In short, what depresses me most about my generation is that I fear we will never be able to experience life with the vitality of our counterparts in the 60s and 70s. Events like Woodstock have been commodified and marketed toward my generation; crude perversions of priceless artifacts from our country’s history.

I am depressed by stories of college life passed on to me by my parents. The mothers and fathers of my friends tell me all the grungy details of their summer roadtrips - makeshift preparations for the all-night, drunken soirées of college life. My own parents leave only vague hints, seeds for my imagination, watered with freshman keg parties.

“It was a different time,” they tell me. I unfortunately couldn’t agree more.

If Generation X is accusing us of being culture-less, conservative, passive consumerists, then I would like to formally point the finger back at them. Helicopter parents, increased law-enforcement, the middle class dream of Daly City-life. It’s all reminiscent of early post-war America, and this is where my hope lies.

I say give Generation Y some time to mature. With the end of the war in Iraq, I believe we’ll seize the opportunity to recreate American culture. We’ll be beatniks before you know it. We’ll pave the path to a new appreciation for what life can really be outside the shackles of supply and demand.

As Hunter S. Thompson said, “And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave… So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”