Doom of the Youth: An Exhortation by Prof. Abrecio Rotor of "Living with Nature"

Young Ka Hsaw Wa from Burma receives the 2009 Ramon
Magsaysay Award for Pursuing Non-Violent Defense of
Human Rights and the Environment, Cultural Center
of the Philippines, Metro Manila.
Youth in gay abandon

Dr Abe V Rotor

Haste is waste, you hurry things up in bundles of abandon and pleasure,
Instant in many ways, coffee to relationship, condominium, cars, food -
All for the flesh and Freud, little of Jung, nil of Gandhi, and so forgotten
The Great Teacher. Rage, rage! Is it a revival at the Waterfront
Where life is aimless, a rebel without cause? Is it cause without a rebel?

Oh, youth of pride with little treasure, like pyramid on the sands of time
Where the sea is advancing, drought at the other end - is this your pedestal?
Even at the top of your juvenile empire and endless view of the horizon
There's little to see with pride in your heart, cold, wooden and numb;
Myopic is your gaze, while the Keller's vision sleeps - the inner eye.

By the books you read, Internet you spend the best hours of your day
And in night's company with Bacchus and Venus in a raucous crowd
You are trapped, trapped in the Good Life, while the world wobbles
In Global Warming, in neo-Nostradamus' prophesy - gentle is disaster
When the youth is Rip Van Winkle snoring with the roars of the world.

And the generations, three under a roof no more, they are now apart
Here and across the seas, atop high rise, severed by the glitter of gold,
And the bonds of promise breaking up from obligation to liberation,
Orphaned is the fruit of love, Narcissus by his side, proud, untamed.
Oh, youth abandoned, seeking light from the pool, reflecting but your own.

And in your study the world is different, idea and truth reign supreme,
Outside its walls- a noosphere, a jungle of fast lanes and empty palms,
Music and noise into pop and rock, fashion of beads and sack, lights neon
In the night subduing the stars, the sky falling with acid rain and smog.
Rage, rage! But the youth can't hear, he is muffled, wired and mired.

And your culture a melange like blood in your veins, mixed, transient,
Homogenized all in the name of globalization and post-modernism
No longer shared by the Bushmen, the Goths, the other races of old;
Natural gene pools dissolving. Oh, youth you don't heed the danger
If culture dictates, no longer genes adapting to a changing world.

Oh youth, the gate is open, the hearth is waiting, your father by its side,
A Prodigal Son you have been, searching for the Golden Fleece for nought,
Hear, hear, the advice of the sage, while the bomb of capitalism ticks,
Silence is deep in danger, listen to it, don't follow Icarus, or the gods -
They have Mount Olympus. You have none, you are only human.~

Extemporaneous, dedicated to my students and audience, Radyo ng Bayan. AVR