The More Things Change…
by Miki Saxon
the more they stay the some.
Does this sound familiar?
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
The result of a new study? The words of a trusted expert?
No, it’s a quote from Socrates (469-399 B.C.).
Just as the Boomer generation was defined by the actions of a large minority, not all Boomers did drugs and dropped out, so the millennial generation has been defined by another large minority.
But they are a minority.
New patterns show they may not be as self-absorbed as they first appeared — maybe as a result of ageing.
But a very different picture of millennials emerges from what may be the most illuminating literary project of our era, the Pew Research Center’s sequence of reports on millennials. The 2010 edition, subtitled “Confident. Connected. Open to Change,” offered an X-ray of its first wave, the “roughly 50 million millennials who currently span the ages of 18 to 29.”
After all, you wouldn’t expect a 29-year-old’s attitudes and goals to be the same as an 18-year-old’s.
Socrates’ words show two things clearly.
- Every generation has been sure that the following generation will be the downfall of the human race.
- Every generation has been wrong.
Flickr image credit: Ben Crowe
