Article August 26, 1967 Issue

Youth: A Problem or a Power?

MARCY BABBITT

Youth is a power in the world. The old and new nations know this. All religious denominations, institutions of learning, publishers, television and advertising executives, and manufacturers, including drug, liquor, and tobacco companies, know it. Organized crime knows it. What do the rapidly expanding hundreds of millions of young people all over the world understand about the power they wield?

Young people know a great deal about the human expression of power. This generation was raised on power: the power which penetrates outer space, which computes complicated information at lightning speeds, which probes every facet of human existence. Having broken away from outworn methods of calculation, youth has also broken away from archaic traditions, dogmas, and bigotries.

The world is at a point where increasing numbers of young people believe that because knowledge of great magnitude is in their hands power also is in their hand. And this may very well be the nucleus of the problem facing youth and facing the world. For the belief that man has power apart from God, Spirit, is as limiting to real progress as if humanity had not gone farther than the wheel in its discoveries. Youth's concepts and future uses of power will largely influence mankind's course.

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