Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[Eric the Green]

(05-22-2019, 04:28 PM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-21-2019, 11:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-08-2019, 12:05 PM)michael_k Wrote:

(05-04-2019, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The 1997-2003 cohorts are NOW acting civically about guns, about climate change, and about inequality, college debt and low wages. Unlike you, they know these issues are civic and are on the ballot for a vote. They are just coming into their own as a civic generation, and we haven't seen anything yet from millennials, born from 1982 to 2003.

I think it's unfair to imply that earlier Millennials (1982-1996) are 'uncivic'. I mean there was the whole LGBT rights movement that sprang up as that group came of age, which had a huge impact on how differing sexualities and identities are perceived. The whole same-sex marriage movement would likely not have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for the earlier-wave Millennials, despite the Boomers and Gen Xers who later agreed that a law change was necessary to enfranchise a minority.

One of the reasons also why we see the later Millennials/Gen Zers making effective protest is due to the ideological groundwork laid out by the first wave. There are politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989) and Sarah Hanson-Young (b. 1981) who are markedly more progressive than many others elected in their field, but both these women have had to endure being the devil of the conservative media and all the smears associated with it. Being a 1991 born Australian myself, if you are caught supporting Hanson-Young too loudly within a moderate-conservative audience of older people you are likely to be called an idiot and told to 'f*** off'. As a cohort of downtrodden, frustrated and quietly-progressive adults are formed, you have a lot higher chance of vocal youth movements not being shrugged off before they can gain traction - they'll have backing from some of the older crowd as well.

I think one of the frustrations that arose with the older wave of Millennials is that we were expected to be 'heroes' by the older generation, but within a framework we did not consent to, as if everyone was trying to write what we'd stand for, for us. When we stepped too far outside of those margins, there was hostility and closed communication and we couldn't reach anyone no matter how much we cared or thought about things, which led to many 'giving up'. It makes me wonder if maybe the older wave of Millennials should be considered a Nomad-Hero hybrid generation, in that we have Civic ideals, but we tend to get be treated as Reactives when we attempt to express them.

I think I answered before that I don't think earlier millennials are uncivic. They have been typical of civics in many ways. They are late, unfortunately, in learning to participate in the civic process. But they are learning. The cynicism of recent years made it harder for our new civics to go against the grain, and not look upon our civic process as an inherent failure.

Protests are always resisted. If millennials continue to protest and take civic action to make a difference in society, despite the opposition of those who naturally don't want to listen and don't want to change, then that is heroic and typical of a civic generation. Lots of protests in the 1930s and 1850s were resisted by those upholding the status quo. It doesn't mean there's any hybrid developing. Everything is on schedule, and if the current time seems to stalemated and not changing like a 4T should seem, that's because it's a repeat of the 1850s, which really was part of the civil war 4T. It's a tougher job to change the society from within, than to face an external enemy from without.

We haven't seen anything yet from millennials. I hope it's clear that what I mean is that I predict a lot more activism from them in the next decade or more.

You did answer before, but this post was more concise. I think what people are forgetting also is that we are still too early in the game to be determining the legacy of Millennials. There are still a lot of frustrations and ideas on what the latest Civic Generation should be, but this is perhaps normal in a 4th Turning where knowledge of Generational Turnings exists and everyone is divided on what they think is the right course of action, resulting in a situation where the Civics may be considered heroes or failures in a myriad of ways before accurate conclusions can be reached.

As for the Millennial/Gen Z split, I feel like time will tell how significant the differences are between the two cohorts. I sort of see a correlation there with the early 'Interbellum' G.I.s being a bit different than the later ones, early G.I.s knew a world before the devastation of World War I and had reached adulthood before the Wall Street crash occurred, while the later wave grew up in a post-WWI world and saw the Great Depression begin during their teen/childhood years. A similar difference exists between Gen Y & Z, Generation Y grew up in a pre-9/11 world and endured the Financial Crisis in early adulthood, Generation Z entered childhood post-9/11 and saw the Financial Crisis hit before coming of age. Perhaps both cohorts will end up having a Civic role, but it will perhaps be expressed in different ways.

I agree. But as I remarked when posters here started to refer to late Xers as "Generation Y", I prefer a letter be assigned to a whole generation. Gen Z should refer to the new adaptives, who have been born since 2003-04.

Quote:Just to put into perspective the timing of events, as I understand, a Saeculum lasts approximately 84 years, with each Generation lasting ~21 years, with specific events and happenings making each Generation and Saeculum potentially longer or shorter to adhere to the timeline. Using this as a guide, we can look at the defining point of the G.I. Generation, which was of course, World War II (1939-1945, middle year being 1942), and then pull the timeline forward 21 years at a time, where we have the 'defining' year for the Silents (1963 Kennedy assassination), likewise for the Boomers (1984 Reagan landslide re-election), Gen Xers (Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 era, centered on 2005) and for the Millennials, this pinnacle year would be 2026, which has not yet occurred. True, some Generations come of age early, like the Lost Generation, whose defining year was not really 1921, but instead 1914, which would place 2019 (!) as the peak Millennial year if we do the 21-year math. This being said though, the Roaring Twenties was also a defining era for the Lost, and for those whose defining eras came earlier, like the 60s/70s for Boomers and 80s/90s for Gen X, in my mind these eras didn't cement the politics of those Generations as much as it defined the youth culture and the idealism - and idealism is not the be-all and end-all of politics. If we look at the Millennial equivalent of these formative cultural eras, we get the 2000s and the 2010s, which fits right in with Millennials still being politically idealistic at this point in time.

Studies show that although defining events may come later, it is in youth, from 14 to 25 years or so, in which political attitudes are set, but of course this varies for different birth cohorts during a generation. Historians consider 1968 as the year that shaped the boomers, but that refers mostly to "the sixties generation," which consists of late silents through core boomers, and not to the late or "Jones" Boomers. I sure would disagree with saying that the Reagan landslide defined the Boomer generation. They were the least likely generation to vote for him, and Reaganomics is not a boomer ideology. These events you mentioned came at the ends of turnings, and 2026 is also scheduled to be near the end of this 4T. I don't know how that fact fits into your analysis of defining years.

Quote:If we consider Millennials and Boomers to have a roughly 42-year gap, and Millennials as G.I. to have an 84-year gap, then the Obama Presidency (2008, 2012 elections) of the Millennials' timeline matches Coolidge's re-election (1924) and Hoover's election (1928) in the G.I. timeline, and I don't think the G.I. were that significant until F.D. Roosevelt's win in 1932, so if we are to give the Millennials credit for Obama's victory and not Gen X, then perhaps Millennials were politically active from an earlier stage. If we compare the Boomers' timeline to Millennials, we get 1966 lining up with 2008, which looks alright for the Boomers in a progressive sense as that was when the Cultural Awakening was picking up, but then we look at the politics and see Nixon being elected in 1968 AND 1972, which makes Boomers look politically conservative/apathetic in contrast with Millennials, at that time.

Wind the timelines forward to the Trump election and following mid-terms (2016, 2018) in the Millennial timeline and match them up to G.I.s and Boomers, and you get G.I.s witnessing the FDR election (1932) instead of Trump's and Boomers seeing the election of Carter (1976) 42 years before the 2018 mid-terms and their record turnout occur. One could argue here that the FDR/Trump difference is due to the G.I.s being part of an 'Apollonian' Saeculum, where society is more unified against outsiders, and the Millennials being in a 'Dionysian' Saeculum, where the society is at war with itself. There are interesting differences between the Civics here, with many Millennials opposing Trump and what I've heard about FDR being a hero to the G.I.s, but there are similarities too, with both Trump and FDR being touted as examples of strong leaders.

As for the comparison between Millennials and Boomers, maybe you could stretch and give some of the eldest Boomers credit for L.B. Johnson's election (1964) and perhaps compare that to Obama's in 2008 (a 44-year difference), but it seems that it took until Carter for many Boomers to take part in the election of a progressive candidate, and then you had Ronald Reagan.

All in all, I don't think Millennials are particularly behind or an outlier when you look at their predecessors.

I agree. It was the McGovern campaign where Boomers made their greatest mark, and he lost big. So Millennials did better to help get Obama elected. Overall the McGovern campaign and the anti-war movement powered by boomers eventually helped end the war and bring environmental and consumer reforms in the 70s. I expect millennials could power many reform movements in the next decade or two, and in the 2040s some liberal elders could match the achievements of Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s in the early 2T.

It was not voting in midterms in which millennials seriously dropped the ball, as Obama pointed out. Only 1 in 5 young people voted in 2014. It showed some lack of education about how our civic affairs work. That greatly restricted what Obama could accomplish. They did better in 2018; I hope they are learning. The Parkland kids like David Hogg really stressed how important it was for their fellow millennials to vote in 2018.