The recent post on Generation Y drew a lot of comment. One of the most prominent questions pertained to why so many members of generations after X are seemingly unsalvageable. As Bruce Lee taught us, understanding the problem points to the solution. So let’s examine Gen Y’s besetting vice: terminal nostalgia.
As the Nintendo generation drifts through middle age, their innate religiosity—suppressed since adolescence by schools and the media—is finding an outlet in the Pop Cult. More and more, a whole generation now venerates plastic idols, video imagers, and four-color sacred texts. Global megacorps sell Gen Y a repackaged version of their own childhood, and they obsessively gobble it up.
Related: The Nostalgia Jukebox Effect
One common aspect of undue attachment is seeking an unhealthy substitute due to the absence or deficiency of some good. The beta male clings to his wife to make up for an absent or aloof mother. The paraphiliac indulges in perversion because he was deprived of rightly ordered sexuality by abuse. The drug addict chases the sense of wellbeing denied him by isolation and poverty.
The flip side of this false coin is that if you want to understand Gen Y’s attachment to the past, ask which genuine goods their nostalgia substitutes for.
Related: The Nostalgia Bar
In short, Ys make idols of their childhood IPs as a way to once again make manifest the goods robbed from them by the passing of their childhood. And that childhood took place in a supermajority white, Christian country with intact families.
Generation Y is especially vulnerable to the Pop Cult’s siren song due to their upbringing in consumerist, materialistic households defined by transactional relationships. They may have gone to parochial schools Monday-Friday and church on Sunday. But their parents’ self-absorption, too often ending in divorce, scandalized them away from the one God who made them and who can make them happy.
Related: Aughts Nostalgia
As a result, many Ys are spiritual vagabonds, left to roam the strange landscape that replaced the world they were raised to survive in. They were never taught the self-mastery or courage needed to withstand Clown World, so they cling to scraps of driftwood from the shipwreck of Cultural Ground Zero.
That’s not to mock or belittle Gen Y. Remember that they are the Mugged by Reality generation, raised in gilded pleasure domes only to be cast out of paradise into Purgatory without the tools to adapt.
Related: The Idea of a Mall
Lest you think that’s hyperbole, consider that two close Gen Y friends gave almost identical accounts of their rude awakenings to the real world. In both cases, their transactional relationship model Boomer parents kicked them out of the house at eighteen. Both lived in pest-ridden dumps where making rent meant they had to walk miles to dead-end service jobs each day. Both had to suffer those squalid conditions for years.
Happy ending: Both are successful now, with families of their own. Their parents pat themselves on the back and say, “What did we tell you? Letting you sink or swim turned out for the best!”
Both of my friends disagree. What the school of hard knocks did was nearly destroy their ability to trust anyone–including God. In reality, they credit the friends who banded together to lend them a hand when their own flesh and blood turned their backs.
Not all Ys found their way back to healthy relationships and a place in society. Not all found their way back to God.
Helping them find their way again is up to us.
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The “School of Hard Knocks” mentality is a corruption of an old saying, “experience keeps an expensive school, but fools will learn in no other”. In other words, there are some people who will only learn things the hard way (this is true). This is true. The problem with the “bootstrap” folk is that they think everyone are fools who will only learn by experience (which is dangerous false).
“The problem with the “bootstrap” folk is that they think everyone are fools who will only learn by experience (which is dangerous false).”
It’s also a very convenient rationalization to let your grown kids live in poverty and/or be raised by wolves.
Intelligence is learning from your mistakes. Wisdom is learning from others’ mistakes.
“You were betrayed and abandoned by the people who were supposed to love you the most. Now get in line and pay your taxes. Imagination time is over, you’re not a kid anymore.”
The reason I think the Gen Y name stuck for so long, even with people trying to rationalize it away, is because it perfectly encapsulates what happened to this cohort.
The generation was raised on products and material goods, robbed of and familial and philia-based relationships through poisonous trends such as zipper blues, and then were told, over night, that none only does none of that matter–neither do they. Not only that: Generation Y doesn’t exist. You never existed. You were always called Millennials the entire time. You were raised on cell phones, social media, reality TV, and iPads. So because you never existed, you can just fade away into nothing, join the faceless crowd, and become another replaceable cog in the machine. You don’t matter and you never did.
What also shouldn’t be overstated was the post-9/11 invention of geek culture dovetailed with the nu atheism gambit in poisoning all over the above tremendously. All of it was an attempt to retreat back into childhood, where they could be free to consume their products in utopia forever. Because what future is there otherwise? The boomers made it very clear that there is nothing else and they exist for no reason except to plug holes in the dam they completely mismanaged. The last ditch attempt to throw Gen Y into the meat grinder ended up being a disaster for all involved.
We’ve already seen the attempts to “fix” the mistakes made since the mid-90s. All of them failed and died out. Every new trend of the last 20 years has been tried and left abandoned when it hit a dead end. As the options dwindle away, Gen Y is more and more being left with two paths forward. Either bending the knee to those old ways they needed to shed, or living off mind-altering substances and procedures for the rest of their lives. There isn’t anywhere to hide because none of this is going away anytime soon.
I know I said I’m more hopeful on this subject than most (which is a rarity, believe me) but when I remember the absolute low that was lockdown world and the bottoming out that happened in its wake, I can only see a mindset shift finally starting to take shape. Again, the ’20s are the decade of transition and change. What happens next could really be anything. That’s why we can’t let up now.
I like my generation, faults and all, and I want us to get beyond this. It’s time to realize your grandparents were right and to get on with it.
The war is ongoing, with advances on some fronts and setbacks on others. It’s far from hopeless but a long way from over.
I make a point of checking in on Normie at semi-regular intervals. On one hand, comments that would have gotten you shunned as a pariah mere months ago are now the subject of GrillerCon memes. On the other hand, there is still much talk of going back to the 90s on the wave of an imminent Trump landslide. Most folks still live in fantasy land.
A popular topic of debate on our side is where to concentrate our efforts: opposing the Death Cult, their fedora-tipping enablers, or Con Inc grifters. Based on long observation, the answer is Con Inc, hands down. Any Death Cultists who could have been talked out of it would’ve been by now. The nuAtheists waddled into irrelevance years ago. It’s the Boomer-baiting hucksters at outfits like the Babylon Bee, Daily Wire, and The Blaze who are keeping Normie’s false hopes alive. “Buy these magic tickets for a cruise with the walrus book guy to keep the Chicoms away from your 401(k)!”
That’s why the series of cascading PR disasters among the controlled opposition is the best news of the past few years. Putting the illusionists out of business is the best way to break the spell on Normie.
It might be because there is no real normiecon scene here (or any real con scene) but I have noticed the harsh split coming up between those who realize Something Is Wrong vs. those who don’t care about anything. All those in the second camp, regardless of age, are all consuming more and more drugs and alcohol and are basically imploding in on themselves. This trend accelerated a lot since 2020, especially with the suicide spike, and it’s a real problem that needs addressing. How to do that beyond divine intervention is a mystery to me.
The blissfully unaware normie that just wants to grill, at least in my observation, doesn’t really exist anymore. You’re either full on board for destruction (self and otherwise) or you are consciously trying to figure out solutions to right the ship. It’s our job to support the latter group for the obvious reason that we’re not suicidal. Like I said in the Kid Who Reads post–we’re not young anymore and things are changing whether we want it to or not. It’s time to be who we need to be.
Feel free to correct me, but I think the “boot-strap” Boomers will get the last laugh on their way into the grave. To be who we need to be, we will have to heed that advice. The only difference is, we will have to pull ourselves up with the intention of breaking the cycle and not letting our kids have to do the same. In the same token too, we will pull ourselves up so we can help pull other people up too. Like Brian says all the time – Have one hand on the rung above the pull yourself up and the other hand reach down to pull the next person up.
“Lest you think that’s hyperbole, consider that two close Gen Y friends gave almost identical accounts of their rude awakenings to the real world. In both cases, their transactional relationship model Boomer parents kicked them out of the house at eighteen.”
This was happening to Gen X as well. I had an acquaintance at 18 whose parents kicked her out, unwilling even to fill out the tax paperwork for college. My sister in law moved out at 18 due to an extremely poor and neglectful relationship with my in laws. My in-laws would charge my future husband and I full market rent for a rental house in my senior year of college, and require a rental contract. They did not 100% cut off all support, but there were moments like having a car stranded in the mountains at 19. Ultimately, it would 100% my would be husband’s problem to fix somehow getting his only transportation back.
That said, being kicked out 10 years previously meant it was much easier to find an affordable apartment. Fast forwarding 10 years later would have made all that misery much worse. Ugh, what nightmare for Gen Y.
Currently, many of my Gen X parent acquaintances are housing their now grown children, including us. Of those who have moved out, it seems to be willingness on their part, some help, and an excellent starting job. We are having to explain to 3 living Boomer grandparents that housing is simply unaffordable. Withdrawing support now especially as it costs us next to nothing extra is something we are not willing to do. Responsible adult children are more than welcome to save for cars/down payments etc.
Mostly that results in snark about them never leaving home and/or sincere encouragement to save to the travel the world. (AKA we should throw them out to go on leisure junkets). Thanks for the advice, but we’re good.
“What the school of hard knocks did was nearly destroy their ability to trust anyone–including God. In reality, they credit the friends who banded together to lend them a hand when their own flesh and blood turned their backs.”
There are whole libraries of books I’ve never read. One of them is called “How the West Really Lost God” by Mary Eberstadt The summary is that there’s evidence that Western family life has been in decline since the French Revolution, which goes hand in hand with the secularization of the West. It’s hard to think well of God the Father if you don’t think well of your father. Then poor parenting with a weaken faith in God begets more poor parenting with a weakened faith God.
If it’s worth the reading, I can not tell you. I’ve never read it. *grin* However, the concept is certainly intriguing.
You might enjoy ‘Faith of the Fatherless” by Paul Vitz.
Gen-Xer here. We still have two of our adult children living with us. Our oldest is married and out on her own. Both the other two want to move out when they can, but things are so dang expensive; we told them to stay as long as they needed.
Bless you, sir.
Likewise: our girls know how insane property is in the UK, and eldest feels guilty that she can’t move out. I’m having none of it. They stay until they can get out themselves, and if they can’t, well at least there’ll be someone to look after us/the wife in times to come.
The 20th century is over.
What else is to be done, but let them work jobs and somehow try to save to leave? I understand the problem is way worse in the UK because they import more people than housing they build every single year.
But it’s even hit us Americans too. We’re getting flooded, the entire system is desperately holding up housing prices, and there’s inflation. My middle daughter is having day dreams about moving out and I understand. But I don’t know when or how it happens.
As a newly married man back in 2005, I noticed how much our standard of living as we were just starting out fell off from what I experienced as normal growing up. Going from a big single family home to a little two-bedroom apartment makes that pretty hard to miss. We still remember it as the sort-of-sketchy place we started out. We only had one income then because my bride was finishing her master’s degree. I just figured everyone had to step down in order to climb back up again. We lived in that apartment for a year, then found a house to rent, where we stayed for the next ten years. We are still renting, eighteen years into the marriage. At the time, I thought we were living with normal, with the consequences of our own foolishness, or with the various things which have come our way. It didn’t occur to me then the world we were raised to live in was disappearing around us. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m Gen Y, married to a Gen Xer. My sister (also Y married to an Xer) has managed to climb back to what Mom and Dad made normal for us growing up. She and my brother in law both work and decided never to have kids, which probably explains that, at least in part. Mom and Dad are late Boomers, both born in 55. They had the two of us. Sister and husband had 0, on purpose. My wife and I lost 1 and never managed another. Our daughter would be ten now, if she had lived. My family seemed to have dodged the worst of the Boomer stuff, but not the failure to breed part. We’d chose to be struggling with kids rather than comfortable without them, all things considered. I thought we’d be dealing with teenagers by now, not dreaming of some other semblance of parenthood.
House ownership has been a dream for many years now, but has never really been within reach. Now that the economy is imploding, I really doubt it ever will be. The most we can hope for is to rent a house again, and then work on the things downstream of getting back into a house, like fostering or adoption. One can’t save for a down payment on a house when the prices of food and housing are both rising far faster than one’s household income. While this is frustrating enough for us, I can only imagine how scary and frustrating it is for younger couples hoping to buy a house, or needing to sell so they can buy. My best friend, also a Y, has been married for about a year. His wife, a Millenial, will have their first child any day now, we hope. I feel for them more than for us, because he’s got a house he needs to sell so he can buy a better place for his new, growing family.