Which, of course, explains why the U.S. and the U.K. had to employ conscription to fill the ranks of the military during WWII when each nation was directly attacked by Axis powers.
And of course Vietnam was the most popular war in American history.
What really sets millennials apart is that they grew up with the internet. They are so much more connected to and aware of the rest of the world than even me as a Gen Xer. That connectivity and knowledge lets them see the bigger picture and be more sensitive to it. And, they’ve been told they can do anything and have anything. So guess what…they want it! And now! I don’t know that they’re spoiled and I’m not saying all of this is bad. It’s just different from previous generations. Things progress.
There is nothing to blame anyone for. “Millennials” are not a single group with common attributes, and all evidence suggests that to the extent people born in that time period can be lumped together, they are essentially the same as people have always been and always will be.
Younger people have always been more impatient than older people. They have always been sharper. They have also always been less wise. It has always been so, and shall always be so.
Even that isn’t true for the newest batch. My own kids are too young to be Millennials but I have been hearing the same complaints from parents of older kids from lots of affluent areas for well over a decade - their kids work too hard especially in school, they are too serious and they don’t know how to rebel compared to their Gen-X and Baby Boomer parents. In short, it is the opposite criticism than is usually given by parents and other elders. Raising a crop of neo-Puritans will really piss you off if you didn’t set out with that goal in mind but the school systems do it for you.
I don’t think I have ever heard older people call Millennials or younger dumb because they aren’t as a whole. Anyone that spends much time around them knows that isn’t true. That is like saying that athletes were better back in the day. It is a delusion if anyone thinks that in general and it isn’t supported by basic facts. I think the more appropriate term is ‘naive’ but that goes with the territory and some adults don’t ever grow out of that either.
The major complaints that I hear are that the newer crops were raised in environments that were overly structured and focused on only a few specific metrics as a measure of success like grades, test scores and carefully prescribed extracurricular activities. I can’t refute that quite as quickly because I have noticed evidence of it too in work environments but it isn’t universal either.
Yeah, that Socrates quote goes all the way back to 1907. :rolleyes:
And here we see one the reasons many of us enjoy it here!
While I would guess though that other quotes exist that bemoan the failings of the young all I can find looking for it is this, complaining about the failings of age and idealizing youth. So my guess may be wrong.
Not so sure when and where the more mature generation complaining about spoiled kids who should get off my lawn started. But apparently not millennia!
In living memory, Americans have lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, Jim Crow, Viet Nam, and the 1970’s.
I don’t recall anyone from those generations whining about “trigger words” and “safe spaces”.
What fraction of those - oh let’s call it 19 to 35 - do you think have appreciable concern about those things? We are talking a hugely diverse group of about over 75 million people, more than are in the Boomer cohort. The whining Baby Boomer cohort. Yeah that one.
Mind you I was not there to witness it, but one suspects that some privileged college students whined about a variety of things throughout living memory.
I’m sure they did, but not to this extent. WARNING, crazy right-wing link here.
That you have failed to recognize such discussions is hardly surprising or relevant.
The phrase “trigger word” may be a new expression, but no one who actually paid attention to the real world over the preceding decades would fail to recognize the uses to which “outside agitator,” “law and order,” “states’ rights,” “fellow traveler,” “uppity,” “elitist,” “radical,” “reactionary,” “racist,” “sexist,” and other words and phrases have been employed to shape the political discourse and even to shape legislation.
I don’t recall anyone whining about “safe places,” so I am not sure why you are whining that some people have presented the proposal that there may be locations where persons may be free from harassment. I have not yet been persuaded that such “safe places” are necessary or useful, but the notion that we should not provide safe places because earlier people suffered and so should we makes as much sense as saying that earlier people got along without pasteurization, vaccinations, and such things, therefore so should we.
Folks during Jim Crow were so fucking fragile they couldn’t handle sharing a water fountain with black people. I’ll take the people who invented the concept of a “safe space” over the assholes who invented the concept of a sundown town any day.
Not sure what you think your link has to do with my question. For the sake of the discussion I accepted you characterization of safe places as “whining” … the question was what fraction of the 75 million plus Millennials do you think are agitating for safe places? Your response is an article that bemoans that there have been a few students mostly at relatively small and relatively elite liberal colleges agitating for them (with its handwringing and pearl clutching about that fact). Okay let’s increase the numbers that article gives the impression of by an order of magnitude, or two … out of 75 million plus people? Your hearing about this is evidence that there is more whining now? It seems to me that you are hearing about it because some older than Millennials are whining lots about it!
This, mainly. I am a Gen Xer and I remember that our generation typically had to work our ass off if we wanted stuff. You want a car when you are 16? Go flip burgers for minimum wage. You want to have money to take your girlfriend out on dates? Better cut some more grass.
In college, I would scrimp and save for spring break to drive to the beach and stay in a shitty motel with broken a/c and cockroaches. Kids today go to fucking London and Paris for spring break.
In other words, all of the stuff that people in my generation were only able to do after starting a career and beginning to make decent money, the millenials have had it all handed to them before they ever worked their first job.
I realize that my observations are not data and there is generational bias in these things. One item that sticks out is central air conditioning. When I was growing up, when it was hot in the summer time, you went outside because it was too god awful miserable to sit in the house and sweat. Most evenings you could open the windows and have a fan and it would be cool enough to sleep comfortably. A couple of nights a year, it was not, and you laid in bed and sweat.
For the first thirty years of my life that was an accepted part of being at this lake house. In the last ten years it seems as if everyone has changed their attitudes on this. Everyone in the younger generation called me a cheap bastard for not putting central a/c in this place and they actually quit coming up here. There is satellite TV and internet, and a fucking lake to swim in, but no a/c, so nobody would come. By the attitudes of some, it is borderline child abuse not to have a/c in your home.
I finally broke down and put in central a/c and now they come up, but just stay inside and watch TV and play on the internet. I want to scream at them that there is a lake right outside, but they complain it is too hot. Also the lake is “dirty” and not like the pools they swim in. When I was a kid, this place didn’t even have a shower. We jumped in the lake, got out and soaped and shampooed up, and jumped back in.
And since then, I have started to be like them. Damn it is hot outside, best stay in the a/c today. They are turning me into them. 
UltraVires I am impressed. I don’t think I have seen such a perfect example of confirmation bias on this site in years. You, apparently know a handful of Millennials who have access to money and attitudes with which you disagree. From that you have drawn the conclusion that “Millennials,” in general, have the same bad attitudes and access to money. I actually do know a few Millennials who match your description, (along with a number of Gen-Xers, Boomers, and even a few folks who are older). But I know far more of each group who are not wealthy and who do not feel entitled.
Your sweeping condemnation is wrong and silly.
I acknowledged that my observations are not data. However, it is what I have observed and wanted to comment on it.
Yes, I remember how the Boomers used to say that us Gen Xers were spoiled because we got to do things that they didn’t get to do. They also said that we were lazy and all we wanted to do was “sit and play video games.”
So, yes, I am looking at this through the eyes of a Gen Xer toward the next generation and I am woefully biased in that respect. However, I thought I addressed that in my post.
If you’re not persuaded that “safe places” are useful, why should we provide them?
Food poisoning and measles are not the same thing as hurt fweeings.
In case no one read the linked article, here’s a couple of choice quotes:
This is way beyond juvenile.
Yes, and?
I’m a Gen-Xer, and I recall that our generation was viewed as slackers, unmotivated and directionless. We came of age during a fairly peaceful (no causes to fight) and prosperous (no real economic blips) time.
Young folks today are facing more economic uncertainty, more difficulty affording college, a lot of political instability…and they’re seriously the most instantly analyzed generation of people to ever walk the planet. There have been blogs and websites devoted to dissecting their actions, motivations, achievements, etc.-- as it has happened for the past 20+ years.
And of *course *previous generations think they’re lazy and entitled. That’s what previous generations have always done. My nearly-70-year-old father recently explained to me that the reason millenials are in the bag for Bernie Sanders is because they’re a bunch of lazy shits who just want free stuff given to them. Never mind the fact that the only millenials he actually knows are his step-grandchildren who are struggling to figure out a way to afford college right now, and my nephew who couldn’t afford college so he enlisted in the Navy. Not a lazy one in the bunch, but all five don’t have as clear a path to a nice career as he did or I did. Yet, he believes their generation is lazy and entitled because…well, I guess that’s what old guys do. Admitting the Boomers and even Gen-Xers have largely left these kids a fucked up place with shrinking opportunity is just too hard to admit.