it's absurd, really

Here's the thing (as my husband would say). I'm back to school. I teach freshmen. I'm feeling old. I don't understand 18 year-olds. On Tuesday I watched a student spend 45 minutes of lecture tending to her mascara. She used three different brushes! I didn't know that this procedure required three different brushes! On Thursday she was either text messaging, or actually placing phone calls in class. I want to smack the shit out of her. This is a great big world with great big problems. How am I to discuss this with them when they are so self-absorbed as not to notice anything beyond the way their faces look?
What is funny to me? The ways in which globalization can be absurd, as in the case of this restaurant in Jordan. What is unfunny? The ways in which globalization becomes colonialism, the ways in which colonialism becomes violence, and the awful ways in which that is done in the name of my liberty. I think we could all spend more time talking about this. I've studied prehistory long enough to know that in many ways we have not changed much over the last million years. 6000 years ago boys still longed to demonstrate their desire to hump girls. They went so far as to spend time pecking the images of large-hipped women in stone way out in the desert. I find it exciting that we have so much in common with each other fundamentally. Why are we focused on invented or perceived differences? Why are freshmen more interested in their cars and phones? What have we done to them? They are reflecting the ways in which they have been socialized. I don't blame them entirely. But dang! They absorbed these values from someone.