I fully believe in the ability of songs to demonstrate the attitudes and beliefs of a time period. The Sixties had the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love,” showing the optimism and ideals of the peace and love hippie culture. “Smells like Teen Spirit” expressed the nihilism of the post-Cold War generation.

And we have... “Rehab”?

I know that there aren’t very many people who care about the Grammys anymore, but the fact that Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” was the winner is still a little terrifying. I’m not going to say she’s a no-talent; I actually think she’s quite talented, but let’s look at the chorus of “Rehab.”

They tried to make me go to rehab

I said no, no, no.

So on the surface the only thing that bothers me is the repetitive and irritating “no, no, no.” But think about the subtext of those lyrics. To me they state, “The people that love and care about me tried to keep me from poisoning the hell out of myself, but I said no because I’m too self-absorbed and self-destructive, and anyway, if I wasn’t addicted to drugs, what would I have to bitch about?”

When I realized what this song—or, more specifically, the popularity of this song—says about my generation, and technically about me myself, I was horrified because it made perfect sense.

The Cold War ended the year I was born. I have no idea what it is like to live under a constant threat. For years, my biggest problems have been, like many of other people my age, pimples and grades. A ridiculous amount of Americans thinks of themselves as middle class. I think we may be the very first generation who actually has no external hardships to complain about.

And yet emo is a mainstream fashion trend, and depression (and with that, anti-depression medication use) is on the rise. We may not have a draft or a Soviet threat, but we’re probably the first generation that has to worry about our fellow classmates shooting us.

Everything that is plaguing our generation comes almost solely from ourselves. An argument against that statement could be terrorism, but do you really think the sorority girl hiding her hangover with a baseball cap, texting under her desk during class, is extremely concerned with a possible terrorist attack?

What’s happened is that since we’ve been little, we’ve been told we can do anything, be anything, especially if you are smart as many of the Ivy League students are. No one really pointed out that sometimes things will be hard, sometimes things won’t go our way, and sometimes we will be lonely. And since we haven’t been told or taught how to face hardship, little things are enough to bring our coddled psyches down.

And we feel betrayed, because we were expecting things to be daisies and sunshine and no one told us about winter. So we become stubborn, sitting and waiting for our reward without the annoying work that comes with it. We become whiny because the reward isn’t coming, and finally, we just become really fucking annoying.

We can’t blame George Bush or terrorists or anyone else for most of our problems. As a generation we’re wasting our talents and our opportunities, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we’re going to improve or make anything better we’re going to have to pause for a moment and look within ourselves and face our own issues.

Maybe, every once in a while, we should say “yes.”