On generations and dog whistles
I am, I have just learned, a “Millennial.” This seems weird.
Apparently — and I’m learning this all second-hand, so don’t shoot the messenger here — a “Millennial” is anyone who was born from about 1981 to 1995. And wouldn’t you know it: we’re all the same!
According to various and sundry thinktanks, us “Millennials” are entitled, lazy narcissists who expect everything to be handed to them. We’re the most self-centered generation that’s ever existed. Who knew!
If you couldn’t tell, I resent being lumped into a group of people about which I know little to nothing. That’s always been an issue I’ve had with the notion of generations: why are you associating me with people just because we were born the same year?
But it gets even stupider and more cynical than that.
If you accept the artificial and often arbitrary construct of a generation — which I do not, but let’s go with it — I think that generations are getting shorter.
I have a younger brother, Jeff. Jeff’s a good dude. Jeff’s five years younger than I am. I often feel as if Jeff and I are on two different planets.
Jeff and I are five years apart, yet I feel like we are worlds apart. That’s what generations are: they are how you feel in relation to other people on the planet.
The main culprit for that feeling, in my estimation, is technology. Jeff’s is the first group of humans that will never know what pre-Internet life is like, for example. That seems like a big deal, like something that we should be paying more attention to.
And yet the People Who Decide These Things will tell you that Jeff and I are in the same generation — Millennial, those selfish, entitled people. Don’t you hate those people?
You’re supposed to.
Generations, it’s important to remember, are arbitrary. When they begin and end is not determined by anything besides what people say. It’s just a way to group people together, to make them into one so it’s easier for our minds to actually grasp who these folks are.
But — and maybe I’m out of my depth here, but here goes — I think it goes deeper than that. The word we keep hearing over and over with regards to “Millennial” is how entitled they are, how they feel like the world owes them something.
Two thoughts on that:
1) This is the hardest-working generation of the modern era. We may not clock in at 9 a.m. and clock out at 5 p.m., but that’s because we don’t clock out. Statistically: 81% of people in this generation check e-mail on the weekend; 59% check it on vacation. Anecdotally: I’m writing this blog at 1:50 a.m. after spending the last two hours working. If that’s entitlement, that’s a strange way of showing it.
2) “Entitlement” is a dog whistle. It’s a word that’s meant to elicit a certain reaction from a certain segment of the population without coming out and saying it. When someone says that someone is “entitled”, they may be referring to someone who actually is entitled — like Paris Hilton or a similarly unfortunate member of society.
But when someone uses “entitled” to describe a group? They’re trying to tell you that they’re different, and not in a good way. They’re trying to tell you that this group is not wholesome like you.
The very notion of “generations” is intended to divide into neat groups, into “us” and “them.”
I don’t think of myself as a member of a generation, because I think "generation" is a hackneyed term that's well outlived its usefulness. But I do think that the folks with which I share a birth year are the most educated, most diverse group in American history. And I think that frightens a lot of people.
And it's easier to say "they're entitled" than it is to say "they scare me."