Oh, Youth! A Prodigal Son you have been. (In celebration of UN International Youth Day, August 12, 2023):

 UN International Youth Day (August 12, 2023):

Theme - "Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World."

Today, the world is embarking on a green transition. The shift towards an environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly world is critical not only for responding to the global climate crisis but also for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A successful transition towards a greener world will depend on the development of green skills in the population. Green skills are “knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society”. - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

Oh, Youth! A Prodigal Son you have been!

(Original title: Doom of the Youth)

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog (avrotor.blogspot.com)

Also open Naturalism -the Eighth Sense

Young Ka Hsaw Wa from Burma receives 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Pursuing  Non-Violent Defense of Human Rights and the Environment, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Metro Manila. Below, youth in gay and abandon, a stark contrast.

Haste is waste, you hurry things up in bundles of abandon and pleasure,
Instant in many ways, coffee to relationship, condominium, cars, food -
All for the flesh and Freud, little of Jung, nil of Gandhi, and so forgotten
The Great Teacher. Rage, rage! Is it a revival at the Waterfront
Where life is aimless, a rebel without cause? Is it cause without a rebel?

Oh, youth of pride with little treasure, like pyramid on the sands of time
Where the sea is advancing, drought at the other end - is this your pedestal?
Even at the top of your juvenile empire and endless view of the horizon
There's little to see with pride in your heart, cold, wooden and numb;
Myopic is your gaze, while the Keller's vision sleeps - the inner eye.

By the books you read, Internet you spend the best hours of your day
And in night's company with Bacchus and Venus in a raucous  crowd
You are trapped, trapped in the Good Life, while the world wobbles
In Global Warming, in neo-Nostradamus' prophesy - gentle is disaster
When the youth is Rip Van Winkle snoring with the roars of the world.

And the generations, three under a roof no more, they are now apart 
Here and across the seas, atop high rise, severed by the glitter  of gold,
And the bonds of promise breaking up from obligation to liberation,
Orphaned is the fruit of love, Narcissus by his side, proud, untamed.
Oh, youth abandoned, seeking light from the pool, reflecting  but your own.

And in your study the world is different, idea and truth reign  supreme,
Outside its walls - a noosphere, a jungle of fast lanes and empty palms,
Music and noise into pop and rock, fashion of beads and sack, lights neon
In the night subduing the stars, the sky falling with acid rain and smog.
Rage, rage! But the youth can't hear, he is muffled, wired and  mired.

And your culture a mélange like blood in your veins, mixed, transient,
Homogenized all in the name of globalization and post-modernism
No longer shared by the Bushmen, the Goths, the other races of old;
Natural gene pools dissolving. Oh, youth you don't heed the danger
If culture dictates, no longer genes adapting to a changing world.

Oh youth, the gate is open, the hearth is waiting, your father by its side,
A Prodigal Son you have been, searching for the Golden Fleece for nought,
Hear, hear, the advice of the sage, while the bomb of capitalism ticks,
Silence is deep in danger, listen to it, don't follow Icarus, or the gods -
They have Mount Olympus. You have none, you are only human. ~

Half of the people on our planet are 30 or younger, and this is expected to reach 57% by the end of 2030. Survey shows that 67% of people believe in a better future, with 15 to 17 year-olds being the most optimistic about this. Internet