Lazy, entitled and self-absorbed. Ask anyone over the age of 40 to describe millennials, and this will be the choired response. We’ve all heard the anti-millennial rhetoric of how our generation is ruining this great nation.
I’m willing to bet the majority of you listened to a parent or grandparent say our generation is “too selfish with your Snapchats and Facebooks and Tweeters.” Let’s backtrack a minute, though, and remind ourselves the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are also known as the “me generation,” as coined by author Tom Wolfe in the ’70s.
Let’s go further back. Anna Rogers published an article in The Atlantic in 1907. She said American marriages were failing because of “the latter-day cult of individualism; the worship of the brazen calf of the Self.” Anna Rogers calls out the baby boomers’ parents on their selfish behavior. Perhaps every generation is the most selfish generation.
Baby boomers complain about more than just our work ethic — they also call our morals into question. A 2009 Pew Social Trends study found that “about two-thirds or more of the public believes that, compared with the younger generation, older Americans have better moral values.”
Of course, baby boomers heard the same argument from the generation above them for not attending church enough and listening to Elvis Presley’s “devil music.” Imagine being told you’re morally bankrupt for listening to a guy whose most scandalous move was shaking his hips on stage. Miley Cyrus makes Elvis Presley look like the Pope.
Speaking down on the generation superseding you is a tradition old as time. The explanation boils down to one emotion — future envy.
As time goes on, standards of living tend to improve. Seeing younger generations go through life without some of the struggles you endured can cause resentment. Take, for example, our parents. I’d be angry, too, if I had to spend six hours a day in the library to write a paper while my kids can just Google their research and finish within an hour.
Future envy is most evident with the generational gap of technology. The amount of progress realized in baby boomers’ lives is astounding. In our lifetime, we will see even more advancement. I know I’ll envy kids growing up with self-driving cars.
It’s okay to resent being born in a certain time. The future holds wonders we will never experience. I resent that exploring new lands is obsolete but exploring the stars isn’t obtainable.
Every generation has its own problems. We worry about global warming and the psychological consequences of living in a social media world, and people before us worried about famine and raiders. In 100 years, people will pity us because we had to die from easily curable diseases such as cancer, just like we pitied those who died of polio only a few decades before us.
It’s called comparative poverty, and everyone suffers from it. We are all poor compared to what those in the future will have, which is why we empathize for those who lived earlier.
If this is true, then we should give ourselves reasonable and appropriate pity knowing that, in time, our present and real dangers will become relics of the past. While we might not be dying in our 30s anymore, we still have it bad in light of the future.
Despite the burdens they imposed on us, we should give baby boomers a break for giving us a hard time. They couldn’t help but envy and scowl at our living standards. Sooner than we think, we’ll get to resent our children and grandchildren for living in the world we created for them, just like every generation before us.
Jay is a 21-year-old finance senior from St. Simons Island, Georgia. You can reach him on Twitter @hjcranford.