Why Millennials Have Every Right to Be Cynical

Below is a link to one of the most brilliant articles I've read recently. Truly. I mean, the guy is spot on about every single thing as I see it.

I want to share a few personal observations, in addition to the article itself (see below for the allowed four-paragraph intro).

I'm a boomer, and I cringe when others over 40 belittle Millennials -- just as I cringed and pushed back when I WAS the younger generation and my elders criticized my age group as "lazy, self-obsessed, shiftless and entitled little bastards" as well. The Simpson's clip was perfect, too. I grew up in an environment where people were content to be merely content, though bitching and moaning was all part of being "content." Taking action to change things was never really part of the scenario. That shaped me and my course from a very early age, and I have rebelled against complacency and apathy my entire life.

While I agree with everything in this article, I'd like to add a few points, with the
caveat that these are generalizations based on my personal observations and interactions. Nothing more.

Reading online (places like reddit, for example) as well as interacting elsewhere IRL with Millennials, has left me a bit disconcerted lately. I detect not only cynicism, but a survival-of-the-fittest callousness.

I TOTALLY get it though. It bothers me, but I do understand it. The article highlights most of the reasons for this. Yet I think there are two other key truths:

1. The 24/7 information tsunami has made Millennials hyper aware of events around the world, including what appears to be endless suffering and injustice, without offering many solutions. It can be overwhelming and lead to many people shutting off entirely, or numbing themselves as the article points out.

2. The younger Millennials grew up in an environment of seemingly nonstop messages about the world ending. Global warming, the Y2k alarmists, 9/11, the 2012 Mayan Prophecy, and nonstop threats of a pandemic. That has to have affected this generation in various ways. I have a 20 y/o and we've discussed this quite a bit after I noticed in her and her friends a tendency, more so than usual, to try to do a LOT in a short span of time, rather than employ a bit of patience. (I realize that's a marker of youth in general, but what I have observed is more extreme.) In talking about it, we realized the list of things I mentioned has influenced them to feel they MUST do as much as they can NOW, because they have this constant sense that the world is going to end at any moment.

It's one thing to learn mindfulness and the art of living in the moment and living each moment to the fullest; it's quite another to feel pushed into doing everything NOW because you fear the world is ending any second.

OGR


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http://www.policymic.com/articles/41043/time-magazine-millennials-why-millennials-have-every-right-to-be-cynical

Most demographers say that the millennial generation began in the early 1980s, and according to a series of polls conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics, in those near-30 years since our generation began, we millennials have become intensely cynical, distrustful of every government institution except for the military, and increasingly partisan in our politics. Even worse, these polls indicate it may become permanent. They worry that the constant demonstrations of greedy partisanship and mindless incompetence by our elected officials is having a long term negative effect on the millennial generation. You don't say?

They're just now realizing that between successive presidencies that spent their entire time lying to us, two major wars (both of which have proven to be completely unnecessary and have lived up to the old Hemingway quote, “You will die like a dog for no good reason at all”), bailouts that have shown that the politicians we elected care more about Wall Street than anyone else, a hyper-partisan and hyper-useless Congress, and an economic forecast that looks so horrible it resembles the average Seattle winter, we millennials might be just a little bitter and cynical? Well guess what, we have every right and reason to be.

It's anecdotal, but I can attest firsthand that I have become far more cynical about politics in the past three to four years than I had been before. If I listened to my finer instincts right at this minute I would unplug the computer I’m typing this on, drive to the home of the nearest politician (any politician), and throw the damned thing through their front window as a show of basic contempt and loathing. Let’s be honest, just counting the past 13 years we have seen some vicious and unforgiving events go down, chief among them being the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center that rang in the start of this current era of Western civilization. Every year since then we have been subject to more and more heinous activities that have shown more and more that we have little to no reason whatsoever to trust anyone over 33.


Full article HERE.