Recent reports state that a large number of young people find themselves unable to cope with everyday life.  What’s going wrong?

Karl Morey responds…

“What is going wrong? What can be done to tackle the problem?

Day to day life is not compatible with human nature. Most of us are sedentary the majority of the time, not sleeping enough, not eating properly and our main goal is to simply make it through to friday. I was in Budapest a few years ago and walked past a circus. There were these two elephants in a concrete yard just rocking from left to right, facing the wall. It was really sad. I feel like thats where we are.

There is an argument for sucking it up and dealing with it, but for how long? Until you’re 65? Seriously? No. I remember when we used to joke in the 90′s about people with A levels working in petrol stations, now we have people with degrees in 10k of debt that will miss out on the job the next man is going for because he doesn’t have a degree and they can pay him less, even though he’ll be shit at it.

I think if you ARE able to cope with regular day to day life, there is something wrong with you.

I have run various music projects in the past for young people. They would come in to the studio, hood up, sit there not participating for weeks unless it was to record some murderous bars about another postcode. After a while they would lighten up, the hood would come down and they would get involved. After a while, I would get concerned if some of them didn’t turn up. One guy disappeared and it turned out he went down for four years for a robbery, another kid didn’t come in one day – he had hanged himself the night before. I wasn’t a youth worker but I was working along side them on the front line. A ton of respect to the good ones. The council that funded the project made it worse though. They micro managed the project into the ground. All they wanted were what seemed like hundreds of forms filled out and a song with a particular subject matter they could use at a presentation that suited their agenda at that time. A year later the studio was closed. I feel bad for the people at these youth services and council departments that are there to help and make a difference.  It must be so depressing to see their hard work and good intentions dashed because a genuine solution was never the goal. The country is littered with lockups, village halls and youth centres full of virtually new music gear gathering dust because it has served its cooperate purpose.

To answer the question what’s going wrong? I think day to day life (society) keeps us all separate. Old young, man woman, black white, this faith, that faith, this postcode, that postcode. This way we are all against each other rather than seeing the big picture. It keeps us weak as a people. It’s the old ‘divide and conquer’ thing.

What can be done to tackle the problem? I’m not gonna start hugging trees or anything but we need to break these barriers on a day to day level, just as a starting point. I realise there are much bigger problems afoot but it’s unlikely we’ll be able to tackle them while we are all against one another.

There are other good people out there too, but they are hiding just like you. Be brave, let them know you’re out there. Then maybe we can all stop feeling so isolated in a world full of people. Just my 2 penneth.”