There are quite a few people that will be the first to jump on how “horrible” the generation known as the millennials are. This generation of lazy delinquents that are more obsessed with cat videos than anything that might be remotely productive, is more likely to waste their lives away then to actually accomplish something.
Rants like those are what I see online and hear in person daily. Which is sad because first and foremost, most people cannot decide when this generation really started. Some say 1984 and up, and some say a far back as 1980. So it would help to be able to actually come up with a consistent date before accusations and ridicule starts flying. Let alone the whole fact that the generation titles are a simple marketing ploy developed by the marketing system to sell things, not as an actual identifier.
I was born July 2, 1985, and by most accounts I would be considered a Millennial. I have worked since I was 15 and even paid the morgage on my parents home for almost a year while my father was laid off. I have raised three children that were not mine for over ten years and have done almost the complete opposite than what I keep getting accused of doing as a Millennial. I am not the only one either, most of my friends and co workers are considered to be Millennials and we seem to be one of the few groups of people left in the work force.
Needless to say, I get upset when either the “Generation” that was before me or that came after seem to complain about how my age group is doing things. But the biggest thing that people need to remember is the fact that “Generations” are nothing more than arbitrary number that some marketing executive decided. There is no possible way for a group of people to all be the same thing. To add the art of sarcasm, isn’t that what racism sounds like?
As humans, we have always seemed to try to lump people together based on seemingly random things. But is that action really the proper thing to do in order to be able to label things? Humans always try to label everything on this earth. But! If, as a human being, if you do not have a label that our species so desperately needs, make a new one. Don’t simply lump more people into a group where they only kind of fit, or only mostly work with. It would make the most sense, that if these labels are needed, from our original British obsession with paperwork started, why not just ad another one instead of adding more people into a label that does not fit. Grant it, the term Millennial sounds fancy and all encompassing. It could even be said that it sounds right since people around my age not only grew up without internet, but invented most of the internet and social media things that the younger people use on a daily...sometimes minutely basis.
Another good point to remember is every older group of people think the next in line are lazy and will amount to nothing. Our parents thought the same for us and the younger ones now are seen that way by us. It just happens to be the way it works. The older group is always envious of the advancements and what they see as an "Easier Time" than what they had. I could give you at least a dozen examples. I roll my eyes at the computers in each classroom as my father rolled his eyes at the fact that I had the internet for my high school reports instead of actually going to the the library. Animosities such as those will always remain as long as technology progresses through time. But just because I had access to the internet during high school reports does not make me any less capable of research, if not it makes me better at it because I have had to learn how to filter out the nonfactual information that exists across the internet into with is actually factual. Just as the people younger than me will always be faster at gaining such information.
When the human race is bunched into only a few labels, you limit your capacity to understand and learn, you limit your capacity to love those around you for simply the people that they are. Just as in Racism limits, Generationalism is a close relative to Racism, not quite the same, but along the same direction.
So the real question and course of action would be, what do we do about it? Do we continue to generalize...Wait, notice how those words are very similar? Generalization-Generation. Anyway, do we continue to generalize everything around us afraid to add another label to our note cards of labels. In all honesty I look forward to a time where we can judge people, for the people that they are, not by their physical attributes. There is a bumper sticker that says: “I hate everyone evenly.”
Notice how the only way that people can be treated equally is when it goes straight to hate. Only hate is non-discriminatory. Shouldn’t love be non-discriminatory? But what people do not understand is that love is difficult, love takes work, a lot of work. Hate is easy, the lazy way out. It is far easier to simply hate someone, or a group of people, than it is to get to know someone. Hence why my opinion is that the ideas of generations is along the same lines as racism. It is no less evil and wrong to not acknowledge a demographic simply based on the years they were born in, than it is based on the color of their skin.
