When everyone has a crutch, no one is blind

I was watching a bunch of the future today and I got a bit worried. One future was an annoying, immature, loudmouth. All this at age 14. I thought to myself, "man, the world is going to eat him up and spit him out." Then I saw another piece of the future; a lazy, whining, excuse finding young person. "Wow," I thought, "in college, the student will not survive!" And on and on it went. I looked at how today's youth seems to be shaping up and I licked my lips excitedly when I thought about how the demands of "real life" will crush the immaturity and stupidity out of them.

Them I had an attack of the nice. Uncharacteristically, I started feeling all generous and whatnot and thought, "they'll all grow up and mature and turn in to perfectly reasonable and productive members of society." I even went so far as to think "we all went through that stage and we grew up and turned out just fine." Lucky for me, at that point, another bit of the future got really annoying and I was shocked back into my version of reality. I was all ready to fear the future and complain about how these punks will need to get a harsh dose of billsville and shutthehellup that adultedness has to offer. And then I realized the scarier point of view.

These miscreant youths (yes...*sigh*...I said "youths." Can we move on now?) will be judged, demanded of and contextualized by not some ideal adult who is either me or someone like me (as if...) but by those OTHER MISCREANT YOUTHS! This lout is going to be the adult administering the harsh dose of adulthood to that whiner. Neither will ever grow up. The next generation will be evaluated by the next generation! All those accommodations that we make for the kids, all the technology that they have used as crutches will become the new status quo and all the whining and weaseling which we look at with disdain will became the new way to go. As long as we lower the bar consistently, no one will ever notice how low we have sunk.