Are Millennials Cemented as Civics/Heroes Yet?

[Anthony '58]

Personally, I have my doubts.

Were G.I.s ever castigated as "snowflakes," or anything similar, at like age?

Plus their immediate juniors are acting a lot more like Idealists/Prophets than Adaptives/Artists lately - see David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the teenaged defenders of Critical Race Theory about whom I have already started a thread.

[Eric the Green]

(12-16-2021, 02:33 PM)Anthony Wrote: Personally, I have my doubts.

Were G.I.s ever castigated as "snowflakes," or anything similar, at like age?

Plus their immediate juniors are acting a lot more like Idealists/Prophets than Adaptives/Artists lately - see David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the teenaged defenders of Critical Race Theory about whom I have already started a thread.

Doubt can always be warranted. But I have seen enough evidence to show that Millennials are typical civics, even if not yet fully living up to the archetype. But then, which generation today is? None of us.

David Hogg is a Millennial by S&H standards, which is what we should go by. Greta is a cusper, civic/adaptive. They are all acting like civic millennials or cuspers. This latest group of Millennials seems to have the most civic awareness of the bunch, similar to JFK's subgroup last time around.

Millennials are typical civics. They are experts at networking, as shown by their abundant use of social media and their tendency to focus on their own age group's interests.

Civics are tech savvy. That describes Millennials. They are pro-science, and largely ignorant of mystical or religious awareness. Some of them have some interest in this though.

Millennials typically show interest in global warming and other vital civic issues that other generations gloss over. They are concerned for their future. They have a strong preference for Democrats, even though many are independents. This is all typical civic. 

But thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism/Reaganism, civics classes have been cut back or eliminated across the country, and the cynicism of Gen X and conservatism of Silents and Boomers have created an anti-politics climate in this country, also evident in the popularity of Trump, which is a tough trend for Millennials to buck. Because of this decades-long cynical and anti-education trend, Millennials have been slow to learn civic virtues like voting in midterms and understanding the role of congress and other elected officials, instead of just the president.

Millennials are not "tough guys" like many in the GI Generation, or Generation X for that matter. They haven't yet personally seen much of big battles at war. Their economic hurdles require many of them to live at home and be more dependent on parents much longer than GIs were. But the essence of civics is not to be tough; it is to be smart, and collegial with each other. And they are.

[pbrower2a]

(12-16-2021, 03:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-16-2021, 02:33 PM)Anthony Wrote: Personally, I have my doubts.

Were G.I.s ever castigated as "snowflakes," or anything similar, at like age?

Plus their immediate juniors are acting a lot more like Idealists/Prophets than Adaptives/Artists lately - see David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the teenaged defenders of Critical Race Theory about whom I have already started a thread.

Doubt can always be warranted. But I have seen enough evidence to show that Millennials are typical civics, even if not yet fully living up to the archetype. But then, which generation today is? None of us.

Nothing has stopped the Millennial Generation from becoming a Civic generation. They prefer to work within the system, especially when they have a significant role in the system. If they are slow in taking over it is because older people are retiring later. Nothing has rushed the generational cycle so that the Millennial generation loses its chance to be a big player in history. 

GI's generally avoided setting scores personally. That isn't cowardice; the Armed Forces typically tell soldiers and officers to run away from bar brawls and street fights. Soldiers have better things to do than to defend personal honor from such a stupid remark as "your mother was a whore". 

David Hogg is a Millennial by S&H standards, which is what we should go by. Greta is a cusper, civic/adaptive. They are all acting like civic millennials or cuspers. This latest group of Millennials seems to have the most civic awareness of the bunch, similar to JFK's subgroup last time around.

Quote:Millennials are typical civics. They are experts at networking, as shown by their abundant use of social media and their tendency to focus on their own age group's interests.

Civics are tech savvy. That describes Millennials. They are pro-science, and largely ignorant of mystical or religious awareness. Some of them have some interest in this though.

Religious awareness, often unconventional, was possible. Just think of Alan Watts. Plenty of GI's returned from Japan with some introduction to Buddhism. This said, Buddhism isn't superstition. In view of scientific and technological achievements in countries under Buddhist cultural influence, it is arguable that Buddhism gives no more support to superstition than does mainline Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, or Judaism. Deep inquiry is good for soothing an otherwise-restless soul.  

Civic (and Civic-like-by-default, like the Gilded who took on much of the role of a Civic generation... Generation X will not get that role)  have little tolerance for mysticism or superstition at the expense of science. 
 

Quote:Millennials typically show interest in global warming and other vital civic issues that other generations gloss over. They are concerned for their future. They have a strong preference for Democrats, even though many are independents. This is all typical civic. 

They can read between the lines. It's not just that we Boomers relate how we had to trudge through snowbanks up-hill both ways to school with polar bears chasing us and they can't relate to that. They can contrast old sources to newer ones and recognize change.  They pay attention to physics, chemistry, and agronomy.  Unlike Boomers, they know that they will be around often into the 2080's when the effects of global warming  can lead to inundation and desertification and the spread of tropical diseases. I've seen the prospective climate maps, and they seem convinced that the tropical-subtropical line (no month with an average temperature under 18 C/64.4 F) will go far enough north to reach Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Orlando, and that the cool-winter/cold winter (rain versus snow) line will go completely through the lower peninsula of Michigan (it is now somewhere near Interstate 70 in Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio).   

Quote:But thanks to 40 years of neoliberalism/Reaganism, civics classes have been cut back or eliminated across the country, and the cynicism of Gen X and conservatism of Silents and Boomers have created an anti-politics climate in this country, also evident in the popularity of Trump, which is a tough trend for Millennials to buck. Because of this decades-long cynical and anti-education trend, Millennials have been slow to learn civic virtues like voting in midterms and understanding the role of congress and other elected officials, instead of just the president.

The Capitol Putsch will compel changes in the teaching of Civics classes. Note well that electoral participation increases with age as people start to have more of a stake in political decisions. This will be true of the Millennial generation (such indeed is already showing). Although the GI Generation has fully entered voting age or is a very close to doing so (should the last years of the Millennial Generation be 2004 or 2005), it is entering its forties on the old side. Around then, a generation has its own constituency as an entity and might aid some of its members in winning some electoral surprises. Except in super-safe R bailiwicks the Millennial Generation is much more liberal, and indeed liberal enough to win some swing districts.   

Neoliberal -- OK, call it what it really is: plutocratic -- politics is not only getting stale, but its core support is also "going gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas), which means a shrinking share of the electorate. First-wave Boomers, including Clinton, Dubya, and Trump, are passing 75. The Millennial got nothing good out of the plutocratic era. Then again, the childhood of Civic/Hero generations isn't soft.

Quote:Millennials are not "tough guys" like many in the GI Generation, or Generation X for that matter. They haven't yet personally seen much of big battles at war. Their economic hurdles require many of them to live at home and be more dependent on parents much longer than GIs were. But the essence of civics is not to be tough; it is to be smart, and collegial with each other. And they are.

Count on this: they will be as tough as they must be to make America a good place in which to seek better for oneself, one's family, and one's community. The United States is the equivalent in foreign policy to what a large dog is in the animal world. It's a well-behaved critter that you want as a friend -- because you certainly do not want it as an enemy. Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, and the Commie clique in Grenada found that out to their surprise... the hard way. 200 to 500 pounds of bite-force per square inch can hurt you badly if it is provoked. 

I'm not sure that the Millennial Generation is any more dependent than the GI generation. 90 years ago many GI's stayed on the family farm through hard times... or even returned to it as things got dicey in the Big City -- to protect the interests of their parents.  Of course not so many people live in rural America on family farms.

[galaxy]

Yes. It took a while to get there, but the Millennial Generation is very clearly Civic now - this was not nearly so obvious in 2014.

I have wondered occasionally about the early Homelanders, but if anything they just seem even more Civic. There was someone who theorized that the skipped Civic generation around the Civil War is being accounted for, thanks to the "1984-2020 3T" phenomenon.

[Eric the Green]

(12-16-2021, 08:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Civic.....have little tolerance for mysticism or superstition at the expense of science. 

Nor do I, a Boomer mystic.

[beechnut79]

So is that why Reagan turned his back on everything his predecessor tried to accomplish, totally ignoring environmental concerns upon taking office, including (in)famously removing solar panels from the White House. This is where the disregard for what appears to be proven science began.

[Eric the Green]

(12-17-2021, 06:53 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: So is that why Reagan turned his back on everything his predecessor tried to accomplish, totally ignoring environmental concerns upon taking office, including (in)famously removing solar panels from the White House. This is where the disregard for what appears to be proven science began.

He was not a very good civic hero, it appears.

[David Horn]

(12-17-2021, 09:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-17-2021, 06:53 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: So is that why Reagan turned his back on everything his predecessor tried to accomplish, totally ignoring environmental concerns upon taking office, including (in)famously removing solar panels from the White House. This is where the disregard for what appears to be proven science began.

He was not a very good civic hero, it appears.

Actually, he had an old and inappropriate view of the world and the personality and skill to sell it.  After all, he had starred in Westerns, the ultimate libertarian stories of the 20th century, and swallowed the idea of idividualism hook, line and sinker.  He thought he was doing right -- odd given his role as labor leader in his ealier days.

[JasonBlack]

Heroes? No
Civics? Yes. a breakdown of their civic traits include
- higher voter turnout
- propensity for collective action
- conformist
- most socially minded living generation
- searching for some sort of unifying collective cause, rather than their more individualist Gen X and boomer elders
- focus on self-sacrifice
- more likely to trust scientific reasoning and data
- more likely to trust institutions in general
- compliant to authority

[sbarrera]

For being expected to work in the productive labor class with compensation that hasn't kept up with the cost of living, I think young adults today deserve the label "Hero."

[David Horn]

(02-16-2022, 08:54 AM)sbarrera Wrote: For being expected to work in the productive labor class with compensation that hasn't kept up with the cost of living, I think young adults today deserve the label "Hero."

I think you're on to something here, though they are more victim than hero IMNSHO.  Millennials have to decide if they are going to oppose or merely survive.  That's still TBD.

[sbarrera]

(02-16-2022, 11:03 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-16-2022, 08:54 AM)sbarrera Wrote: For being expected to work in the productive labor class with compensation that hasn't kept up with the cost of living, I think young adults today deserve the label "Hero."

I think you're on to something here, though they are more victim than hero IMNSHO.  Millennials have to decide if they are going to oppose or merely survive.  That's still TBD.

In some sense, Heros are victims by definition. They are sacrificed for the greater good.

[David Horn]

(02-16-2022, 11:37 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(02-16-2022, 11:03 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-16-2022, 08:54 AM)sbarrera Wrote: For being expected to work in the productive labor class with compensation that hasn't kept up with the cost of living, I think young adults today deserve the label "Hero."

I think you're on to something here, though they are more victim than hero IMNSHO.  Millennials have to decide if they are going to oppose or merely survive.  That's still TBD.

In some sense, Heros are victims by definition. They are sacrificed for the greater good.

Let's pray that the bloodletting this time is figurative not literal.

[sbarrera]

The bloodletting is already literal, if you accept the narrative that elites are fine with workers dying from COVID if that keeps the economy going.

[David Horn]

(02-16-2022, 06:13 PM)sbarrera Wrote: The bloodletting is already literal, if you accept the narrative that elites are fine with workers dying from COVID if that keeps the economy going.

The ever-greedy are always shocked ... SHOCKED that suffering occurs.  They never know anyone affected, so it must be a myth.

[JasonBlack]

(12-16-2021, 03:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Millennials are not "tough guys" like many in the GI Generation, or Generation X for that matter. They haven't yet personally seen much of big battles at war. Their economic hurdles require many of them to live at home and be more dependent on parents much longer than GIs were. But the essence of civics is not to be tough; it is to be smart, and collegial with each other. And they are.

This is more or less the essence of why I like "Civic" more than "Hero" for this archetype in the cycle. The "glorious heroes" gestalt of the GI generation was not shared by all of the past generations.

- the so-called "Glorious Generation" which came of age during the Salem Witch Trials honestly wasn't very glorious compared to their idealist fathers. They were more like well behaved home school children who went on to become skilled tradesmen, businessmen and professionals.
- the Republican Generation (Thomas Jefferson's generation) was glorious and heroic...but so were the Liberty (Nomad/Reactive, George Washington's generation) and Awakening (Idealist/Prophet, Benjamin Franklin's generation)
- (skip Civil War saeculum)
- GIs were glorious and heroic
- millennials are...well, not.

[pbrower2a]

(03-09-2022, 09:42 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(12-16-2021, 03:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Millennials are not "tough guys" like many in the GI Generation, or Generation X for that matter. They haven't yet personally seen much of big battles at war. Their economic hurdles require many of them to live at home and be more dependent on parents much longer than GIs were. But the essence of civics is not to be tough; it is to be smart, and collegial with each other. And they are.

This is more or less the essence of why I like "Civic" more than "Hero" for this archetype in the cycle. The "glorious heroes" gestalt of the GI generation was not shared by all of the past generations.

For sacrificial performance of the heroic role, none in American history could match the Gilded. Of course they went into the Civil War clearly non-Civic: too reckless and materialistic. Becoming cannon fodder was made practically a business proposition. The Gilded took on Civic traits because they could not escape the danger of the 'business proposition' and came to recognize the need for organization and conformity.

For the Millennial generation one can look at the four archetypes. They could never be Idealists because except among those born to the economic elite they would never get the opportunity for 'finding themselves' in some Voyage to the Interior. Young adulthood was strictly pay-to-pay, and they paid a high price through the graft and gouging built into a plutocratic society that demanded work but rewarded it with a brutal cost of living. America divided neatly into places either economically-nuked due to the decline of the manufacturing sector (just about any part of Ohio except for Columbus) or fiendishly-costly (you could be in the information industry but be compelled to spend over half your income in renting a slum apartment). Such religious exploration as the Establishment  encouraged was the money-driven Prosperity Cult little different from $cientology except for a Christian veneer or those fundamentalists that offered Pie in the Sky. For the smarter ones, irreligion is saner. To become Reactive/Nomad they would need to have a youth devoid of structure. Millennial kids got structure within a hardscrabble world.That is what the young GI's knew. Generation X got more chaos in childhood and often an alternation between indulgence and either neglect or abuse. Now afult during a Crisis Era, they can't act as Adaptive/Artist types. We know what that leaves.

Quote:- the so-called "Glorious Generation" which came of age during the Salem Witch Trials honestly wasn't very glorious compared to their idealist fathers. They were more like well behaved home school children who went on to become skilled tradesmen, businessmen and professionals.
- the Republican Generation (Thomas Jefferson's generation) was glorious and heroic...but so were the Liberty (Nomad/Reactive, George Washington's generation) and Awakening (Idealist/Prophet, Benjamin Franklin's generation)


- (skip Civil War saeculum)
- GIs were glorious and heroic
- millennials are...well, not.

This time the struggle does not have either the establishment of national independence from a distant, meddlesome and capricious king George III as the focus. Neither does it have the survival of the moral foundation of western Christian civilization against demonic powers intent on establishing universal thralldom among the defeated that they grant the privilege of survival as in The Man in the High Castle. The Civil War boiled down to the solidification or abolition of slavery which decided the fate of about one fifth of the American people (but it did decide that recent slaves would be American and would get, at least for a short time, some opportunity to define themselves personally during Reconstruction.

We have been in a Crisis era whose focus was labor-management relations, with those doing the work getting bare survival (the industrial worker of the 1950's typically had life better than a nurse or even a software engineer ten years ago if you are to look at something like the ability to send his kids to college, buy a new car, buy a single-family house, or attend a major-league sporting event). There is plenty of money to be made on passive investments that become quasi-aristocratic legacies for heirs who did nothing to create wealth yet fare best economically if they preserve scarcity. That of course may have weakened with the Plague of the Trump Presidency, COVID-19, which kills much like a shooting war.

The Crisis is not over. I can see this one ending with the rejection of the neoliberal consensus that can achieve nothing nobler than the sort of inequality that one associates with a feudal order in which people work for little and a few magnates get whatever is not necessary for animal-like survival for the proles and peons. If this Crisis solves nothing except to establish a quasi-aristocratic order, then we can expect further acceleration of the ravaging of resources, with the voracious use of fossil fuels as the measure of prosperity.

(We are in the 'pleasantly-warm bath' phase of global warming; some of us are the stupid frogs who will simply doze off and never wake up before being boiled alive. Some of us are human enough to figure what is going on and have the smarts and manual dexterity with which to turn off the heat on the stove. This said,we are about fifty years away from the inundation of some of the world's most-productive farmland while ... speaking only of Europe, the Hungarian plain, Romanian lowlands, and southern Ukraine become semi-desert. We are playing Russian Roulette with global warming as the partially-loaded gun.

[Eric the Green]

Yes, Millennials are cemented as heroes and civics. They are good at tech and networking, and they are more conscious of social and political issues than other generations and willing to take action. They are collegial with each other and have a lot of self-confidence, and have a lower crime rate. They are like what S&H predicted they would be.

"Plus their immediate juniors are acting a lot more like Idealists/Prophets than Adaptives/Artists lately - see David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the teenaged defenders of Critical Race Theory about whom I have already started a thread." David Hogg is a millennial by S&H reckoning, and Greta is on the cusp. They are typical millennials or cuspers, and are not adaptives and artists. Millennials do not end in 1996 as the false Pew Research group account says, but extend to about 2003. Their public behavior is external oriented toward causes and interest in society, not inward oriented and spiritual seekers or "narcissists" like many Boomers.

[galaxy]

(03-10-2022, 11:31 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: "Plus their immediate juniors are acting a lot more like Idealists/Prophets than Adaptives/Artists lately - see David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the teenaged defenders of Critical Race Theory about whom I have already started a thread." David Hogg is a millennial by S&H reckoning, and Greta is on the cusp.

You don't need to use the idea of "cusp" for Greta - the turnings and therefore the generations begin a few years later in most of the 4T European countries than they do here. This is presumably because the World War 4T ended in the US immediately when the war ended, but in most of Europe took a few more years because of the scale of the destruction. So she's likely unambiguously Millennial, with that generation in Sweden maybe extending to around 2005 or so? (I haven't pinned down an exact date for Sweden's entry into the 4T yet. Norway's appears to be 2011, so possibly around then.)

[JasonBlack]

Overall I'd say millennials are quite Civic. The one glaring inconsistency is that civic responsibility is all about responsibility to your country. It's not that millennials are an extremely selfish generation (this is an unfair criticism that gets levied on us, but generally, it's not true), but that they often place the greater good of the entire world above their own country and families.

The Ukraine fiasco is a good example. Like....really? Now is the time you want to go to war? At precisely the moment where it will cost your own people nothing but sacrifices with no payoff? Fighting moral crusades over gas while your own countrymen are in the worst depression in almost 100 years? Civics are supposed to support their people and their country, yet millennials walk around in perpetual guilt. I get some level of "why can't we have healthcare like Sweden?" or "Why can't we have work weeks like Australia?", but it's gotten to the point where people view their own country with shame and almost...want us to fail. I know not all of them are like this, but that such a large swathe feel this way is, at the very least, unusual for a Civic gen.

On a more positive note, one thing I will say is that they seem to be finally waking up to a kind of "wholesomeness" that American culture has lost touch with since the boom, and, even into their 30s, many of the more intellectually honest ones are open minded to changing their minds and adopting values they've only come to truly understand later in life. The "red pill" community is a good example of this. It's not that everything they believe is good (some of it is kinda disgusting, and I say this as a conservative), but that it started with cringe, immature PUAs from the 2000s and gradually grew into a more nuanced understanding of evolutionary psychology and history that has had some more positive offshoots as well (say what you will about horny bastards desperate for sex, it's a desire that lends itself to a kind of pragmatism and adaptability stemming from necessity). Coming full circle, sbarrera made a comment about how being a hero often means being a victim who is sacrificed for the greater good. I would add to that that most heroes don't set out choosing to be heroes. They get forced into it out of necessity, and forced to develop the character and skills necessary to make it through to the other side. It could be what we're seeing is that millennials could indeed be a "heroic" generation, just one comprised of...very late bloomers.