There’s a video that has been being shared all over the Internet recently of a young millennial woman who ultimately is bashing on her own generation. I’m sure that some, if not most, of you reading this have seen the video of this blonde southerner and her rant on the way millennials treat the elderly poorly, complain and are just all around lazy. While I do agree with her on many points, what I want to discuss is the way my generation (our generation) seems to want to blame all of our problems on the generations before us, most notably the baby boomers.

The girl in this video is not blaming the generations before her. She is blaming her own generation. The generation that seems to be perpetuating some of the problems she touches on. The thing I noticed, though, after watching the video was the way people were reacting. A vast majority of those who watched the video decided to resort to the blame game. This isn’t unique to just this video either. The blame game, as I’m choosing to call it, has been used countless times to create excuses for the younger generations’ antics.

Why is it that we can’t take responsibility for our own actions? I completely understand that some of the issues with today's society were caused by the generations before us. But some of the problems that were plaguing society when our parents were our age were caused by the generations before them, too.

I’ve been reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and something that stood out to me is the way that the main character, Amory, blames the problem of World War I on “the Victorians.” He’s playing the blame game just like many millennials are now. There’s no doubt that problems in our country have been caused by people who start something and then become irrelevant (are voted out of office, become less active members of society, or simply age), leaving the problems they created to be solved by those who will come after them. I don’t think all of our problems stem from this idea, though.

Fitzgerald explains in This Side of Paradise that Amory was unsatisfied due to “his lack of enthusiasm [which] sublimated in an attempt to put the blame for the whole war on the ancestors of his generation...all the people who cheered for Germany in 1870...All the materialists rampant, all the idolizers of German science and efficiency.” Fitzgerald wrote about what related to him as someone who had lived through the horrors of World War I. Though this novel was written almost a hundred years ago in 1920, this particular passage seems to ring pretty true today. Substitute the nouns from 1920 with nouns from today and you’d have yourself a pretty accurate depiction of the mindset of many millennials. The blame for everything in Amory’s world was put “on the ancestors of his generation.” Replace the war with the economy, or the Germans with a particular political party/social demographic and there’d hardly be a difference.

When I look at the state our society is in today, I don’t want to play the blame game. As a matter of fact, America is still one of the best places to call home - even with all of her faults. The main thing I’ve realized through my own examination of my peers' thoughts and through reading This Side of Paradise, is that there will always be someone to blame. There was in 1920, and there still is now in 2016. Nothing is going to change, though, if someone doesn’t take responsibility - and the reality is that the economy, the election, the job market, or [insert current events issue here] is a result of many people’s actions that span more than just one generation. If anything is going to change, we all need to step up and change it, baby boomers and millennials alike.

“Songs in the time of order

You left for us to sing,

Proofs with excluded middles,

Answers to life in rhyme,

Keys of prison warden

And ancient bells to ring,

Time was the end of riddles,

We were the end of time…

Here were domestic oceans

And a sky that we might reach,

Guns and guarded border,

Gauntlets-but not to fling,

Thousands of old emotions,

And platitude for each,

Songs in the time of order-

And tongues, that we might sing.”

-A Poem to the Victorians from

This Side of Paradise