique voice.
Too many voices trying to find uniqueness. You stand next to the singing man; you eventually start to emulate his tune. Subconsciously. Genres grow from emulation and adaptation until one depressed youth’s voice sounds like another depressed youths voice with minor difference. One drug culture reject sounds like another drug culture reject until we’re all singing the same tune.
A generation of white noise. In the mainstream, the culture of the aged and the conformist is preached. Stephen King rehashes his first six books again and again and we keep buying them. The new york times best seller list is a cross section of the absolute boredom of the American experience. Those on the fringes are beginning to unite and in uniting become a little closer to being normal, being just like everybody else. Everyone wants to be normal, be accepted. Everyone wants to be unique, but they don’t know how so they steal from someone they find unique. We’re a generation of impersonators. A generation of White noise.
There is nothing new under the sun says the lord. Well that may be true in the 21st century. Perhaps we’re just a generation who haven’t found our voice. Maybe we’re a generation with too many copycats. The Xerox generation. A unique voice emerges and suddenly thousands leap up to copy it. We have a movement, a generation, a genre. Suddenly one man’s unique voice is just the first step in a tired old convention. Cobain, Sorkin, Palahniuk, Manson; where they tread a thousand soon followed. Imitation is the most sincere form of hatred. The cardinal sin is to be just like your hero, just like your legend. If you admire him then find your own voice and don’t take away from his legacy.
Where Burroughs went, few ever followed. He’s still unique. Where Tolkien went, everyone followed. Now he’s as much a hack as the genre he created. Innovators only last as long as they are innovative. Once the light bulb became humdrum we didn’t care about Edison or Tesla. Just old men in history class; sepia-toned, unimportant. Everything is branded and labeled. You can’t be experimental if you’re sponsored by Nike and Pepsi, and Colgate. You can’t be a unique voice if you can be classified into genre. How can people look at you like an original human being when you dress like James Dean, talk like Andy Warhol, and write like Sartre.
It’s said that the very act of observing an object changes it. I say the very act of defining an experience diminishes it. We rant and we rave about the conformity and herd mentality while we wear the sponsored shoes and drink the hip cola all the fuckable girls and boys drink, and head right for our clearly marked section in the Hot Topic. The hip culture is the most conformist group I’ve ever seen. You don’t even see this kind of herd mentality at office parties. Everyone wants to belong and everyone wants to be unique and in the end we all just end up like copycats; standing in our marked section screaming our harmonized message. Conformity is the new hip. Revolutionary is the new square. Uniqueness and identity are fading concepts in the new 21st century America. This is our brave new world; a world of categorized humans with branded and grouped tastes, ideas, and mannerisms. We’ve become caricatures of human beings. Like some extraterrestrial satire on American life. In the end, conformity is still the great creeping grey death that slowly kills the mind, it just wears brand name clothes now.
We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.
– Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
