I want to be independent! How many times have we used this phrase when we were twenty years old. It does not depend on anyone, it shapes our lives. The more we know about the present generation that left its mark on our generation, that scream, a target, has disappeared. Why aren’t young people in a rush to leave their parents’ house and continue to live in their umbrellas? The result is very simple: Living with your parents is satisfying and allows you to keep the comforts you cannot afford in your own apartment. So my students find that they live better with their families than in a rented apartment: there is no internet connection there, no one to wash their clothes and prepare lunch for them. They prefer comfort rather than freedom to live.
This clear justification, on my part, hides the various shortcomings of the younger generation of the newborn generation. They have not learned to do the daily work of a house, they do not know how to manage the economy and shopping correctly. They have a lot more money than we have at their age, but their choice is clothing, an endless supply of parts and other costs that come from the desire to stay up to date on phones and other tech gadgets. They declare themselves incapable of being managed on a daily basis, without any acquired responsibility. They have a generation of parents who have bailed them out of bankruptcy, and they don’t need a loan to buy a vehicle or remodel their home; elders are responsible.
Still, the purpose of my article is the opposite. Beyond the lack of independence of young people, I am interested in the dependency approach to those of our generation. I mean resigned to not making decisions for ourselves as long as we have a handful of factors that prevent us from being free. We had a hard time living our own lives away from family. Whether we have a partner or not, we decided that we wanted to set the course of our existence with problems or obstacles that might arise. And so, despite our decision, our various dependencies on the material environment persist. Therefore, we have an important limitation on being able to describe ourselves as self-employed.
We live in a certain society, system and environment. As the sociologist pointed out Nicholas LuhmannThis system creates its own boundaries, its own structures and its own functioning, thus finding itself closed and open. It’s an operational closure, but it also becomes cognitively open. We must respect certain social norms, but we can also consider and reflect on others that offer us greater autonomy. It’s a paradox that each of us moves in the middle of our life. If we want to follow fashion, we limit the way we dress, so we pay attention to what designers or trendsetters mark. It is a fact that we are not always aware of, because sometimes it comes to us through the most unexpected channels; but we can rebel, create our own style or design our own. Can we understand this decision as a sign of independence? Or how will our haters be liberated as a sign of snobbery?
We live in a society where those who decide to do their own business, those who break the stereotypes set by others, prejudices and unnecessary valuations try to humiliate them. The independence of values and decisions becomes for some a “dangerous” tool that “breaks” the cohesion of their society. Again, man raises the rejection of diversity, autonomy, originality: this has been so throughout our history. So let’s rebel: let’s do our own thing. Take a look at the poem Joan Maragall wrote more than a hundred years ago, “La vaca cega”: all alone. Blind.” The Barcelona poet made the modernist artist’s goal clear: to clear his way and break his inertia. So, sometimes using the poet’s simile, I sometimes want to be a “blind cow” and do mine. I don’t care what they say and I feel free. Speaking of an independent !