Garvey

In Charles C. Mann's article "The Coming Death Shortage", he writes:

"According to Joshua Goldstein, a demographer at Princeton, adolescence will in the future evolve into a period of experimentation and education that will last from the teenage years into the mid-thirties. In a kind of wanderjahr prolonged for decades, young people will try out jobs on a temporary basis, float in and out of their parents' homes, hit the Europass-and-hostel circuit, pick up extra courses and degrees, and live with different people in different places. In the past the transition from youth to adulthood usually followed an orderly sequence: education, entry into the labor force, marriage, and parenthood. For tomorrow's thirtysomethings, suspended in what Goldstein calls "quasi-adulthood," these steps may occur in any order."

For me this appears to correspond with what Anke C. Plagnol and Richard A. Easterlin wrote in their piece "Aspirations, Attainments, and Satisfaction: Life Cycle Differences Between American Women and Men" in the Journal of Happiness Studies:

"The saddest period of the average man's life – his 20s – is also the period when he is most likely to be single."

It seems peculiar that a man's unhappiest years encompass the period of his life where he is most likely to have the freedom to travel and study and move about the world. At the same time, though, this revelation is not all that surprising. No matter what view is available outside of the room where you sleep, in spite of all the photographs and entry visas and memories one can collect through travels and moves, companionship in life seems to be a desire that is hardwired into our sense of happiness and our sense of self (and self-worth).

One could even argue that the affects of a period of profound freedom do not present themselves fully until years later, until some meaning has been derived from the blur of airports and apartments and experiences. Without a clear sense of how we are being changed by our education or wanderlust, it doesn't seem unreasonable to believe that a person in their 20s could more strongly feel the affects of loneliness than appreciate the benefit of learning a second language, of having lived or traveled abroad, and so on.

From what I have gathered from discussions with my parents, friends' parents, professors, and friends, and from articles like those of Mann's and Plagnol's and Easterlin's, is that a person is more likely to develop themselves as individuals in their twenties, and not necessarily to develop much of a "life" as it has become defined today: a 9 -5 job, a significant other, a home in the suburbs, and so on. In the face of the security a life like that offers, the freedom to travel and study can feel superfluous, empty, indulgent, without substance -- like treading water instead of choosing a path.

Plagnol and Easterlin write later in their article:

"But age alters many things, including men's money woes and lackluster love lives.

After 34, men are more likely to be married than women, and the gap only widens with age, mirroring men's growing satisfaction with family life.

Men also become more satisfied with their financial situations over time, as reflected in their increased spending power. The researchers found that men tend to covet big-ticket items that might not be within reach until later in life, such as a car or vacation home."

For most Americans, it seems that the sooner they can mirror the family they grew up in -- or attempt to create the family they never had -- the happier they will be.

What I can't seem to fully ascertain from my conversations or readings, or even from my own life, is what affect taking advantage of the freedom that is available in our 20s will have on individuals and their happiness later in life. We hear so often about the sacrifices that must be made when children enter into the equation, so I can imagine that trying to move beyond feelings of melancholy and loneliness while a twenty-something and taking risks and chances can only be beneficial, especially if a family life appears to be the hopeful existence of a person.

As Dennis Wilson croons in "Time":

"I'm the kind of guy that loves to mess around,
Know a lot of women, but they don't fill my heart with love..."

Ever since returning from Sweden, I've had some strange attraction to novels and films depicting the human experience at war.

I've rewatched Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, and attempted to finish (and this time fully appreciate) Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line on multiple occasions -- though, sadly, most of these occasions were between the hours of 3 and 4 in the morning, and I would slip into unconsciousness after a half-hour or so.

Yesterday, I picked up Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and received Joel Turnipseed's Baghdad Express in the mail, a purchase made solely on the recommendation of my roommate. What sealed the deal was when Alan said that there was a controversy focused around William Broyles, Jr., the screenwriter who adapted Tony Swofford's memoir into the largely overlooked and ignored Sam Mendes film Jarhead, over whether sections of Baghdad Express were used in the Jarhead script without permission.

At the beginning of the summer, I found myself tearing through the works of Henry Miller, and still have the last third of Tropic of Capricorn to finish, leafing back through the highlighted and annotated pages of my Sartre novels, finally taking a turn at Albert Camus' The Fall and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground while en route to Scandinavia (both novels now sit, in various stages of completion, on the top of the sizable piles of texts that have formed a monument of sorts next to my bed)... and yet from these absurdist/existentialist/stream-of-consciousness explorations of human existence in Paris, New York, Amsterdam, and [St.] Petersburg, I now find myself attracted to analyses of the horrors of war on the human mind; the affect of war, not as seen in headlines or read in the paragraphs of history books, but on the individuals whose orders were to kill until directed to do otherwise, for the safety and security of their families at home, for the "betterment of the world," for, ironically, another attempt at a peace.

Despite the fact that America is engaged in two wars in the Middle East, both of which are extensively covered by this nation's reputable newspapers, it seems as though most people's opinions of the wars are based on sheer, at times almost feral, emotion, and not on any of the materials and facts all too available on the internet. In my previous post, I linked to a story in the World Politics Review about why a "Surge-like" strategy would not work in Afghanistan... I have serious doubts that many who voice their opinions so loudly about America At War have even glanced over articles like this.

Like a woman's right to choose, capital punishment, and the rights of homosexual couples, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become ideologically divisive issues. John McCain has said that Barack Obama "would rather lose the war than the campaign." Those of us who have criticized George W. Bush's decision to go to war since the beginning have been labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American." It has also been brought to my attention by a number of my countrymen who align themselves with the Republican Party or a Conservation Ideology that, because I do not support the War in Iraq, I therefore do not (and, because of my stance, can not) support the American troops in these theaters of war... and anyone who does not support our troops, our president, and our country in this time of war is nothing short of a coward and sorry excuse for an American.

I wonder what these people would make of Alan Rogers, an exemplary American solider who also happened to be a homosexual.

The saddest fact of all is that all this chest-thumping and hollering about the Spread of Democracy to the Darkest Corners of the World overlooks something rather important: young American men and women are fighting and dying for a war that was sold to the American public packaged in lies and half-truths. This fact is no longer in dispute. Even if the Iraq War was legal and morally just (and this question of the morality of war opens a can of worms that I'm still not quite sure how to untangle), soldiers are dying, civilians too. War should never be about forcefully imprinting one's beliefs on another culture, but a frightening last resort. War should not be a divisive political issue, but something that should make us all fearful that events led us to that point... and because of this sickening aspect of war, the loss of life on all sides, no one should be called "unpatriotic" because they are against violence and death, and every informed opinion should be allowed to enter the public discussion without ridicule or theatric shows of disgust.

It's been a long time since I held any real estate on the blogosphere...

To be rather honest, I often find myself nostalgic for "The World That Was" before the advent of the internet. I miss long phone calls, receiving letters in the mail, reading the paper in the morning, watching the news in the evening, finding an answer in the pages of a book instead of on a Google search or in a Wikipedia entry... but that world is gone, and, as much as I'd hate to admit it, I abandoned it as quickly as my peers.

I'm not positive, but I don't remember feeling nearly as alone surrounded by books and records when I was 17 as I do now surrounded by the myriad avenues of the vast and varied landscape of cyberspace. A friend once told me she felt horridly alone in New York City despite being encircled by millions of people all the time, and I wonder if a similarly bitter statement could be formulated about the infinite expanses of the internet, or even the strange distance that the internet has put between us... Instead of calling one or two good friends to see if they are going out, we change our Facebook status or post a MySpace bulletin asking numerous people, not all friends, if, when, and where they are planning to be that evening.

I seem to remember people saying the internet would make our world smaller, but it seems to have done the opposite. Where once we were happy with our towns, with calling around looking for our friends, with the local bookstore, now we have hundreds of "friends," we know where they are through Twitter or their AIM away messages, and I can't seem to count how many times I've picked up a record or a novel at a local store and thought, "I saw this cheaper on Amazon."

But this is the world in which we exist, and I am as guilty as the next person -- I do not believe that a knowledge of what it is that I am doing offers me any safe haven or immunity... if anything, it makes my actions all the more reprehensible if I am to continue to chip away at the Pinnacle Achievement of the Information Age.

And it's not all downhill...

Just yesterday, I spent the morning reading about the differences between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and why the different ground conditions in Afghanistan would make a "Surge-like" strategy ill advised); how 24's Jack Bauer has influenced America's interrogation policies; that Sam Raimi has, at the very least, said there is a chance for another installment in the Evil Dead franchise at Comic-Con; and felt wonderfully relieved to have an open mind when confronted with American Conservatism.

Obviously, the fact that I have decided to have another crack at a blog should also demonstrate the peculiar blend of feelings I have for the internet. As complicated as these feelings may be, our lives have been vastly changed by the world wide web -- one could even go so far as to say much of our lives are lived here.

If this is indeed the Brave New World, I'm already a part of it, for better or worse.