I walk back from the place & see my neighbour.
They are Gen Z – about 23.
We’ve Been Neighbours since he was born.
I am a young Gen X – I’m 47.
I haven’t ever really said much to the young fella,
Probably because neighbors these days avoid each other in general.
But he knows I’m his neighbor & vice versa (of course).
Anyway, so I’m walking home.
He sees me from about thirty meters away he’s walking towards me.
And so he doesn’t have to interact with another human being,
He sells a dummy & pretends he’s going to the other direction.
But I’m on to him – he’s bad at executing.
As I walk pass him, not five meters later, he veers back to his original plan and direction.
Proof he’s gone out of his way to avoid me, because it obvious that a passing nod is all too much for him.
If this is the future of our species WE have no hope.
They try to avoid all stress – even the smallest tiniest piece of it.
Thinking more deeply about it, this is surely the behaviour of an endangered animal that is inevitably soon due for extinction.
Let me illustrate the point with a wildlife analogy.
If it was a nature doco about the small endangered ‘Furry Zwapzwap’ of Gonkswania,
The narrator would say:
Sadly the small furry Zwapzwap has become so reclusive over the last century, that it has given up entirely on the stress of communication at all, & is now mute. It is now unable to make it’s former muffled warbling sound. This also means it has tragically lost it’s mating call. It no longer reproduces at all, except by accident when one furry Zwapzwap falls over onto another member of the opposite sex. The Gonwanian Zwapzwap is so now shy it only ventures out when it has to eat, and only eats the minimum so to the reduce stress of being outside to long outside its safe warm underground burrow. Sadly, with all this lack of vitality, Furry Zwapzwap numbers have fallen dramatically to the point of-no-return where even a ‘massive accidental copulation event’ will not stop their total extinction by the year 2075.
The world needs to realise that the under 35 crowd- aka the species future hopes – are the f*cking weak afraid-of-livng furry Zwapzwaps that are breeding themselves and ‘future us out’ of existence.
And p.s. I don’t really care about us aging Gen X’s – we’ve done ‘the tour of duty’ – we’re allowed to start slowly fading away. It’s the Future that matters. No one should start fading away at age sixteen, twenty three, thirty one.
I think we need a new ‘Manhatten Project’ to stop all this ‘scaredie cat’ nonsense.
I’m not saying this is the best strategy option – but perhaps the following scheme easiest way to save future extinction:
Cheap Rent,
Cheap Alcohol,
Lots of late night shitty meat-market bars re-open,
A shitty but guaranteed job for every and any dopey schmuck loser.
I call this theory by a very interesting name:
“Roll back the Wowsering, Roll on the Partying”.
And I reckon you’d win an election with it as a slogan.
If I come up with a less based, more refined way to save us all – I’ll let you know.
But I have a sneaking suspicion there is none.
Hopefully by the time I am 125, I trust someone long ago with more energy than me will have read this prose as a young man or woman, & then championed my idea in the real world of high Politics.
And then perhaps all going well, I will be reading a History book of the Twenty First Century just ended that has a chapter called:
Roll back the Wowsering, Roll on the Partying: The Disease that Was Killed with a Slogan.
But if not we’ll certainly go the way of the Romans, which is sad but probably fitting – given that we are technically the last remnant of The Roman Empire anyway.
If this latter case is the case, I’ll be the last Human on earth age 125, casually reading a dirt-salvaged History book with the chapter:
No One Rolled back the Wowsering, No One Was Partying: And Isn’t It a Pity That We’re All Now Extinct
Anton Martin Smith Writer 