Fourteen years ago was still the twentieth century: a period of great, fast paced change and social and scientific development. It is almost hard not to think that the youth of that period had more battles to fight, greater social goals to achieve than we do. They had to struggle to give us every freedom we take for granted today, the luxury to cry for change and the power to communicate opinions, to make people listen – if we really put our minds up to it. But sometimes I think they had one thing that seems distinctly lacking in us: courage.
I think we are still living through what some have called ‘the cynical times’. To quote Jedediah Purdy “Irony has become our marker of worldliness and maturity.” That is, in a quest to seem tough and wise we mistake cynicism for strength. We don’t dare dream too big – and when we do, it is only in the dark confines of our most private thoughts, never to be spoken out loud for the fear of accusations of naivety. We don’t trust and we barely dare to hope or care openly because of the fragile ground where such a person would stand, facing the, quite possibly imminent, valleys of betrayal and disappointment. And this is where courage fails us. We fear the mockery of a skeptical generation so we hide away what we care for and ultimately fail to realise that we are our own prison wardens.
I think we are still living through what some have called ‘the cynical times’. To quote Jedediah Purdy “Irony has become our marker of worldliness and maturity.” That is, in a quest to seem tough and wise we mistake cynicism for strength. We don’t dare dream too big – and when we do, it is only in the dark confines of our most private thoughts, never to be spoken out loud for the fear of accusations of naivety. We don’t trust and we barely dare to hope or care openly because of the fragile ground where such a person would stand, facing the, quite possibly imminent, valleys of betrayal and disappointment. And this is where courage fails us. We fear the mockery of a skeptical generation so we hide away what we care for and ultimately fail to realise that we are our own prison wardens.
By Nasim Mirzajani from her response to the fifth task. Read the rest of the essay here.