THE ASCENDANCY OF THE MILLENNIALS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN!

THE ASCENDANCY OF THE MILLENNIALS AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© October 19, 2014

NOTE:

We are not only in a new century, but have in our midst a new generation called “millennials.” Born in the very late twentieth century or the beginning of the twenty-first century, millennials look at life and us in a very different way. 

Joel Stein of Time magazine (May 20, 2013) captures a sense of this new generation.  Since I have several grandchildren that are millennials, I thought I’d add my own two cents with special acknowledgement to Joel Stein and his interesting piece.

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The current generation of the young, known as the “millennials,” are not trying to take over the establishment, nor to fall in line with hierarchical authority, position power and its rights of infallibility and succession.  Instead, they are choosing to ignore the establishment and grow up without it.

They are accused of being lazy, narcissistic, not centered, going with the flow, and even being unhinged.  While being indifferent to such criticism, they look past the establishment’s hyperbole, rhetoric, chicanery, duplicity, backstabbing, and climate of chasing shadows in its nervous dance to paranoia.

Millennials, reared in a climate of reality television, are living their lives as if it is reality television defining themselves at the age of fourteen, while their parents were still struggling with identity and personality type at the age of thirty or forty. 

While their parents had a problem with authority, with its infallible finality, millennials don’t respect authority but they don’t resent it either.  Authority has no relevance to them.  They are the first generation not interested in rebelling against the status quo, mainly because it has never been a threat to their take on life.  Nor are millennials given to the herd mentality of “true believers” bent on a case or establishing a counterculture.  It would be hard for them to join such a culture when, from their perspective, there is no culture.  They are starting out from scratch.

They are creatures of smartphones, laptops, apps and the Internet, which they see has democratized them and given them access to information that once only belonged to the wealthy.   A lot of what counts as millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved.

Consequently, they are not intimidated with position or knowledge power, and therefore can negotiate much better contracts for themselves with traditional institutions. 

This generation thinks before it does, and is usually thinking three or four steps ahead of its interlocutors.  They tell recruiters, “I want to do this, and then when that is done, I want to do this.”    

It is too late for the traditional organization to wield its power in this confusion because they are here and they are earnest and optimistic, pragmatic and idealists, tinkerers more than dreamers, life hackers rather than trendsetters, gender and ethnic neutral seeing the world flat with the mantra, “May the best person win whoever that might be.” 

It is yet to be established if they can lead or follow as they cannot escape some of the hash tags that obsessed their parents such as the need for constant approval. 

Check out their posted photos on the social Internet.  They also fear missing out, cannot stand silence, or being alone, and have to always be doing something. They are celebrity obsessed and have an acronym for everything.  They don’t go to church but believe in God and are likely to be religiously unaffiliated.

In case this is worrisome, they are cool, reserved, not all that passionate, and therefore less prone to manipulation.  They are also pro-business, financially responsible although student loans are more than a $trillion, but household and credit card debt is less than any previous generation. 

In terms of numbers, they are the largest generation in United States history.  Ergo, no recitation of “empowerment” need be voiced as they see themselves as empowered, in charge, comfortable before a camera and able to articulate their case. 

Millennials embrace the future by living in the present, and what they make of it promises to be very different than what they have been programmed by their parents and the society they have to inherit. 

They are not handicapped by the litany of go to school, get good grades, ignore the elevated grading system and social promotion, where colleges and universities depend on defense and industrial contracts for survival, while pretending they do not, spewing out anti-military and anti-industry rhetoric in the classroom, which was bothersome to their parents. 

Nor are millennials troubled with what they have been told is true only to find it is not, such as living in an open, free society of equal opportunity when they see that is not true of people of color, or of women compared to men as has been the case of their parents’ generation.  They plan on making it true, however, for theirs.

They have been inundated with cultural values that don’t resonate.  Self-esteem is claimed to be essential when they see it is great in getting a job or hooking up with someone at a bar, but not so great keeping a job or a relationship.  They are left with the idea that has become close to a cause to distance themselves from anything and everything that suggests “the establishment.”

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REFERENCE:

Joel Stein, “THE ME ME ME GENERATION: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents – Why they’ll save us all!” Time magazine, May 20, 2013, pp. 27-32.