A while ago, the internet – mostly Twitter – erupted with a new thirty second fascination: #Millennialbillofrights. It started as a joke, another way to chide Millennials for their supposed self-centered, whiny, entitled attitudes. It ended up being something more. Of course, it attracted the haters and flamers, but it also attracted the Millennials themselves, attempting to defend themselves against the Boomers. It feels a little weird to say this, as a Boomer myself, but the Millennials have as much right to be pissed at us as we had to be pissed at our parents. Now, for those of you with a short attention span (you know who you are) I present:
The Short Version
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again, unless we drop our flags and our prejudices, and work together for the change we want.
(Do you see what I did there?) (#)
And for those with the patience to listen to me ramble, I present:
The Long Version
Having graduated High School in 1975 (yes, I’m old), I was faced, along with my entire generation, with a horrifying world that I was expected to make right. The Vietnam War had just ended, and badly. For those too young to know how badly, just understand that it was the only war in the Twentieth Century that we ran away from with our tail between our legs. And there was none of the current ‘Thank you for your service’ that I get when I mention that I’m a veteran. The guys who came back from Vietnam were spit on, called ‘baby killer’, and ignored by their own government. The Economy was a wreck; there were no jobs worth having. Education was a joke; the system was constantly derided as ‘irrelevant’. President Nixon had resigned from office under threat of Impeachment. We had been to the moon, but now we couldn’t even seem to get off the planet. The environment was completely polluted, with no help in sight. And to cap the whole rosy picture, the Soviet Union seemed to be winning the Cold War, and we stood on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Fun, huh? One of the most commonly played songs in the mid-70’s was “My Generation” by The Who. We were angry, we were powerless, and we were expected to solve the problems that our parents had dropped in our laps. Sound familiar? No? Then let me up the ante.
The Millennials have been handed a world that is trying to tear itself apart under the twin guns of Terrorism and Economic Instability. The U.S. government is a very un-funny joke. There are no jobs worth having. The only jobs commonly available don’t pay a living wage. Education is no longer broken, it’s unrecoverable. You have to have a High School diploma to get any job other than Walmart, and you have to have a college degree to get a job that pays above the poverty line. Just above. We’re not sure whether China is an enemy or an ally. Climate change is progressing rapidly (yes, it’s a real thing, pull your head out of your ass), and there’s no solution in sight. The race problems of the 1960’s haven’t really gone away, because people are as stupid as ever. Religious radicals of all types are threatening Armageddon on their own terms, and we’re stupidly backing the ones that wave the American flag. Our last President was impeached – twice. We are reeling under the lash of a lethal Pandemic. And we still can’t leave the planet.
One of the icons of my generation, David Bowie, died a few years ago. Rest in Peace, David. He was ahead of his time in the 60’s and 70’s, and even though he’s dead, he’s still 20 years ahead of us. Remember the verse from “Changes”?
“And these children that you spit on,
As they try to change their world,
Are immune to your consultations.
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.”
It was written about my generation. It applies to the Millennials. It applies to all generations. We have all been handed a mess of a world and expected to clean it up – with no instructions, no help, and no direction to travel towards. And just as my generation were spit on and called ‘whiners’ and ‘entitled’, so do we do to our children and grandchildren. This. Must. Stop.
It does us no earthly good to drop our problems on our children’s doorstep and walk away as if it wasn’t our fault. It did (and does) no good to blame the generation before, or ridicule the generation following. The world is screwed up. We need to fix this, and we need to do it together. The young ones have the energy; the oldsters have the wisdom. It has always been thus, but it’s only been true for the last hundred years or so that we assume no connection between the generations. Our ‘Cult of Youth’ attitudes have robbed us of the ability to talk to one another, help one another. There is no generation gap – there never was. We need – individually, corporately, nationally – to reconnect with each other. My generation solved a huge number of problems: nuclear brinkmanship, ecological collapse, the computer revolution, just to name a few. We have knowledge and wisdom to share with the younger ones, knowledge that they desperately need in order to handle the newest spate of problems. Share. Support. Encourage. Do for them what your parents refused to do for you: treat them like the adults they’ve become, not the children you still see them as. It’s a truism that we get the world we deserve. One of the ways we come to deserve a better world is by helping those who are honestly trying to make it better.
Go ye, therefore, and do likewise.
pax et ama
TGC