Pick up the knife. In posters, speeches, research, headlines, campaigns; its slash marks a vein of problems that dis-ease our humanity. This is how we cut young people up and down: as feckless, untalented, without grit, thuggish, disadvantaged, homeless, soft outcomes, at risk – Neets, Not Etonian or Easy Enough To Save, undeservingly poor. These are the people we stab with our images. Just so many charity cases to hide capitalism’s collateral damage in. Labelled like oversized luggage to carry the body bags of our market economy's age into another poster asking for 40p to help kill again and again.
Is it the self-harm of teenagers that cuts so deep today, or
the social harm perpetuated by adults to feed their pain? Our policies, our irresponsibilities,
our ignorance of what it takes to inspire and engage a generation, boomerangs
through history. Specialists in failure, we are qualified to strip hope away to
replace it with blame. And so young people become our scars lined up in
prisons, gangs, A&E, welfare queues, systems of neglect, locked in
disinvested rooms, whatever stereotype we can house them in - except a place to
become themselves.
We must scar our youth so they can express our failure to
lead. We must disadvantage them to give us an excuse for failed dreams. They
must carry the reason we can not harness the resources of our planet. For we are the real harmers - the ‘social
harmers of the self’ – addicted to cutting, punishing, manipulating, hurting
the wellbeing of those who will not behave as we wish they would, to suffer in
silent passivity to the conceit of adulthood.
Our social harm has turned the language of support into an anthem
for doomed youth. Hear its miserly
abuse, see its squalid PR graffiti, and turn your heart away. Fresh words will
sing elsewhere.
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