"The Sunset Generation"

A look into the mind of a person questioning ignorance, growing up, and death. I look into what it means to live in the world as it is and what it actually means to die.

It amazes me how big you think your world is when you’re young. When I was real little, I don’t think I really felt that there was a limit to how big the world could be. What I mean is that right now I know that there’s a Russia and China, I know that the world has two poles and an equator.  Yet when I was little I thought that there wasn’t a limit to how many poles there can be or how many countries there are. If you were to ask me, I’d say learning that the earth has a size is one of the worst parts about growing up.

            I hate that I learned that there’s only two poles and one equator on our planet. Once you learn that there’s a size to the planet you can never stop learning about it. You start learning that your first kitten wasn’t sleeping the last time you saw it, it was actually dead and never coming back. You learn that there’s no such number as a billion million.  If I could forget that the world has a size, I would in a heart beat.  That way I’d never have to know that there’s a limit on everything and anything I could ever love.

            That’s the problem with being intelligent; once you know something, you can never un-know it. Once you know something the world always reminds you of it. When I was thirteen I accepted that the world had a size.  The problem was that I was wrong about the size.  As far as I knew there was no world beyond the honey suckle bushes in the backfield of my school. Anything beyond that point was a fantasy to me. Well honestly I knew that there was more beyond that point but when I was young it didn’t matter. There was never this sense of longing for things that you can’t have. When you’re older you always have that sense of longing. So often you find yourself longing to be able to be excited about a book or a movie. When you’re young you always get excited over that s**t but when you’re older you already know it’s not going to be that special. When you’re young everything has the potential to be special.

            I guess what I’m trying to say is that ignorance is bliss, it really is. Whenever you’re ignorant of harsh truth, you’re spared from this goddamned sense of impending doom that seems to follow you all the time. It doesn’t f*****g matter to you whether you’re going to go the Harvard or if you’re just going to sit at your parent’s house smoking pot for the next twenty years. That’s what’s wrong with the whole human race; knowing the truth denies any purpose. When you know that ninety percent of the people who dream of something more and who actually deserve more than their empty lives will never get to live out their dreams. Yet people who are in the right place at the right time will have the whole world spoon-fed to them. It f*****g makes me sick. When you look at the big picture and realize everyone who has anything worthwhile most likely got it because they were lucky. I know some people got their rewards from hard work but generally most people don’t get their just rewards.

            I mean if you really think about it, every politician happily rapes their people because someone pays them to. It doesn’t matter how many people die each day, just as long as someone’s making a profit then everything is ok in their eyes. It doesn’t matter to anyone with power that so many people are dying over their decisions, they’re happy as long as they can stay in power. Do you have any idea what happens when I watch the news? I’m told that some celebrity was found dead from a drug overdose, the government has come and fucked over it’s people for a buck, and that the planet is almost completely hopeless. For Christ’s sake, the whole world’s falling apart but all anyone can do is f**k each other over. No one ever sits down and tries to change things even though we need change more than anything. They just go on playing the same game. I just want to blow my goddamn brains out because of this fucked up planet, with all these immoral b******s surrounding me.

            Mankind has become nothing more than a festering pile of s**t. If you ask me we deserve to die, we’ve done nothing but destroy ever since the day we arrived here. If there is a god I hope he looks down at us. I hope he looks at the insects he created and I hope we look right back at him as we shout, “F**k you” over and over again. That’s what kind of people we are. And do you know why it’s this way, it’s because we know the size of our planet.

            Everyone who got power, at some point started to realize that there’s a size to the planet. They could only f**k so many super models before it got boring.  If you ask me that is why our world is the way that it is, it’s because after a while those with power began to get tired of having everything. There comes a point when you make more money that you can spend. So they decided to turn life into a game, it’s a dick comparison game. They spend as much money as they can to make the whole world as challenging as possible, just so see if they can get away with it. I think that everything’s spiraling out of control because they secretly want someone to challenge them but no one ever will.

            If people actually did what they’re supposed to do, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. I hate those with power just as f*****g much as I hate those without power. It may seem childish but everybody has an equal part in this whole f*****g mess. If normal people stopped giving those b******s the power then they wouldn’t be able to f**k us over. No it’s too hard to do that, why should it matter that the people they’re supporting see us as nothing more than animals? And because they think we’re animals they’ll never have a problem f*****g us and I don’t mean they want to f**k us gently, they want to rape us. All that matters to those rich sons of b*****s is if they can be the only ones to have anything. God, they’re like children. Taking things from other people just so that they can be the only ones who have anything. Just so they can be special. And us poor people don’t act any better. We let them because they promise if we just shut the f**k up then they’ll let us have our turn, funny enough we’re so stupid we believe them.

            If we start to catch on that they’re f*****g us over, they turn into the popular kid in class; the one that points at the kid who’s different and gets everyone to gang up on them. It all happens for the same reason, that mother f****r doesn’t want people to turn on him so he points them in someone else’s direction. God this place makes me sick.

            It’s sad to think that we were born into this. All I’ve ever wanted to do was just end my life; I think it’d be the only thing I’ve ever done that would have mattered. At least if I killed myself then I’d have done something by my own hand. I would have chosen not to live in this world anymore with people like this. The problem is, I don’t know if there’s anything beyond this. I guess at the heart of the matter it’s that I’m scared; I’m scared that there’ll be nothing beyond this. People say that there’s a god and that there’s an afterlife but how do we know for sure. I mean I guess there’s faith, like you have to have faith that there’s something more beyond this life but it’s hard for me. I guess I’m just useless like that.

            The problem I have with the idea of an after life and all the stuff is the confusion that comes with it. On the one hand; if there is a god and a heaven, why is there no help from them? If there’s a god above why does he let his creations suffer like this? And if there’s nothing beyond our life, what does it feel like to die? Do you just see blackness and feel nothing, how’s that possible? How can we be conscious now and dream while we’re unconscious yet there’s nothing after we die? If that’s true what the f**k does it mean to be conscious? That’s what I f*****g hate about dying; I hate living in this s**t hole yet if I die most likely I’ll just cease to be. I wont remember anything, I won’t be able to think about the things and people I love, I wont be anything. How the f**k are people ok with this, I want to believe but more than that I want it to be true. I don’t want to forget who I am and just be nothing. That’s what I am now; I’m nothing. Why isn’t there any proof of anything beyond this?

            That’s what I hate about existing; I really wish I never existed in the first place. Every time I start to love something it falls apart. Whenever I’m happy about something it just fades away and nothing I can ever do stops that. When I was little I didn’t have to think about that because I didn’t know that things have to be this way. You should be able to be happy about something and not fear it wearing away. I like books because of that, no matter what the words on the pages will never change. It’ll always be the way I remember it, until the author decides to f**k it up. Which they always do, they can never just let things stay nice; no they have to destroy it. F**k, nothing in this world is sacred; nothing will ever last.

            There is something that everyone can count on though; there is one sacred rule of life. Things can always get worst! No matter how bad things are, they can and most likely will get worse. That’s the thing religion and all that other bullshit doesn’t say, it always gets worse. Look at it like this, even if right now everyone on this planet decided to grow a heart and do something about all the s**t that’s wrong, we’d still be fucked. Our planet is destroyed so even if we found a way to stop f*****g it over, there’d still be little hope. The planet is overpopulated, so there’s never going to be enough food. Most of the world’s best animals are already extinct or so close to extinction that there’s almost no chance of survival for them. On top of that there’s almost no way to fix the world’s economy so most people are going to die poor and sick anyways. And if anyone decides to commit suicide and be spared the torment of this life and all it’s unfairness, they’ll have to take a gamble that they’ll most likely lose. Most likely there is no afterlife and even if there is, most people think that suicide is a one-way ticket to hell. So you’ll end losing no matter what.

            There’s no way to win, we’re supposed to just try to be content with making what little life we can and then just let it wash away. That’s what f*****g sucks more than anything, we know that our lives are meaningless yet we want so bad for something to mean anything that we just try to pretend we don’t know how pointless our lives really are. That’s the sick joke, at the end of it all we’re pathetic creatures trying to have something meaningful, but we never will have anything meaningful; we’ll all just fade away like chalk on the sidewalk. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or if you’re smart. It doesn’t matter if you work every day for nineteen hours a day, it still won’t matter. The bottom line is that we have to pretend until the very end or accept the futility of our lives and suffer endlessly.

Maybe not existing after we die really is a reward. I think maybe that might be better than existing and thinking about all the suffering that still exists, thinking about all the people who are forsaken like you were. It’s probably the best thing for us. Imagine being forced to watch everything unfold from you. Imagine knowing that we were the sunset generation and that everything that came from us was cast into a bleak darkness. Imagine watching everything fade to black and then there being only nothingness for all mankind. And it all came from us, the sunset generation.

Author's Note

This was my first completed work, please point out ways in which I can make it flow better and ways to cut down on things like repetition. Please and Thank you :)
-DeadWolf

Reviews

[Douglas White]

I would have to agree with the other review; this is certainly a rant, but that's fine - everyone should rant once in a while. But in a way, it was sort of directionless; there was really no particular thing that stood out on its own throughout the piece.

I would suggest pulling out the 2 or 3 things (max) that are the most important to you and focus on those, one at a time. (You can always write other rants on the various other things that bug you) Break each one down and detail all the things that really bug you, but try to do so in a way that people can relate to what you have to say. You can be as extreme as you want, but word it right and people will relate.

Remember also that people can be highly offended by swearing, and many will quit reading at the first curse word. You can always emphasize your feelings in various other ways.

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading Stephen King's "On Writing". He brings a very different viewpoint, and doesn't bore you to death with grammar lessons, as he assumes you already know it. Excellent read.

Overall, I think you have a good start here. Go through a few rewrites and see what happens - you may very well surprise the hell out of yourself.

Good luck, and keep writing!

[DeadWolf]

Thank you for that :) I'll check out "On Writing" I love Stephen King's Q&A's and the like almost as much as I like his stories. I didn't really know where to put this though, I don't think it's an accurate portrayal of my work, I think I was trying to pull of my own spin on the way J.D. Salinger wrote. It does come off as a rant but hey at least it's something :).

[RainDancer1997]

I haven't really ever thought about this but it's true. I agree it sounds like a rant. All the bad things coming off in a anger rant. It's great though:) I agree with you on some stuff and disagree on some stuff, but it's suppose to be that way. Good job:)

[DeadWolf]

Thank you so much :333

[Wolfwind]

Overall... The piece comes off as a rant. A very extreme rant that focuses on one extreme side of a slide rule. While there are places that the other ways of thinking are mentioned momentarily... they get washed away with the power of the negative rant energy. Now, if this was a position piece, more time would need to be spent of mentioning other sides of the fence as well in order to sway the readers towards which ever view point you're attempting to. Gramatically... it's fine. Personnally... do to all the cussing I as a reader wouldn't pay much attention to it, that takes away from the opinion and focusses it on the anger and frustration. If that was your goal, then it was indeed just a rant and it succeeded in conveying your extreme position.

Personally... While I see where your opinion comes from... I don't agree with many of the extreme views. Living life is about taking chances, getting knocked down and getting back up again, time and time again, until you reach your goals. Anybody who's got the will power to reach their goals, can. It's just comes down to hard work.

I appreciate your unique view of what you see in the world. Keep writing!

Aaron - Wolfwind

[DeadWolf]

Thanks for taking the time and reviewing this and for being my first review ever on here ^_^. And yeah after rereading it I agree a lot with what you said. I was hoping to write something that conveyed my frustration with a lot of things. So on that front I succeeded lol. I probably could have cut down on the swearing XD