Look at the buildings that the ancient world created, the monuments and achievements without electricity or computers. Where getting in touch with someone a hundred miles away may have taken up to a week or more even. Yet St.Peters Basilica was built, the Sistine Chapel and the Notre Dame Cathedral were all built. A lot of our biggest monuments and accomplishments are remnants of the ancient world. How many of these projects have been bettered in recent times? with all our advancements in technology and communications. Could we plausibly build an equivalent of the statue of liberty and transport it across the Atlantic ocean. Yes we could but what would be the point it was already done 100+ years ago.

To address the second sweeping statement made earlier about we are not as far as we should be. This is something that I believe wholeheartedly. The Greeks were on the verge of discovering calculus if they could resolve their philosophical problems but they couldn’t before their civilisation crumbled sadly. But then advances were made things seemed to be going fairly well, the renaissance happened and their was an explosion of creativity and new ideas. Sadly religion and the church had to get involved.

Like a corned beast they refused to accept any new ideas no matter what evidence was presented to them. They persecuted and discredited curious and creative individuals who knows what has been lost to the sands of time now? How much of a set back was the dark ages and inquisitions to mankind’s development. For this among some other reasons is why I have no love or faith in religions. As Dan LeSac put it

All the good I tried to do was corrupted
when organised religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered

Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong

This current scandal is becoming less and less about the abuse that took place and more about the coverup that followed the abuse. To me this is worse than the actual abuse, purely based on the fact that so much would’ve been avoided if everything had been reported to the civil authorities. What strikes me most is the sheer arrogance of the church back then, I believe that in “Song for a Raggy Boy” this is shown best where, at the end the Bishop shows up and simply says it’s sorted. The probable involvement Cardinal Brady in the cover up and oaths of silence with two of Brendan Smiths victims is, actually I don’t have a word to describe the how deplorable that was. Words such as deplorable, shameful, inexcusable, heinous and despicable seem to mundane to even scratch the surface of the disgust that the nation as a whole feels about what has recently come to light.

For decades Irish people lived in fear of the church and the damage that was done in those decades is irreparable, From the magadalene laundries to the child abuse and the fear that the clergy could wield. Without challenge or question priests could destroy families and exile people from their communities. Despite all this the church still has their devout fanatics who insist that the church can do no wrong. The letter from the pope is apparently in the spirit of healing wounds and moving on. The problem is that these wounds should never have happened in the first place. For an organisation that’s core commandments are concerned with loving your fellow man and always selflessly for the greater cause of being good. They have exhibited an extreme case of selfishness that has destroyed hundreds if not thousands of lives across the world.

The catholic church seems to subscribe to the slogan of

Do as I say not as I do

To sum up in words the church may understand. You’ve lost most of the flock.

Given that the above is a general statement of the difference between the last two generations. The above will apply to different people in different degrees but some of the above applies to everyone born in those years. But then again they are very general attributes and I’m sure someone will point out that some of each applies to them. But that’s the nature of general assertions of a generations characteristics.

Anyhow apparently one of our greatest attributes is our complete rejection of the counter culture that was a major part of generation X and the 1960′s baby boomers. We don’t scorn our parents as previous generations have and surveys have shown that among generation Y college students in the US they talk to parents an average of 1.5 times a day about a variety of things instead of just a “checking up” conversation. We are also the most liberal generation ever with a large proportion being in favour of same sex marriage and LBGT rights. Despite us being a relatively liberal and progressive society, this generation has seen an increase in the number of youth organisations dedicated to the conservation of well conservative views and ideals.

In terms of technology we well rock! completely with the vast majority of us being completely techno-literate and adaptable to changes in technology user interfaces and the such. We IM, network and multi task like no generation has before thanks in large part to the explosion of the internet in the late 90′s and early 00′s. What surprises most of the older generation is out ability to multi task strangely enough. They can’t seem to comprehend how having an im conversation with 2/3 people, writing report and listening to some music is nothing out of the ordinary. Generation Y are also the most important component of the emerging web 2.0 trend. Without us and our seeming love of being connected to our friends sites like facebook, youtube and digg would never have taken off. Without this love of participation and being able to connect and share virtually everything we do with our friends almost instantly these sites would never have taken off the way they did.

One of the most interesting things I found when reading about generation Y was that we repeatedly shun big music industry manufactured artists and prefer to deal with independent bands and acts. This is one of the main reasons attributed to the indie rock breakthrough into the mainstream. Also shockingly we tend to live at home for longer than previous generations have. Also a fun fact is that we make up over 20% of the worlds population. So with most of having liberal and progressive social views and having the highest proportion of college graduates it seems like our generation could be the greatest ever. It’s possible that during our tenure of society that real change could happen. Maybe it’s already started with Barack Obama’s election in 2008 and the introduction of a bill in Ireland allowing same sex civil partnerships in 2009/2010. Things look like they are starting to change.

Anyway while browsing around one shop called “Sister Ray” (my new favourite shop) I discovered “The Honeydippers” album for £3. “The Honeydippers” that are on amazon are the a different group. “The Honeydippers” that I found in sister ray, is Jimmy Page and Robert Plant blues album from post Led Zeppelin. I heard about them at a record fair. I thought that was a pretty good find, my dad however was completely amazed by the fact that I was buying records not cd’s. I explained it him but I don’t think that he quite understood where I was coming from. (I’ll try and explain it better in a later post) I picked up two other albums one was AC DC’s “Back in Black” and the other was a limited white vinyl of Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning”

Its not the stock in these record shops that I love though its the people working there. When you go to a Virgin and HMV everything fells very generic, from the greeting to the goodbye at the till its like its leaned from a script (as it probably is).
“Good day Sir/Madam, have you had a pleasant experience? Could you find everything ok?”
Then the infamous “Thank you come again”

In America this is taken to an extreme. I saw an employee handbook from an American retail chain that had scripted conversations about how to pressure customers to buy products they didn’t need or want. I’ll try to find the link again.

In these second hand stores though everything seem more chilled out. The staff actually know what they’re talking about. They can even tell you how difficult its going to be to find the different albums. I think that its almost an older kind of service. From before big retail chains almost like the days of family run businesses. Theres an element of personal service that isn’t available in the big retail chains.

So in summation the reason I like the smaller second hand shops is because the staff are more knowledgeable, they have stock that just isn’t available in the bigger retail stores and there is an element of personal service.

But on the contrary to the above the stock tends to be a lot cheaper in the big chains, but thats just simple economics isn’t it?