This thing highlights so much wrong.
First off, the idea that generations of people are easily categorized and share many characteristics is laughable. All those articles about millennials doing X are foolish clickbait, whether they are praising millennials for something or blaming them for being feckless and lazy. People have thought that the generations after them are ruining civilization since the beginning of recorded history, so pretty clearly that line of reasoning is nonsense. Everyone writes about how young people these days are ruining marriage, unwilling to work, don't respect their elders, and have no sense of responsibility. Drivel, all of it.
But this meme, attempting to be a counterpoint to the vilification of the young, is also ridiculous. You really think this, today, is the worst of capitalism? Do you know about the days when 8 year olds would work 14 hour days in rooms without a window, only to collapse and then wake up again the next day to repeat it? Do you know about union leaders getting their houses burnt down when they asked for basic safety standards?
Don't even get me started on police brutality. I am not at all pro police. Hell, if I have to choose I will take Fuck the Police over A Thin Blue Line as my tagline. No question the police do some bad shit, particularly when it comes to people of colour. But police violence today is a bouquet of roses compared to what it was in times past. The Toronto police were at one point completely disbanded and restarted because they had become totally corrupted and were nothing more than hoodlums who attacked political opponents and at one point watched firemen burn down a circus, doing nothing. The firemen burned down the circus because clowns jumped the line at a brothel! (History is AMAZING.)
Shit like that is crazy, yes, but it isn't just a couple crazy incidents. Do you think police arresting a black man and accidentally killing him would even ping the radar of the mainstream media 150 years ago? I know about incidents like that all over the Western world, but back then they were so common I probably wouldn't have even known if it had happened two blocks over. Just because the internet tells you about terrible tragedies does not mean they didn't happen before the internet - it is just that all the Trayvon Martins and Philado Castiles died without white people like me ever finding out.
These days the police are crying because they want to show how sensitive they are by having a float in the Toronto Pride Parade and they are upset that they got turned down. (Turned down for good reasons, I should add.) The world isn't perfect, but it is undeniably better than it was.
Let's be blunt. Millennials aren't especially bad. They also aren't especially put upon. The world here in Canada is better than it has been for centuries. (Or maybe ever, depending on your definitions, but centuries for sure.) The Millennials are a group that grew up with the internet. That is pretty much the defining thing about them, when compared to earlier generations. They had more stuff than people before them, and they also had slightly better air quality, health care, and life expectancy. But none of that stuff is what people whine about when they complain about Millennials, nor is it what Millennials like to bring up in their own defence.
Millennials, you aren't special. You aren't particularly good, nor particularly bad. But neither are the Boomers, or Gen X, or any other random group you create by putting endpoints on a timeline.
Let's all stop with the vacuous generational generalizations and just accept that both broad criticisms and compliments about such groups are silly. Then we can get back to something we do agree on, like which side of the political spectrum is right and which is wrong.
So I think the basic message you have here is probably fine, in that the world right now, bad as it is, is better than the world of 150 years ago. But this is not the best it has ever been, and it should be way better than it is.
ReplyDeleteCost of living relative to standard wages is worse for the lower class now than it was in the 80s. Millennials are way worse off than previous generations were when it comes to owning property and exiting University without a crushing debtload.
Global average temperatures are way up over the last century, are trending to continue to rise, and are well on their way to a catastrophic point of no return. This is entirely on capitalism which places more value on the profits of the corporation than it does on the state of the planet. It's been part of capitalism the whole time, but the effects are snowballing their way to impending doom and capitalism is not equipped to stop it.
Authoritarianism and white nationalism are on the rise and are at the worst they've been in almost 100 years. Do you think Doug Ford is going to keep Ontario trending in the direction of better air quality and health care?
I suspect if you look at the headlines 20, 40 and 60 years ago, you'd have seen similar signs of gloom and doom.
DeleteThe world is heading toward nuclear annihilation was a big one. Environmental disaster is looming ("Silent Spring"). People were breathing lead and asbestos, not wearing seat belts. OPEC made the price of gas so high that gas was rationed. Black people couldn't own property in certain neighbourhoods. The 20's were a lot like now economically, then there was a crash (that was *really* awful vs. 10 years ago) and government fought back. It's a cycle.
I'm not saying that there aren't problems, and that they aren't bad, but I suspect every generation lacks perspective. And there may have been a lull of "good times" for 20 years there after 1989 that got people's expectations up.
You're showing some survivorship bias there. Nuclear annihilation didn't happen, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a danger. It doesn't mean that people worrying about it didn't stop it from happening. In particular, if Vasili Arkhipov was a lesser man there _would_ have been nuclear annihilation.
DeleteRight now we're in a political climate of oscillating between governments who think they are running things the only way things can reasonably be run and governments who are spitefully destroying that. when the former gets back into power they say, "Whew, glad that's over and things are back to normal." I think young people being angry about the way things are is pretty much the only way forward, and I think "you have a right to be angry" is a more reasonable response to the meme than "this is so factually incorrect."
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think you might be wrong about "the worst of capitalism". It's not fair to use child labour as an example, because child labour is the norm for all of human history until recently, not a product of capitalism. I think the US right now is approaching the actual worst of capitalism: unvarnished rule by the wealthy (some US politicians defended their tax cut by saying they needed to do it for their donors without even pretending they served the people) collapsing into fascism or revolution. Marxists say you have to choose between socialism or barbarism, and the US really looks like it's aiming to prove the point soonish.