Generation Meh

Do you remember the last time you read a novel, just for the sake of reading?

If you’re like me, it’s probably been a while.

We live in an age when knowledge is delivered in a matter of seconds through lightning-fast networks of information databases and mobile technology. We’ve become inclined to rely on our steady access to information for any inquiry, whether it’s an answer to a casual musing or the solution to some complex academic assignment.

To be frank, our ability to access this wealth of information has made us lazy. The skills of good research have almost become a lost art, as students can now find almost any relevant academic text on their subject in a matter of minutes with just a few good keywords.

Original content also seems to be on the decline. Because students have easier access to obscure scholarly works on a subject, they have an easier time lifting someone else’s ideas, passing off someone else’s hard work as their own ingenuity.

This doesn’t just apply to academia, either. An entire subculture of recycling the art and expressions of past generations has developed from our generation’s lack of creativity, which stems from the age of instant information.

Kanye West, one of our generation’s greatest musical artists, is widely known for sampling hooks, beats and lyrics from many other songs. His hit song “Champion,” from his 2007 album “Graduation,” was largely modeled after Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” which came out about 30 years earlier.

Gregg Gillis, who is more commonly referred to by his stage moniker Girl Talk, has launched an entire genre of music focused on the combination of older songs into new Frankenstein pop-dance techno party jams. While Gillis’s “music” has almost no original content, it is heralded as being some of the most creative of our generation.

The willingness of our generation to readily accept credibility of artists such as West and Gillis is demonstrative of our willingness to accept the recycling of a previous generation’s art as our own.

I am dismayed to think our generation could be remembered as the one that stole, cheated and connived its way to the top of the charts — and managed to convince itself all the way that what it was doing was legitimate and something to be proud of.

However, it is unfair to say our generation is inherently unethical. We are merely products of our environment — an environment of instant gratification and unlimited resources at our fingertips.

To combat our intellectual entropy, I’d like to make a modest proposal: Let’s start reading again.

When I was a kid, my local libraries promoted a summer reading program. It encouraged kids to pick up books and start reading, for no other reason other than to enjoy the aesthetic pleasures of reading itself.

Maybe if we just start reading and appreciating novels again, we can start fighting our intellectual slide toward laziness and stupidity. We can actually begin to start cherishing intellectualism and creativity, not just the cheap knock-offs to which we’ve become accustomed.

That is, of course, if we don’t find the CliffsNotes online first.