My generation isn’t as enthusiastic
about technology as the pundits of an older generation seem to think. They talk
of our Facebook self-consciousness, our endless hours wasted looking at corgi
butts on Buzzfeed, and our sense of 1920s style optimism surrounding the
technology boom we see expanding like an all-encompassing Big Bang before our
eyes. But they somehow miss the irony with which we engage those pastimes.
My
generation knows that those parts of our lives are superficial. We spend a
minute or two looking at them, like we used to watch cartoons when we were
kids, and then we turn our conversations to questions of global justice, the
environment, the problems of sexual identity politics, and the absurdity of
patriotism in the face of a globalized outlook that is aware enough to
recognize that the content of a person’s character is ultimately his or her
only defining feature. We recognize tribal identification as exactly what it is:
a childish form of self-aggrandizement.
My
generation looks at the bigotries of past generations and wonders how they
maintained their convictions in the face of nothing but concrete evidence and
experience to the contrary. We wonder why those who are older than us waste
time debating whether homosexuality is a choice or not (p.s. the answer is what
does it fucking matter? People fluctuate in sexuality as fickle as the weather,
and whether it’s a choice or not, you learn something new about the world
through the lens of a same-sex relationship). We wonder why they still talk in
terms of races and stereotypes when all the people we admire most from world
history represent every color and culture across the corners of the globe.
My generation
is concerned with consumerism and capitalist competition. I mean, we’re concerned about it. We admire innovative
people who make the most beautiful things and solve the most difficult problems
with the least amount of resources, the most ingenuity, and with the sharpest
eye to sustainability. When we hear older generations telling us to buy more,
waste more, and be as selfish as possible with our time and money, we look at
one another with expressions like, “Who is this asshole jabbering bullshit to
himself and why does he think we’re listening to him?”
My
generation thinks war is stupid. We don’t have the fuzzy peace fingers and the
ingratiating folk songs of our parents’ generation. We just think war is stupid.
It’s something stupid people do to gratify their own greedy ambitions. In
opposition, we believe in community, but not in the stiff repressed community
of nostalgic Republicans. We believe in collaboration – with likeminded people
from Whogivesashitwhere on the planet Earth, for we think nationalities are as
stupid as wars. We believe in hard work for small goals – growing food without
poison in it, making simple, satisfying lives that benefit everyone involved,
having fun with our bodies and imaginations, not what we are told to buy on TV.
My
generation is not yet wise, for we seem to have trouble overcoming a certain
sense of paralysis. That said, my generation is not who our elders think we
are. We understand equality not as an
idealistic way to fetishize the other like old school liberals, but instead as
a form of communication. We understand freedom,
not as a hall pass to be self-absorbed and oppressive to everyone different
from us like old school conservatives, but as an unpretentious way to live and
let live.
My
generation understands that life is as simple as proverbs make it out to be,
and yet there’s this whole web of complexity overlaying it that can be
frustrating at times. We’re not idealistic, because the things we believe in
that older people say are far-fetched are as simple as our daily experience. My
generation is not defined by our technology, but instead the information about
the world around us that it gives us access to. We’re not defined by the latest
incarnation of a get rich quick bubble, but instead the meaning of stewardship
for the land and one another. We’re sick of our elders’ insistence on a life of
consumptive alienation. We’re defined by our desire and our efforts to find a
better way to live.
4 comments:
This is very well-written. But who are you speaking for when you say, "my generation?" Why identify with an anonymous group of twentysomething year olds when your piece is about the stupidity of group identifications? ...Even if we hadn't met I could tell this was written by a white American, educated, with liberal leanings. Tribal identifications are not always a form of self-aggrandizement: they can be very empowering, especially for indigenous peoples who have struggled to preserve their history despite the slavery and genocide of the colonial encounter. You say you are not idealistic and attempt to define your generation against "your elders" while touting a neo-hippie ideal of the global village and a post-identity politics which recalls the seventies when "make peace not war" was the reigning wisdom.... I am only playing devil's advocate here. I love the voice and the spirit of your piece, I think you have real potential as a journalist, but you need to position yourself more.
Good point about group identification. I guess it's hard to respond to a piece that is about a category of people that you belong to (Millennials in Dowd's NYT piece) without falling into the trap of group identification. Nice eye for irony!
I'm confused about why it's clear that I'm white...I'm mixed race, Arab-American. The opinions expressed are an aggregation of the people around me, who represent ethnic backgrounds all over the map (if such a map exists).
Finally, great point about indigenous peoples. But as you point out yourself, a lot of the power that comes from tribal identification is an unhappy symptom of the colonial encounter. That is to say, if there wasn't an aggressively violent force threatening them on an existential level, it seems unlikely that tribal identification would maintain such force.
Regarding the neo-hippie ideal of the global village, the point of the whole piece is it's not an ideal because it's the concrete approach to community that the people around me really are living. There's no preaching here about how others should live to "change the world" and make it into a global village, just a firm declaration of how we are (and have been for some time) currently living.
Thank you very much for the comment! I appreciate the dialogue, and pointing out the hole in my argument helps me clarify it to myself in a stronger way.
With much respect,
Travis
Beautifully written piece. It gives me hope that while our generation suffers from paralysis as you put it, we do understand the complex and often suffocating structures we lives under. The want to understand and address the negativities that effect our future is the optimism I find most inspiring about our generation.
-savvyraven
I do believe you are right when you say that the older generations have mischaracterized the millennial's obsession with technology. But I would say that most millennials misunderstand their own obsession with technology.
Just look at Facebook. For all of the time it has existed, it has remained this lame, background thing that everyone does but doesn't really talk about. To me it is similar to pornography. Not in the sexual sense, but in the shared cultural denial of the widespread consumption of it.
No millennial wants to admit to their friends that they spend an absurd amount of time aimlessly perusing Facebook, just as few people are quick to admit watching porn.
So while the older generations overgeneralize our generation (as was the case during the 60's where all young people were hedonistic hippies), our generation also has a very warped view of what we are like. There is nothing wrong with this, it is simply an aggregated consequence of how every person at the individual level has a warped perspective of themselves.
Everyone thinks they are a good driver, a good this, a good that. So when you apply that mentality to a grouping of millions of people, it is only natural for there to be large stereotypic over generalizations.
With regards to some of your other points, I have to agree with the commenter. While your ethnicity/race may be Arab-American, your culture is very clearly white, Boulder liberal. There is nothing good or bad about this culture/viewpoint, but I understand where the other commenter was coming from when he said you were easily identifiable.
In terms of your response regarding tribal identification, I have to whole-heartedly disagree. Tribalism is not a consequence of cultural socialization, it is the result of evolutionary psychology. Humans have innate biological tendencies to organize themselves in small tribal groups that compete for resources like any other primate. The common mistake among the standard social science model is to view humans as exceptions in the world of biology. Our tendency to tribalize is also reflected in the broad stroke generalizations between older and younger generations. We live in a complex world that didn’t exist thousands and millions of years ago, so our tendency to tribalize can manifest itself in multiple ways simultaneously.
Overall, I think that your viewpoint tends to be a bit too subjective. I know plenty of people in our generation that would disagree with just about every characterization you made. I myself struggle with trying to escape my own self-selected group think within my own friend groups. It’s just natural though. I think all of the points you make can be rendered as true with the qualifier of *many. *Many in my generation……*many this, *many that. I do believe that there are certain unifiers like food consciousness and ramping down on overconsumption. I would like to agree that our generation is more “cause-friendly”, but I honestly think we are far, far less active about them than most people think. Our generation is huge on awareness, but small on action. That’s why I think the Occupy Movement surprised a lot of people. Most people in our generation, myself included (usually), are very keen on sharing news, outrage, causes, etc, but are rarely participating in their success beyond that.
Like any generation, you won’t be able to judge them properly without both the preceding and following generation as context, so I am curious to see how we turn out.
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