Before I get into this post, I want to say that this is definitely different than our normal posts and not directly business related, but important to say none the less. While this is my opinion as a person, as a relatively young male and as a part of a generation that is genuinely worried about our economic future future, I do not mean to offend or anger anyone, just to offer my opinion on the matter.
Having watched the London riots rage on now for multiple days through news sources and through internet user media (Youtube videos, other blog posts, etc) I hope that everyone stays safe first and foremost. Whatever the cause behind the rioting, hurting or killing other people is definitely not any answer. From what I understand, these riots initially started from a report of someone getting killed by the police, but has generally devolved into something more vague and seemingly less meaningless at first glance. The latest reports are that young people are getting more involved, not because of an untimely death, but because of our frustration with our economic position and our role in it.
We keep seeing media villianize these rioters because a large group of them are just taking advantage of the situation to grab electronics and make a mess. While these people are unfortunately bringing down the meaning of the rest of the group, it is still very much there.
Young people are the majority of the rioters out on the streets and they do have a cause behind them. As a young adult I can tell you that the job market is terrible out there. Between talking to friends, and getting resumes I can clearly see our generation is really feeling the brunt of our economic situation. We are just getting out of college, and trying to start our lives and we are frequently having to battle up hill to even get a job to start making payments for our education that helped lead us into this. While I am in the US, and we have been dealing with extraordinary college costs for as long as we can remember, our generation across the pond have not. For myself, I have to deal with college costs at around $8,000 a semester. Those costs are forcing us into a job market that requires a secondary education to get a job, with incredible amounts of debt (around $100,000), and absolutely no job market to begin with.
I think we are now beginning an era that will see high school students skipping college and going into the job force immediately so they can start receiving pay raises to get up to a livable wage. You are going to start seeing kids living at home much longer than ever before. You are going to start seeing a generation that admittedly is babied already, turn into bigger babies. All of this doesn’t help any of us. Its that type of short sighted style of building and living that has partially caused these riots and have caused a generation to finally rage up and force others to look at us and our situation.
We keep getting told that we are too young to know anything, we shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and that previous generations have had it worse. We are being held back from making decisions and at the same time blamed for these screw ups. I can certainly understand our elder’s worries and their thought processes, but our frustration has been bottling up in us for years because of this exact thing. What you see in London is it all coming to a head and it won’t get better until the system starts getting fixed.
Since I am in the US, I can tell you that our recent credit downgrade is frustrating from my standpoint. Seeing 2 political parties battle over something as silly as wanting to look like the tougher half has cost our country its credit rating and potentially caused more economic strife around the world. Coming up through school, it was always fairly apparent to my friends and I, that our current political system was going to disintegrate into this, but we didn’t think it would happen so soon.
Again, I hope that the rioters that are just looting and causing damage get caught. I hope that people stay safe and that buildings stop being destroyed. We need to revolt, but not in such a childish and immature way.
This is a call to arms for my fellow designers, geeks and artists! We need to rise up, but lets do so in a civilized, organized fashion. Let us use what people think has been our downfall, technology and art, to come together and share our story with the world. Let us make noise, but let us do it in a way that gets us into debates with our elders, our peers. We shall tweet, we shall facebook…. we shall announce our displeasure with our political systems, not our political parties! So bring out your pencils, bring out your tablets, your computers, your keyboards and smartphones and lets get to work!!
