In my observation, a big part of social progress is each generation pointing out the hypocrisy of the previous. “All men are created equal” so how can you enslave black people? If men can vote, why can’t women? How come straight people can marry but gay people can’t? How is it fair to send an 18 year old to war but not let him vote?
A lot of these hypocrisies were so internalized that a lot of people of previous generations never even thought about them. It was like a mental blind spot. It took young people with fresh thinking to point them out and fight to fix them.
So, speaking as a Millenial, I’m asking what my generation’s blind spots are. What injustices are we perpetuating without even thinking much about it?
For reference, Millenials are currently in their late 20s to early 40s. Not running the world, but also not fresh eyed college grads.
Or readers, you can just say fuck OP’s premise and agree that we shouldn’t be trying to make enemies of strong allies right now - especially when we have so much existing consensus to continue a full-throated joint fight against.
Seems like an overreaction.
OP is asking how they can be better, I don’t see hate in that.
I mean, not everything has to be a fight. This is just asking for feedback.
Edit: I think there’s a general consensus that Gen X, Millenials, and Zoomers are all on the same side against the Boomers. But none of us are perfect.
I’m gen-x according to you. When I was younger there were none of these divisive nomenclatures. They’re stupid and harmful, the same as every stereotype, and anyone who uses them is a gullible fool
90% of people I know, from teenagers to pensioners, are lovely, interesting, amazing folk, and their age has as much to do with that as the colour of their skin
You should be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating divisiveness
I’m likely older than you and there’s always been generational name calling and judging.
“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”
- Quintus Horatius Flaccus, writing over 2,000 years ago
Society-dependant I suppose. Doesn’t make it any less toxic
It’s descriptive. Do you want to use paragraphs to name a group of similar people, or a word? " The people born between x and y exhibiting these behaviors and traits, or have been imprinted by these traits, though it is not as strict rule," or “generation x.”
And yes, we are also allowed to critique people based off of these things. It’s how life works. It’s how we grow and change.
though it is not a strict rule
Vis a vis, a stéréotype
Keep 'em divided and angry at eachother!
Say you make a new invention. Are you going to give it a name, or are you going to use a description each time?
What about if you have kids. Are you going to name your kid a long winded description of their lineage, or something short?
I hate the idea of answering for my fellow idiots in my age group.
I think “generations” is a useful abstract thought, but it is really only usefully clear in more distant hindsight, and one where the conclusions have little actionable consequences. On the individual level, it is a poorly fitting stereotype.
I’m a hardcore roadie that almost died on a bicycle while commuting full time and riding over 400 miles every week for years. Do I get a say in my generation label and efforts to make change? My supercharged camaro always stayed at home. I didn’t have to ride.
Only things I really see are an unwillingness to vote, which is dangerous for democracy and civil rights, being somewhat gullible online / not doing proper research before jumping to conclusions, and still a slight divide in gender roles and expectations. Luckily, all those things are generally fixable.
I’m right on the GenX/millennial cusp, but since I was interested in technology as a kid, I align more with millennials in general.
How we treat transexual people will be our embarrassment. Not everyone, of course, but as a whole, it wasn’t something we ever talked about in the 90s, and if we did it was a joke.
We’re still learning, and there are many of us who want to be better, and others who will fight it because it makes them uncomfortable.
We’ll get there eventually.
How is it fair to send an 18 year old to war but not let him vote?
Where do you live where you can enlist at age 18 but don’t have the right to vote‽ Not in the USA…
OP was giving examples of things in the past. In the US the voting age was 21 until 1971 when it was lowered to 18. During the Vietnam War draft lots of 18-21 year-olds were drafted to fight a conflict they had absolutely no say in.
I believe OP is referring to the demands of the young people during the period between World War II and Vietnam War in the United States when 18-21 could be drafted but not vote, which resulted in passage of the 26th Amendment.
Also, Vivek Ramaswamy has talked about raising the voting age to 25 unless you serve in the military. Which is in effort to keep young people (especially Swifties!) from voting Democrat.
“Would you like to know more?”
“Service guarantees citizenship.”
Not in the USA…
Not anymore, thanks to the 26th amendment to the Constitution.
The hypocrisy calling out happens between the young generation and their parents. Millenials are more likely to be the older cousins to Zoomers than parents. Zoomers would be calling out the hypocrisy of Gen X, which would probably look something along the lines of “You spent your youth acting like caring about anything was lame and now mainstream art is just commentary about itself instead of anything sincere.”
I didn’t use the word hate. That said, you don’t bicker about minor things when the house is actively on fire. Focus, get some bigger wins collectively.
These types of introspective self improvement moments are for the quiet times, we’re not in the quiet times - those are a luxury that you earn, maybe. Much better use of our energy today than this.
How come straight people can marry but gay people can’t? This has the foundations in religion I believe. It’s a strong belief that marriage is between a man and a woman since it’s in the Bible I guess?
Millenials seem to be a lot more open to all humans being free to be who they want to be, which means humanity is moving further away from traditional religions ideas about good and bad.
Could be good or bad depending on if there is an actual god behind those religions or not.
Could be good or bad depending on if there is an actual god behind those religions or not.
Spoiler: There isn’t.
Must be nice to be certain.
It is.
I realize your comment is a smooth attempt at saying “Only a fool doesn’t acknowledge that there is a chance that they’re wrong” and sure, there’s a chance that I’m wrong, but are you making major life decisions based on the chance that dragons could awaken and attack mankind? Do you worry daily that you might be punished by Bigfoot because you ate the wrong food on Friday? Are unicorns disappointed in you because you masturbate too much?
Who knows, maybe a magical, horned Sasquatch riding a dragon will cleanse the world of all non-believers. After all, there’s always a chance, but I’m not going to waste any of my time worrying about it until he shows himself.
In my observation, millennials are the perfect consumers. They do not stand up for anything. They have forgotten all the neccessary “fights for a better world” of the former generation, for the environment, for peace, for better social justice etc. and not adopted the ones of the younger ones, like vegans etc.
We stood up during the anti Iraq war protests, occupy Wall Street, blm, pro-choice, marched for lgbtq rights, human rights, the environment.
We’re burned out because (mostly) nothing changed or got worse… also busy working to the bone to be able to afford to go to work tomorrow.
Perfect consumer because everything we need to buy is designed to fail and not be repairable.
We fought, we argued, we protested and we got some shit changed, some attitudes evolved but we got older and we got on with making the best of a bad situation. Like EVERY GENERATION BEFORE US.
How many of the diehard peace and love hippies who were at woodstock arent angry old boomers now? How many of them kept up the fight their whole lives? How many of Generation X are still “Xtreem”? people get old.
Its the Zoomers time to shine now, I have a child to provide for and raise into a confident young woman who demands changes herself.
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong here but this is definitely a funny contrast to the classic “millennials are killing x industry” articles
The other generations are not perfect consumers? You got to be kidding yourself.
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Veganism, or at least vegetarianism, was the first thing that crossed my mind. I bet future generations will not look kindly on us for eating meat. And yet still, I can’t turn down a good burger.
until we have a viable alternative it’s a choice between your ethics or your health and I don’t think we can begrudge anyone for choosing either one, especially when industrial agriculture make both option equally terrible.
a single cow can feed a single human for a year. eating meat isn’t the problem it’s the incredible amount of food waste and disrespect for the sacrifice that will be looked down upon.
Even if we do keep eating meat eating cows is about as wasteful as it gets. People should get over themselves and forget about their steaks once and for all. It truly is a disgusting practice of the same magnitude of environmental and ethical harm as burning fossil fuels to fuel your insane shopping addictions.
it’s like arguing over different types of combustion engines. at the end of the day we need to feed 8 billion people and it simply isn’t possible without industrial food production. and cows could be the best option because saturated fat is the most energy dense food but people only want to eat that 1 cut they like so we get the situation we’re in now where cows are almost the worst possible option.
I say almost because at lest they aren’t being ground up alive in a combine harvester so people can feel smug about not eating that meat.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you probably haven’t even looked for any viable alternatives, because if you had, you would have found they are plentiful already. They’re just expensive because of the government subsidizing animal farming, not because they’re expensive to produce.
They’re not even expensive. If you cook at home, a vegetable-based diet is a fraction of the cost of a meat-based one.
I was vegan by choice for over a year, then went back to vegetarianism; and then nearly vegan for many more years because I was too broke to afford animal products (though also too broke to refuse them if they were free).
Now I’m well-off, and I still keep my grocery budget low by avoiding animal products, especially meat.
If you cook at home, a vegetable-based diet is a fraction of the cost of a meat-based one.
Highly dependent on where you live. In some places, vegetables are more expensive than meat.
Where? Alaska? I grew up in South Dakota –dairy and ranching country– and veggie, legumes, grains were way less expensive than meat, even in winter.
Food deserts. Some places I grew up in, it was difficult to find fresh veggies at all, much less affordable ones. Even canned and frozen was about the same as meat.
if it was viable it’s all you would hear about from militant internet vegans … and I wouldn’t even be mad.
First of all, it’s perfectly viable to just not eat meat. Tons of people don’t eat meat and are perfectly healthy.
If you need meat replacements, (which is for taste, let’s be clear) there are a TON of good substitutes, for example Beyond.
Also to your previous point, food waste is a big problem, but thermodynamically, meat IS food waste. Only a fraction of the energy of animal feed is present in the meat, which is super resource intensive and environmentally terrible (not to mention all the methane produced)
Meat substitutes are horrible replacements in terms of taste. Let’s just clarify that. Question anyone who likes them enough and you’ll eventually find out that they always disliked real meat, or they haven’t eaten real meat in decades.
But correct. Meat is not needed at all.
I’m afraid I’m gonna be the counterexample to your theory. I liked most forms of meat; my favorites were chicken, ground beef, and fish fingers. However, once I discovered plant-based (mostly soy-based) substitutes, I genuinely prefer them. I’m still not fully vegan but I’m no longer buying meat because this stuff is so much better. I also prefer oat milk over cow milk and am kind of annoyed I didn’t try it sooner because it’s so much better (esp. in hot chocolate).
