Malcontent

Hail to the Millennials

A misunderstood generation is building an unorthodox future

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Millennials are having their moment. They have surpassed Generation X as the largest in the US workforce, and locally the Millennial Professional Group of Rhode Island, which launched earlier this year, seems to be constantly growing in membership. Mayor Elorza created his own “Millennial Task Force” to encourage them to “create and build your future in Providence.” And this month, thousands of them either arrive in or return to Providence as the school year begins. 

As with any new generation coming into its own, they are a frequent topic of discussion, debate and misunderstanding. There has been much handwringing over Millennials’ perceived inferiority to previous generations (remember when that happened to Gen X?). They’re lazy, entitled, self-obsessed, impractical, politically correct to a fault, too smart for their own good, unable to disconnect from their phones long enough to engage in meaningful human interaction, etc. The truth is much simpler: like every generation from the Beats to the Hippies to Gen X, they’re rejecting what came before them and trying to stake out their own ground. The difference is that their ability to opt out of the old ways of doing things is unparalleled in history. This is due in part to the tools and connectivity of the Internet, which constitute not a brave new world to which they must adapt, but rather the only world they’ve ever known. 

Millennials can hardly be blamed for having no use for old paradigms. They came of age in the Aughts, the decade in which the center did not hold. Institutions that were once thought to be permanent and impregnable collapsed, bonds and covenants regarded as ironclad were broken, borders were erased, geographic distances became irrelevant, ideas that were thought to be birthright proved to be illusions. Towers literally fell from the sky. 

Subsequently, a president launched a disastrous war on what proved to be false pretenses and stuck future generations with the bill. A surging economy that the experts said would grow exponentially and indefinitely collapsed suddenly and spectacularly, revealing that the entire system was just a shell game rigged by a relatively small handful of Wall Street hucksters who were never held accountable for their transgressions. The auto industry, once the foremost emblem of America’s economic might, imploded and was forced to go begging for a handout on the steps of the Capitol. Parents, who had long preached the virtues of an American Dream in which hard work and education led to a safe, stable career on which one could raise a family, saw their jobs eliminated, their houses foreclosed upon, their pensions slashed, their life savings vanished in a puff of economic smoke and mirrors. Mass shootings, bankrupt institutions, failing schools, instantaneous access to information, constant connectivity, stateless warfare, a government surveillance state once relegated to science fiction, all became the new normal as the bachelor’s degree, once thought to be a sure ticket to prosperity, became the minimum requirement for subsistence-level employment. Timeless truths proved false, goal lines kept moving, old ways of doing things ceased to work. 

Jaded adults, already experienced in the ways of the world, could rationalize such things, adapt their worldviews to fit the facts and vice versa. But youth, still forming their impressions about the world, could only come to one logical conclusion: It’s all crap. The old wisdom doesn’t apply. The old allegiances no longer bind us. The powerful mass at the center has been atomized. When the old world collapses around you, the only sensible option is to build a new one in your own image. That’s what the Millennials are trying to do. They don’t need to be catered to, puzzled over or regarded as something unique. They simply must be understood, like all generations before them, as reacting to the world in which they were born.

millennials, jorge elorza, millennial task force, generation x, gen x, hippies, beatnicks, beats, malcontent, john taraborelli

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