12-13-2020, 11:46 AM
I am going to define the divide between the Millennial and Homeland generation between those who have gone through childhood without disruptions of the usual rites of passage (K-12 attendance, First Communions, bar mitzvahs, Little League baseball, Pop Warner football, Scouting, 4-H, quinceaneras, first driver's licenses, school plays and band or orchestra concerts, high-school proms, high-school graduations) not ordinarily put off without doing harm or creating a travesty (Homeland) and going through the ones appropriate for one's culture (OK, if you are a Jewish kid in Manhattan you get a bar mitzvah and may never drive a car, but if you are a Swedish-American farm kid in rural Minnesota you get no bar mitzvah but you do learn to drive a car so that you can get a license at 16). There will be many kids who must repeat a year of schooling due to the disruption that COVID-19 did to their schooling.
The next Idealist generation will probably be the one that has no experience with the definitive Crisis event of this Crisis Era, COVID-19.
It is arguable that every year of childhood is critical in personal development, and Homeland kids will find much of their life stunted. The only thing that they can have as a common experience that won't be disrupted will be voting.
College can be put off for a year, and some would-be college freshman who takes advantage of the opportunity to do well-paid labor in a genuine factory might get the special bonus of saving some money for education instead of going into debt. But that is how things might be for Millennial -- but not Homeland kids.
The next Idealist generation will probably be the one that has no experience with the definitive Crisis event of this Crisis Era, COVID-19.
It is arguable that every year of childhood is critical in personal development, and Homeland kids will find much of their life stunted. The only thing that they can have as a common experience that won't be disrupted will be voting.
College can be put off for a year, and some would-be college freshman who takes advantage of the opportunity to do well-paid labor in a genuine factory might get the special bonus of saving some money for education instead of going into debt. But that is how things might be for Millennial -- but not Homeland kids.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.