August -- No improvement, nothing to be proud of, and nothing to get excited about.
Generation X simply doesn't get it. We are a people who have grown up being told we live in the best, most advantaged part of the world. For a long time, I think we believed it. In theory, they might be right, but in reality, we're not so sure. Maybe the days when they grew up, things were vastly different, but we can't relate.
We, Generation Y, are a people who have lived through the need for "ADHD medicines," "anti-depressants," dysfunctional and broken families, a dot-com bust, financial collapse, failed government institutions, world hunger, terrorism, and international conflicts. Simply put, there has been little to celebrate in life since we've been around.
Some people think we are self-absorbed, concerned only with our interest, but can you blame us? The only glimmers of hope have been what personal achievements we have accomplished, of which we hang onto to for dear life. After all, in a country that is supposed to be so "great," something doesn't add up, and we want to know why? It's not that we are conceited or don't want to be a part of something better, but why get in the middle of a national mess that looks like a downward spiral?
Currently, the United States has a hard time scheduling a meeting for a joint session of Congress, and if that's the barometer for moving forward -- We're over it. Far too long, we have been a people concerned with asking the question why, and for some reason, no one seems to take our question seriously.
Generation X, our parents, they were all about the corporate ladder. It was their goal to give us a life better than they had. We were involved in one sport after another, season after season, always something to do and somewhere to be. As a result, we are used to great attention, kept busy with alternatives, and live with an entitled mindset. Growing up this way has caused us to exist with a capacity to function at a high level. We are perceptive, and quite frankly are on the verge of checking out. We are not pleased, and not easily appeased.
What this country stands for is unknown and therefore undesirable. All that we hear is, "looks like a long road ahead," "good luck when you get out of school," and "social security, well, don't expect to ever collect that." And as a college graduate, I'm supposed to fit into this mold?
Here's the good news -- all of us haven't checked out yet. In fact, some of us are tired of this needless banter and want to ask our favorite question yet again. It's our generational namesake -- Y. Fundamentally, we wonder if America has lost her real objectives. Seems to us, the issues now are not about quality of life, and how to achieve it in a just and fair way, but about polar extremities and ideological differences. If it was clear what our motivations were, ridding ourselves of the small ideas we have about life, thinking bigger than ourselves, we could understand the root of our motivation and speak to real change. Because, after all "Yes we can!" -- right?
This question: why -- has already revealed much about the issues we face today. The root of the motives that landed us here are simple: Greed. And what doesn't make sense is that everyone has quit asking the very question that gave us answers. I guess motivations aren't a pretty thing to talk about.
Our issue is with the solutions and honestly; no one trusts anyone's motivations.
Is it not possible that if Generation X were to engage Generation Y in asking more of the tough questions, those obstacles could be conquered from a new perspective, one that embraces the issues rather than seeks self-preservation in government employment or corporate corner offices?
We think with no attachments, our goals are independence, both personally and nationally. Our desire is to live right and well, with a real balance between work & play. Work is not our life, but if things aren't taken care of, we will be forced into rigorous work to simply live.
If we don't keep asking why, our youngest and arguably brightest will be a generation that fails to believe in the American Dream: that life can be better with our opportunities, in the land of free and home of the brave. The truth is, unless we overcome America's issues today, opportunity will be limited and Generation Y will be slaves to all that Generation X created.
Let me thank you on behalf of my generation, Y, for all that you have done, and now I ask that you step aside, open your books, and let us, with all the right questions, begin to solve the problems you can't seem to figure out. It all starts with Why/Y.
If you won't ask, we will.
For me to buy into his ideas I would need more supporting evidence that many of his criticisms of Generation X shouldn't be aimed at the Baby Boomer generation, who has most of the economic and political power in the United States at this time.
You see Josh, life doesn't always hand you a trophy just for the trying...REAL life that is, anyway. Sometimes there is this thing called "failure". I know, I know, nobody ever told you about that. That's because right around the time we Gen Xers were off to college or our minimum wage jobs, the Boomers decided to rig the games for you guys...you know, outlawing such Fascist activities as dodgeball or riding a bike without being covered in armor. I'm sorry for that, really I am, because all it amounted to was that your generation never learned that struggle, and scraped knees and elbows, and sometimes getting your face smashed in by and a red rubber ball you never saw coming, are all a part of growing up. Among the jobs I held AFTER graduating with a 3.9+ GPA and my B.A....limo driver, midnight-to 8 AM-shift security guard, waiter, bartender...it's called paying your dues. See, the resume-builder job where 200 people are showing up for one position is the END point, very often. The beginning isn't nearly as pretty. But it'll build character, if that's any consolation.
(Now, if the HP folks will just let that lesson be heard. But I'm guessing they're the ones who did away with dodgeball...so off to oblivion with these words...)
But Generation X is only responsible for this in so far as they fail to change the course that was laid out for them at birth. To suggest that Generation X is made up of innactive slackers, or that we are TV zombies, overly medicated and sensitive, implies that there is some sort of unspoken conspiracy among the members of each generation to behave this way. We are products of the generation that comes before us. Where Josh is undeniably correct is in his hinting that the current system is no longer able to provide for the needs of the majority of the population. But vague platitudes are not enough, we need a clear and focused movement.
Sweeping Generalization much?
Many of climbed no Corporate ladder. Instead we took on a crap load of student debt to pursue liberal arts degrees. Many of us become political or social activists trying to improve the world and get out of the heavy shadow of our parents who ended the Vietnam War advanced Women's Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights and tried to curb abuses by Nixon, the CIA and the FBI. No way we could out shine them, not with the Reagan years pressing down upon us.
What many in Generation Y don't get is how hard previous generations had it. Gen X wasn't told that the world was their oyster, that they shouldn't settle for anything less than the best. Nope we were ripped upon by the mainstream media as slackers.
Part of the problem with this article is that Gen X are not really the parents of Gen Y. Gen Y are the little siblings of Gen X, children of the late-Boomers. Many of Gen X's children are still little kids or in school. Give it another five to ten years and the true children of Gen X will be out there doing whatever it is they're destined to be doing.
The other problem with this article is that there's no such thing as Generation Y, or Generation X, or any of that. They're all a fiction.
Long story short.....the golden age of the American middle and working class workers was from the 1940's to the 1980's....though things limped along until maybe the 1990's.
It has been downhill ever since.
Outsourcing, union (workers' rights) busting, fewer benefits, stagnant and dropping wages, less job security if you worked hard, attacks on social security which was sold to the American public as a retirement INSURANCE program and NOT an entitlement...........
Yes, it WAS better for the ordinary American worker back then.
Today, we have more technological goodies but less security.
What can I say?
The rich and politicians did dirty and caused the Great Depression....and finally had to fix it.
I have NO idea if and when the rich and politicians will fix THIS economic mess we are living with.
****I am a lower class boomer. {shrugs}
I see it as an attack on a system gone mad.....greedy, selfish, crazy, dysfunctional, and extremely harmful people are in charge from oligarchs to politicians.
And the worst damage was not done by Generation Y, though like everything else there are people in that generation that DID and are DOING dirty.
{shrugs}
Although the date range varies as to who is in X. The consensus I hear is that Y started somewhere in the 80s.
Try actually doing something to improve the world and not whining about how we (Gneration X, a lable we never wanted).