Baby Boomers, Millennials, Generation X and Generation Y…Oh My….
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Think back to when you were a teenager, or even in your twenties. Do you remember your elders complimenting your generation for all its accomplishments? Do you have fond memories of them acknowledging your contributions to modern society? I’m sure you can remember that elderly gentleman telling you that your generation made him proud and hopeful for the future. Wait. What’s that? You don’t recall any of that happening? Me neither. Hmmm. Interesting.
Today it’s all about the Millennials and how they are so sensitive and can’t do anything if there’s not an app for it on their phone. They don’t know how to change their own oil, can’t drive a manual transmission, and they don’t hold to the same principles as the previous generation. Sounds vaguely familiar to me. Sounds exactly like the things they said about Generation Y, Generation X, the Baby Boomers, etc.
I’m not a Millennial. I was born in the mid-seventies so I think that puts me on the cusp of the Gen-X and Gen-Y categories. I identify more with the Generation Next label. That’s the generation that was considered, by members of the previous generation, to do nothing but watch tv and play video games. And that generation is now in its mid-forties, still plays video games, but usually in a house of their own and after work instead of in mom’s basement avoiding work.
Now the Millennials are being accused of not knowing how to drive a manual transmission or make change without the aid of a cash register. They are labeled as entitled and sensitive and weak. I hear it all the time. “Kids these days”, “When I was a kid”, and “This generation will never know the struggle of yada yada yada.” It’s a cycle. We get older, we look at the current generation, and we see them through our own generation’s filter.
Most automatically focus on the negatives and miss the positives, intentionally or unintentionally, makes no difference. Let’s use that cookie cutter we grew up with and criticize all the parts that don’t fit. But let’s just use the analogies I mentioned earlier and roll back the clock on them.
My grandmother’s generation didn’t know how to use a Cotton Gin or a steam engine. My dad’s generation didn’t know how to drive a Model T. They didn’t teach me how to use an adding machine in high school. And I doubt my daughter has ever dirtied her fingers changing a typewriter ribbon. None of those things made anyone less useful than the generation before them. It simply makes them different. And broad generalizations don’t hold up to scrutiny well, either.
Just because the cashier at McDonald’s paused for a second when you handed them a $5 and .33 cents, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to make change. Perhaps they have to switch gears from the 700 other customers ahead of you that used their debit card instead.
Millennials can’t drive manual transmissions? Think about that the next time you complain about those same kids pretending they’re in the latest Fast and Furious movie by racing through your neighborhood.
Are they automatically relegated to being entitled, little whiners? According to some, yes. Because it’s traditional to look at the younger generation as not working nearly as hard as we did to achieve the same results. But that conveniently leaves out the idea that we’re constantly trying to progress and make things better or easier. I doubt most would’ve walked three miles, to school, undoubtedly uphill both ways and in the snow, if there had been the option of a bus available.
Just because someone can’t write in cursive doesn’t make them any less useful to society. But I guess it’s easier to focus on the ways you feel superior to the current generation. It’s easier to criticize their supposed shortcomings than to admit to the real shortcomings of whichever generation claims you.
Millennials are no different than any other generation. They make do with what’s available to them based on which skills are necessary. They see things through a different filter than their predecessors. I’ve heard the accusations that they’re too sensitive and get upset over the smallest of things. And this criticism usually comes from the same people who threw a fit over someone of a different color drinking from the same public water fountain as them.
Humanity is comprised of humans. We have a collective knowledge and a collective conscience. Things that were acceptable 100 years ago are not accepted now. We used to think mercury was something to play with in chemistry class. Now we know better. We used to use think women should only reduce their cigarette intake during pregnancy. Now we know better.
We used to think separate but equal was a perfectly reasonable solution to racism. Now we know better. Those revelations weren’t presented by the generations of scientists, doctors, and activists that perpetuated them for decades. They were discovered by the younger versions who questioned them.
To use the current logic being applied to Millennials, we’re all useless because we can’t fashion a spear and kill a mammoth before cooking it on a fire we made by rubbing sticks together. I suppose it’s human nature to see the young as inferior. But, I’m sure that one day there will be a Millennial saying, “Kids these days will never know the struggle of having to type on a phone with their thumbs.”
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As an older millenial or echo boomer, I am telling you all to get off my damn lawn you kids. Isn’t that how it’s done by you olds 😉 For the record, I can drive a stick, my dad made sure of it in case I was ever stuck on a date with someone who shouldn’t be driving and they had a stick shift, I can also change a tire and my own oil thank you very much. Not much desire to spear or cook any animal for myself, so I will likely starve in the event of an apocalypse unless I can forage for berries and vegetables. I think every generation has good and bad to it.
As a boomer I have forgotten what I was about to say.
Very nice indeed, but at the end of the day, when you’re laying in the bed, almost dead I guess it don’t really matter does it?
A really good article Josh. Thanks for sharing with us.
Agreed, it’s a great post. And it reminds me of things that I really shouldn’t be proud of! Yes, I can drive a stick shift (or I could when I was still driving); I could change the oil; I could make curtains.
But I couldn’t maintain a model T! I couldn’t farm; I couldn’t keep horses! Yes, we are proud of the fact that we can do things that the next generation can’t.
But I think it important to keep up SOME skills, mostly because we can, and although we have technology that will do it for us, we would still be lost without it. I still read – despite the fact that I could just listen to my books on the computer or my husband’s smart phone (nevermind that I read on a Kindle 🙂 ). But if the power grid were to become compromised – and that’s not just a horror story pipe dream! There are a lot of things that can take us down! The ability to read, actually read, is important. Similarly, basic arithmetic that most people require a calculator for should be achievable by individuals in a pinch.
Just sayin’
I have a feeling that many people mourn the time when we were more self-sufficient and that explains the flood of TV shows about survival and living off the grid and maybe even some of the apocalypse shows and movies. When I was a Boy Scout, the focus was on maintaining the skills we were told Americans were losing. One of those of course was skill with firearms (Oh my!)
Civilization advances but not without discarding things that aren’t profitable, but still, there are many people who like to tinker, invent, build and even to decrease dependency on an infrastructure. Being one of those, I think it’s actually easier now to acquire such knowledge for those so motivated, even if it’s harder to get any respect for it. In terms of self-respect, I think it feels good to know you know how to take care of yourself even if your skills are rarely used.
By the way a model T is the easiest car to drive or repair there ever was. I had one for many years.
I would love to tinker, but everything I tinker with breaks…again, so I stopped tinkering. Now I just throw shit away and buy new stuff. I’m a boomer 🙂
This is a really good article and I enjoyed it. Much food for thought from this millennial.
Around 50AD, somewhere in the Middle East, which I believe was called Mesopotamia at the time, a family was sitting around the dinner table. The teenage kids were discussing a party they had just attended, when the father said to the mother: “You know kids aren’t the same as they once were. They go to parties all the time, don’t do their schoolwork, or keep house. They also talk back to their mother. Times have changed. We would never have done those things when I was growing up.”
A few years ago, when personal computers first came out, I was convinced they were just a flash in the pan, and never, ever intended to buy one. Today, I have a laptop, a desktop, an iPad, and an iPhone. I’m a boomer, and proud of it. Good article and good title. Intriguing.
LOL! I have all of those things as well Rachael.
Great post.
All sweeping generalizations are wrong — but of course that’s a generalization. You can’t really blame people for getting used to convenience. I may be one of the last to know how to drive a model T and to know how to diagnose repair and maintain one, but really how many people get the chance these days? It does seem to me that people are far less technical and don’t know how to build things, but is that because I’ve got 70 years experience in doing things the public has forgotten or doesn’t use any more?
What I will acknowledge is that popular culture takes up more and more of people’s lives and it encourages us all not to know how to take care of ourselves. We’re far, far more specialized as well and there’s more technology we can take advantage of, but I will also admit that when a hurricane comes through and all my neighbors are totally helpless, standing out in the street desperately trying to get their smart phones to work, I have to smile.
As a boomer I can’t really say I’ve seen changes beyond what I’ve seen for decades, and those are few, excepting the technological paradigm. Every generation complains about the one that follows them. Good article.