This blog’s ongoing project to beat the boundaries of forgotten generations has drawn a surprising amount of interest. Especially posts dealing with Gen Y and Millennials.
You would think these observations self-evident, but Madison Avenue has consigned these cohorts to the memory hole since they’re not longer profitable to ad targets.
Also against expectations, the Gen Y category has made something of a comeback. It stands to reason that with the death of the internet becoming impossible to ignore, the lines between pre and post-internet cohorts would sharpen.
Those who reject Gen Y on the grounds that it’s just a way for Millennials to deny their much-hype faults ignore that most discussions of Gen Y focus on Ys’ vices. In fact, examining each cohort’s besetting sins highlights the stark differences between them.
While Millennials are notorious for their opinionated self-importance, Ys tend to be tractable and self-doubting.
But we can add another fault to Ys’ list of common vices.
A transactional view of relationships.
Take this series of surveys from 2013, for instance. The researchers left out the Gen Y category, but the 18-32 year-olds they called “Millennials” closely align with Generation Y. The median age of first marriage in 2013 is a near match for Ys’ 24-34 age range back then.
That marriage data bears special importance, since it shows a steep decline in marriage among Gen Y.
Just as telling, Gen Y has higher divorce rates than Gen X, despite also having lower marriage rates.
It should surprise no one that Ys have lower rates of church membership too, and trust people less overall.
Gen Xers take flak for being cynical loners, but Ys are quantifiably more antisocial.
Millennials are known for being oversocialized to the point of seeking consensus on the smallest matters. So how did their elder siblings’ penchant for introversion emerge?
For the answer, we must look yet again to the Baby Boomers.
Wracked with guilt for neglecting their eldest offspring from Gen X, Boomers overcompensated with their middle kids. But instead of spending less time at work and more with Gen Y, Boomers bribed Ys with plastic toys and plastic food.
The trouble with paying people to like you is it teaches them that love is conditional.
If your first and most formative relationship is based on being fed and entertained, you come to value all relationships only for what you get out of them.
That’s why Gen Y apostates complain “I just wasn’t getting anything out of church.”
Ditto for divorced Ys. “He wasn’t making me happy anymore.”
And male Ys lack real-life friendships. It goes back to their first interactions with other boys, many of which revolved around what a playmate brought to the table.
“I’m heading to Mike’s birthday party. His mom bought him the USS Flagg and a whole set of G.I. Joes!”
“Brandon’s folks got him Sonic the Hedgehog for getting As on his report card! I’m going over there to play it!”
“Sam got a VCR for Christmas. His dad’s renting a bunch of tapes and letting us spend the night!”
Those mercenary friendships ended when one party could no longer extract value from the other.
Even today, members of Gen Y will tell you that all relationships are transactional. When pressed, they’ll argue that even parents get something out of having kids.
You can easily dismantle that argument by asking if they’d disown their kid if he became a net negative.
That transactional attitude betrays Ys’ weak or absent virtue of religion. God is the Perfect, Absolute, Self-necessary Being. Claiming that we limited beings can offer something He lacks is a non-starter. He gives us everything, including life itself.
Transactional views of relationships are inherently coercive. They imply that both parties must keep bribing each other to continue the relationship.
That’s manipulation, not love.
Instead of basing relationships on exchanging material gifts, learn to give the gift of yourself.
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“Instead of basing relationships on exchanging material gifts, learn to give the gift of yourself.”
Even that seems to be a challenge for some because they have nothing to offer. It harkens back to a saying I adopted a long time ago “Don’t be yourself, be better.” If yourself is currently some guy who flakes on his “friends”, has few to no redeeming qualities, that person’s self is by no means a gift. Not trying to validate the previous statements made about Gen Y with transactional relationships, but there is some nuance here.
I’d say if people want to make the most of their gift of self, they need to do some soul searching, but people can trip on the where and how to look. Some succeed by finding God and pursuing meaning in their lives, while others go the Eat, Pray, Love route leaning into their narcissism as the path to self actualization. That road is a dead end and invites doubt and depression to sink in, but I digress.
TL;DR – some people aren’t good enough to offer a gift of self and have to first admit they’re a crappy person, then resolve to make changes.
The loathsome phenomenon of men flaking on their friends like vapid Tinder hoes must mark a civilizational low point. It used to be that a man’s word was his bond. What then to make of men who habitually say they will be in a specific place at a specific time, then ghost without warning?
The worst part is, in my experience, it’s never been ghosting over Tender hoes. As if the people I knew could get them.
Edward Sri put it best – people are of the attitude that they are always looking for something better.
There’s been a lost social etiquette of rescheduling. If we are friends and I can’t hang out with you because I’m busy on the proposed date and/or time, I will tell you when I am available so we can do something. Your average person will half reject an outing by saying they don’t know what they’re doing that day (which is a dumb excuse) and with the other spend that day hanging out with other people who asked them to commit that day. Have that happen enough and you start to figure out who your friends truly are.
I’ve been on the brunt end of this too much which is why I have few friends and refuse to initiate plans.
The great irony of our time is that people want loyalty but no one wants to be loyal.
Hats off to you!
Most of my friends who have kids ended up with them accidentally (there’s a couple of exceptions, thankfully.) Before that they would say that they didn’t see the point in kids, when it’s so much work and you can get just as much affection from a cat or a dog. Thanks be to God that they’ve changed their minds after actually having kids, but the pre-child mindset was 100% transactional.
You see anti-kid attitudes in Millennials and Zoomers, but I don’t think it’s coming from the same place. For Millennials its wrapped up in social concerns: why contribute to overpopulation, who would want to bring a kid into such a messed up world, etc. For Zoomers I think it’s just that they don’t believe that they could end up in a committed relationship where children are even a possibility in the first place.
It’s taken over 50 years but we have officially managed to destroy a key part of humanity which is socialization. We don’t know how to properly interact with our fellow man because too many arbitrary rules have been put between us, that and the tiniest offense can invoke steep consequences. Take the generations of divorced parents and you have children who are ignorant of healthy relationships due to lack of exposure learning. They don’t know because they just don’t know.
A breaking point will be reach where either a whole culture will die out or it will burn the rulebook that makes everyone too afraid to talk to a girl at risk of incurring the wrath of HR or the police.
As folks who are more plugged in to the tech scene have observed, pretty much every technological advancement in those last 50 years has served to reduce the need for direct human interaction.
Karl Popper wrote in the 40s about such tech driving the transition from an organic society to an abstract (or open) society. His protégé George Soros has brought it to fruition.
> It’s taken over 50 years but we have officially managed to destroy a key part of humanity which is socialization. We don’t know how to properly interact with our fellow man because too many arbitrary rules have been put between us, that and the tiniest offense can invoke steep consequences.
There should be rules for social interaction. There used to be decent rules. Then the boomers decided the rules were too restricting and through them all out. Then later generations realized that rules were actually necessary and have been trying to create (mostly bad) rules out of the ruble the boomers left them.
“When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom. You do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”–G.K. Chesterton