Where Are We Headed To ?

We, the youth, are the children of progress. With the fruits of modernity at our disposal we are abled in many ways. The entire concept of childhood has changed, and so has the way in which we grow up. We see more screens than faces; we always want to be over connected not in reality but through virtual mediums. Due to countless similar reasons it wouldn't be wrong to say that we, the children of progress are paralyzed by technology.

Today’s childhood does not involve adventures in the pool or the parks. There aren't stories of princesses, dwarfs and other innocent mysticism that once helped the budding imaginations to flower. The playfulness of children is limited by screens that hypnotize them. Children are not surrounded by familiar faces for each of the family members are out in the world chasing their dreams of fancy careers. The human element in raising children is absent and thus we’re raising children who’re developing a dependence on the so called technological aids, some things that eventually cage their lives in a virtual utopia.

The children who've graduated to become bread earners are constantly being influenced by a western lifestyle, an outcome of a booming economy that has led to migrations into the big cities where these newly arrived adults are experiencing and relishing their “big city lives”. Thus, there is a generation of young people who thrive on western sitcoms, drinking binges and an unawareness of the future. A generation that does not worry about the future and even neglects the worries of today, a generation that has left families behind and has found a sense of individuality, an individuality that lacks the virtue of responsibility.

Life is treated as a party, and thus there’s carelessness in this modern life. The paradox is that even after being so well informed about everything under the sun, we live without the basic ethics that our fore-fathers had. It’s this careless playfulness that is now progressing into marital relations and divorce is not much of a taboo for the Indians of today. Such changes are bound to happen. Cultural advocates will scorn at such a new way life but the fact is that material progress comes at the cost of cultural degradation. Progress woes people, affects their lifestyles and finally affects their beliefs, making cultural norms look like forgotten facts of a certain period back in time.

The youth today makes its own choices, its own rules and is on its way in creating a pseudo-culture, a culture that will be followed by generations to come. An eventual outcome will be a culture that is closely related to the western way of life. The Indian youth is on the road of progress. It has come really far but it is slowly forgetting where it once belonged.

The sun which once rose in the east,

Will eventually set in the west...

When the course of life,

Changes from east to west...