On the occasion of a visit to the US, Mother Teresa was heard to marvel at the poverty of New York compared to Calcutta. She wasn’t talking about material poverty. The US has some of the richest poor in the world, as the Mammon Mob loves to point out. Instead, what struck her even in the 80s and 90s was how spiritually poor America had become.
That spiritual destitution, in sharp contrast to historic material wealth, is a common touchstone in author David V. Stewart’s musings on Generation Y. That new lost generation came up under conditions that could be called swag rich, spirit poor. Inundated with more toys, snacks, and diversions than any prior generation, Gen Y was also the first to come of age in post-Christian America.
Another saint, John Henry Newman, ascribed nostalgia for childhood as guise under which we long for the divine. As Newman saw it, children have a natural closeness to God. So when we pine for the homes, entertainments, or even relationships of our youth, what we’re really longing for is closer relationship with our creator.
That childhood memory of a spiritual dimension to life is probably the reason Gen Y drives the Pop Cult. And their personal memories of the Cold War likely explain another major divide between Gen Y – along with all older generations – and Millennials.
Support for WWIII decreases by age, but the difference in opinion is starkest between Gen Y and Millennials. The former are old enough to not only remember jingoistic anti-Russkie agitprop, they’re old enough to have been propagandized by it. On the other side, twentieth century grievances against Russia have no meaning to Millennials living in perpetual Year Zero.
David discusses these and other generational dividing lines in his latest video. Watch it here:
Then get an exciting glimpse of the post-future in my hit mecha thriller.
I stumbled onto this truth in my 20s, when I realized that Apple electronics were as much a lifestyle badge as Jnco jeans and Korn albums. I wish my parents, teachers, clergy, etc. gave me more than just Jesus swag. I had to figure this out for myself.
Incisive point. lifestyle brands have always existed, but until the end of the 20th century, they were reserved for high rollers. Think Mercedes-Benz, Chanel, and Rolex. The 80s saw the advent of consumer-grade display items, but they were marketed to the yuppie crowd. It was Steve Jobs who pioneered brand evangelism, which only hit it big in the 90s.
“The console wars” are another such example that hit Y and Millenials harder. Sega vs. Nintendo. Sony vs. Nintendo. Sony vs. Xbox. And prior to that, Gen X had things like coke vs pepsi, or Jiff vs Skippy. Consumer brand choices were as much a part of your household identity as ethnicity or religion.
Indeed. This is a malaise gnawing away at the West from within, and the fundamental reason why we are now weak. I myself was saved only by divine providence and a residual fascination with Narnia and “hoping-something-was-out-there” left over from my childhood days. Rediscovering Christ and having my dead faith brought back to life was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Praise be to God!
Born in early ’88 at the tail end of Gen Y, I’m too young to remember the Cold War or anti-Russia rhetoric, so that aspect of the generational experience is a bit beyond my years – I think it’s probably one of the major differences in experience between younger and older Gen Ys. Cold War conflict was ancient history by the time I hit elementary school.
But I vividly remember most of the other big 90s events that Millennials don’t – Princess Diana, Waco, OJ Simpson, Timothy McVeigh, Columbine, and of course 9/11, which happened as I was at the impressionable age of thirteen.
Generational identity is a spectrum. It gets fuzzy at the edges. It’s also an example of Simpson’s paradox: Qualities present at the macro level start to be obscured the closer you zoom in.
Quite true. My brothers – born ’90 and ’92 – are more behaviorally Gen Y than Millennial, but there are some Millennial traits and experiences in us as well – they’re just arguably not the dominant ones.
One interesting factor in my case is that I was the oldest of three, but most of my friends had at least one or two older siblings, tilting their entertainment and cultural tastes a couple years older into the middle of the Gen Y space.
Here’s a minor addition to the Ground Zero collection. I was reading a review of “Krippendorf’s Tribe” from 1998 here: https://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=688
with this aside: “The new Disney has bought as heavily in shares in the new nihilism as anyone in Hollywood”
He hadn’t seen nothing yet.
One thing that I realized watching David’s video was how normal our generation finds taking prescription drugs. The boomers may have medicated us because the doctors told them to do so and they thought it would magically fix things. But they always knew that it was an unusual thing to do, they just thought (in typical Boomer fashion) that they finally fixed things this time.
A lot of people in Gen Y and younger generations don’t have a clear conception that you can get through life without taking tons of pills, especially in terms of pills for your mental state. Made me realize why I see people my age drugging their kids without doing any research even in terms of what the pills are supposed to fix. Pills are like college, everyone does it so why ask questions?
Ubiquitous internet has been a disaster on the whole, but one windfall has been the public revelation of the NPC phenomenon. A foundational tenet of Liberalism holds that each individual is a rational actor who understands himself and his interests. We now know that just isn’t true of 80% of the population. Which is a fatal blow to democracy.
Without fail the people campaigning for the craziest, insane solutions to today’s problems are all uniformly on drugs. That isn’t an exaggeration. It used to be common sense that someone who needs to medicate themselves to think properly is not someone who should have a deciding factor over the day to day decisions of others.
And yet here we are.
I don’t miss my childhood that much because I was raised by lukewarm Catholic parents in a lukewarm Catholic church (which is all but dead) in a lukewarm diocese. I shouted out JPII and Mother Theresa which made me think I was a good Catholic in the late 90s despite engaging in vice.
Flash forward today and I’m in a traditional diocese attending traditional masses and I try to grow in my faith every day. I love learning about the faith and passing on that knowledge to my child and their future siblings. I’m so happy that I don’t have to raise them in the same lukewarm way that my parents did and I can dare to be weird and different.
And it warms my heart to know I’m not alone. If Christianity was irrelevant in the 90s, it was an absolute punchline at the expense of the New Atheist movement and Comedy Central in the 00s. To see fellow members of Gen Y walk away from the Thorazine drip of the Pop Cult to either convert or renew their faith is what makes this the best time in my life.
We’re in an Empire in the midst of a managed decline by people who hate us. We will suffer materially but our faith and zeal will grow. Maybe something better will arise from the ashes of America but even if it doesn’t, we know that this life is not the end and God commanded us to not fear death. Luke 12:4.
Amen and amen!
We are at the point where some are steering back towards faith again, or plunging face first into the mire of Brand worship. There is very quickly becoming no third group.