Youth

People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. If there is one - which I take leave to doubt - then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to the fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings - people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.

When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain - that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.

I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary clichés about respect for elders - as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.

-- Fielden Hughes, Out of the Air

Vocabulary (Click to expand)

rub:

1. move your hand or fingers backwards and forwards over it while pressing firmly;
2. rub something into/from a surface: spread it over the surface or remove it from the surface using your hand or something such as a cloth;
3. (FORMAL) "there's the rub" / "the rub is": you are mentioning a difficulty that makes something hard or impossible to achieve.

dreary: dull and depressing.

commitment:

1. a strong belief in an idea or system;
2. something which regularly takes up some of your time because of an agreement or responsibilities;
3. (FORMAL) make a commitment to do something -> you promise that you will do it.

conceited: disapproval of the fact that somebody is far too proud of their abilities or achievements.

presumptuous: disapprove of someone because they are doing something that they have no right or authority to do.

fatuous: (FORMAL) extremely silly, showing a lack of intelligence or thought.

cliché: an idea or phrase which has been used so much that it is no longer interesting or effective or no longer has much meaning.

The sporting spirit

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe - at any rate for short periods - that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.

-- George Orwell, The sporting spirit

Vocabulary

orgy: a party in which people behave in a very uncontrolled way, especially one involving sexual activity.

patriotism: love for your country and loyalty towards it.

prestige: has prestige -> admired and respected because of the position they hold or the things they have achieved.

savage: 1. extremely cruel, violent, and uncontrolled; 2. If you refer to people as savages, you dislike them because you think that they do not have an advanced society and are violent.

mimic: imitate, usually in a way that is meant to be amusing or entertaining.

fury: violent or very strong anger.

How to grow old

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it - so at least it seems to me - is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

-- Bertrand Russell, How to grow old from Portraits From Memory And Other Essays

Vocabulary

abject: to emphasize that a situation or quality is extremely bad.

ignoble: (FORMAL) it is bad and something to be ashamed of.

ego: the sense of their own worth.

recede: moves away / becomes weaker, smaller, or less intense.

boulder: a large rounded rock.

weariness: If you are weary, you are very tired. If you are weary of something / you weary of something / it wearies you, you become tired of it and lose your enthusiasm for it.

The Modern City

In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and without giving any consideration to the effects produced by the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, trucks, and trolleys, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants.

-- Alexis Carrel, Man, the Unknown

Vocabulary

banal: do not like it because you think that it is so ordinary that it is not at all effective or interesting.

dwelling: (FORMAL) a place where someone lives.

monstrous:

1. a situation or event: extremely shocking or unfair.
2. an unpleasant thing: extremely large in size or extent. (emphasis)
3. extremely frightening because it appears unnatural or ugly.

fume: unpleasant and often unhealthy smoke and gases that are produced by fires or by things such as chemicals, fuel, or cooking. /
Fume over/at/about something -> express annoyance and anger about it.

throng: (LITERARY) people throng somewhere -> go there in great numbers. A throng is a large crowd of people.

ceaselessly: (FORMAL) something, often something unpleasant, is ceaseless -> it continues for a long time without stopping or changing.

Regional notes

(British) The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of petrol fumes and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, lorries and buses, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds.