This is my interpretation of Socrates point of view. You see, I had to do this for an English project. Our assignment: If Socrates took a time machine to this day and age, what would he be concerned about?

My whole life everything I spoke about was to reiterate the importance of speaking for yourself and to thinking for yourself. I am extremely gratified to find out that my works are still read and analyzed today, but I am horrified to see that my principles are not observed at all! How can you say each of you is an individual when you all follow the crowd more than sheep! You are all acting as if you are lemmings hopping on after another off the cliff to your doom. One of your sane peers showed me a statistic that blew my mind. It reads “98% percent of teens would die of suffocation if Abercrombie and Fitch declared it un-cool to breath.” How I don’t know who Abercrombie or Fitch is but what I want to know is what kind of mind control they have over you to assert such power!

As I have been observing Earth from eternity I have noticed that each generation has a message or goal, but then it comes to you, millenniums, and what happens? Humanity seems to have run out of styles so what do you do? You yank one from a few years back and slap a “retro” label on it. I’m sorry to say, my friends, but just reusing old ideas is not going to get you remembered in the history books. The people of the Renaissance pulled that off once by calling it ‘humanities’ but the millenniums trying to reuse the idea of reusing? I understand recycling and global preservation is an issue in this day and age, but that is just stale and unoriginal.

I’ve watched you, millenniums, and do you know what I see? Copies. Every one of you is a copy. Or clone, to use your word. If there is a popular movie with a miniature poodle in it, overnight everyone goes and buys one and the next day every girl has a white fluffy dog head peaking out of her purse.

Everything just has to be about image. If a girl reaches a certain age suddenly she needs a six foot tall footballer clamped on her hand or else everyone points fingers and accuses her of not being mature.
Now, I know I come from a time period where arranged marriages were common, but at least sometimes they were for the good of a country or fiefdom to preserve peace or to keep quarreling noble families from sticking knives in each others backs.
But now the ideal of love has been completely twisted, hacked, and contorted to just uphold a person’s image. Girls will take a boy or visa versa just because they need a date to go see the latest motion picture just so she doesn’t become an awkward seventh wheel. Again, it’s all about image.

What is today’s “erfect image” anyway? All boys fall into one of two different categories of either jocks concerned only with sports, cars, money, and their girl or wannabe teen rebels clothed in all black with a nose ring, guitar, and a garage band that they believe will support them if they can just get some publicity.
For girls it’s even worse. Everyday they beat their hair with an iron to make it perfectly straight then curl it again to get the picturesque baby-doll curls. I cannot for the life of me understand why they don’t just leave it the way it was in the first place. The idea of style has been thrown out the window to be replaced by tight fitting tee-shirts that have giant brand names embossed on them that somehow are supposed to signify status. But how a label of a nonsense word like “Aéropostale” is supposed to do that, I have yet to find out. If you know please do not hesitate to enlighten me. The whole look is completed with slatherings of make-up that completely smothers the original, probably gorgeous, natural beauty. I understand war paint being applied to intimidate enemies, but what does this make-up do? Cover up what nature deemed right to give you?

I am not, millenniums, trying to tell your generation you are with out any hope for I know you are not. But what I truly believe is that if you stopped trying so hard to blend into one multi-heart-beating organism and let your individuality show you would be remembered as more than just the time of uncertain clones. Speak for yourself, think for yourself. Question. Speculate. For that is where true wisdom lies.