Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[pbrower2a]

(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.

The Millennial Generation has yet to become war heroes in large numbers of even face a war in which such is likely. But that may not define a Civic generation. A Civic generation reverses the atomization, the inequality, the corruption, the cynicism, the anti-intellectualism, and the mindless hedonism that prior generations let happen. Note well that the Millennial Generation is now the most liberal generation on the scene in its politics. Not until it starts seeing coming-of-age rebellion (which will probably not happen until about 2040) will it start to trend conservative as 'their' world comes under challenge. A Civic Generation is willing to do physical toil, if necessary, to create the material basis of prosperity instead of seeking over-paid white-collar work.

The Millennial struggle may focus on a President who seems the diametric opposite of their agenda as one who believes in every man for himself in a race to the bottom, who exudes contempt for both thinkers and toilers, and who thinks of extravagance as evidence of success instead of as its dissipation, and who seeks to impose in a pay-to-pay system in which people must compete to be exploited.

Millennials are also the least racist generation and the one least prone to religious bigotry. Every generation reacts against what it sees contemptible in public life as it is young, and the Millennial Generation exemplifies such. Trump may have co-opted the Silent, silenced broken the Boomers who recognize everything wrong with him, and broken Generation X, but he has done none of that to the Millennial Generation.

Quote: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.

Anyone who expects the Millennial Generation to be weak, complacent, corrupt, and inegalitarian as the result of the culture in which they reach maturity will be disappointed. They are showing how they vote in elections, and their voters are much more liberal than any other adults by age group. The oldest are just entering the age in which some of the earliest-bloomers start winning high offices. They will be replacing not only the people that we can most obviously expect to leave the political scene soon (late-wave Silent and early-wave Boomers) but also those of Generation X who fail to get the message. Maybe for now the Millennial Generation would tolerate a Silent who suggests the GI generation, a Boomer who isn't so narcissistic and ruthless, or a mature X who is cautious and pragmatic even in his moral choices (look at the overlay of the electoral maps involving Eisenhower and Obama, pols of opposite parties but similar in integrity and temperament).

The reptilian soul that has flourished in American politics has just about played itself. People of all ages want politics worthy of faith.

Quote: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 see it. Many expected the Millennial generation to accept an America better serving institutional power and entrenched wealth in an economy demanding cheap labor but imposing monopolized prices. To be sure, the highest profits come not from meeting needs and shortages but instead from creating and exploiting shortages. That will fail as Millennial adults who have less stake in the vileness of American life that already exists than people who might get something out of it in return for acquiescence. But note well that X has its role to play in creating a safer world, or at least one less depraved. One late-4T trend to watch is the tendency to an omnibus culture. Sure, the technology of our time allows people to live in their own virtual worlds; a nuclear family with two adults and two kids might have the television or the radio on four different sources of entertainment. I expect mass entertainment to become civic ritual, and one way to achieve that is to provide entertainment that offends no sensibilities but operates at multiple levels of esthetic appeal. Think of Big Band music -- witty enough for smart people but accessible to children, and with nothing to scare off what then were the elderly who often had prudish values. Think also of the movie theater -- one got some newsreels (everyone watched the same newsreels), some cartoons, and a feature. Shared experiences will be precious, and even necessary for creating solidarity across lines of age, religion, region, and ethnicity.


Note well that late-wave Lost musicians sanitized their music if they wanted to keep performing or getting commissions. Note also that late-wave Lost cleaned up their act and fit the new civic strictures. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello figured out the wisdom of not saying filthy words for a cheap joke. The Marx brothers? Likewise.  Mae West learned to tease the limits only to retreat -- and that somehow worked. People marching off to the beat of a different drum? There are now too many drummers for that.