A recent Cracked article, 5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation, got passed around by my Gen-X peers. It’s a hell of a read, and another reminder that some of the most insightful pop-culture analysis comes from what was formerly a low-rent MAD Magazine.
You need to read the piece to fully appreciate how thoroughly we’ve set the stage for our spectacular, slow-motion failure. Worse, we can’t pin this one on a papier-mâché donkey or elephant. It’s a game of follow the leader where everyone’s lined up and walking in a circle. I certainly played my part. I fancy myself a free thinker, but I parrot enough shit masquerading as faux-profound to be culpable.
Occupy _______
One reason why I’ve become so enamored by the Occupy Wall Street movement can be symbolized by – hands-down – the best quote in that article, a virally circulated (though unattributed) conversation:
Me: I just get so pissed off by the older generation.
Therapist: Why?
Me: Because when I grew up, we were force fed the idea that if we didn’t want to be ‘flipping burgers at McDonalds’ then we better go to college.
Therapist: And?
Me: And now we’ve gone to college, have degrees, can’t get a damn job, and the same people call us entitled assholes because we refuse to flip burgers!
Therapist: Touche.
Here’s what we did wrong (along with my personal take), but please, read the original piece.
- We made our youth ashamed to take jobs that involve manual labor.
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. That’s a quote from John Gardner, by the way. Remember that flipping burgers bit above? It’s a fancy way of saying that we’ve scorned commoner work. That’s for serfs. We’ve gone all job-snob on the backbone of our nation’s infrastructure. - We implied that college would naturally lead to a good job.
Which resulted in flooding the educational market. We, sometimes subtly, sometimes arrogantly, expressed that laborous work is only fit for the likes of Jimbo Jones. With tons of kids in college – many of whom would probably love to be tradesmen - we generated educational inflation that gave rise to diploma farms. - We added seven years to being a teenager.
What did we expect? They’re living at home longer because they have to go to school. Hell, even if they’re employed, that’s no guarantee they can cover their expenses. The pathetic man-child archetype is a common, modern gag for a reason. - We created the notion that entertainment has no monetary value.
Napster. Torrenting. Yeah, we have our reasons. Rationalizations are readily on hand. And yeah, it drove the technologies that my family now rely upon for entertainment, namely NetFlix and Hulu. But it’s been harrowing, difficult, and a big legal hassle. Feeling entitled? Yeah, I’m feeling entitled. I did my part to wreck the entertainment industry, just like the industry itself did theirs. - We removed every reason possible to go outside.
We used to go outside, not because we were really concerned with our health, but because that was the only place to do fun stuff. Hell, I’m from among the first generation of computer users. I experienced this first-hand without the internet. I spent late nights typing ship-routes into my local BBS’ game of Trade Wars. That and a lousy diet go hand in hand. We accidentally developed technologies – industrial food processing loaded with salt and sugar, and wicked cool video games (among others) – that would make it very difficult for you to motivate yourself to keep in shape and eat right. Now we have an obesity epidemic and record levels of diabetes.
Your welcome
The Aftermath (Creative Commons image by becky bokern at Flickr)
So that’s the five, and it makes me queasy. We’re deep inside a spectrum of a yet-to-be-written date-range that describes this period. It’s hard to see social change from the inside. Some are for this thing, some against that other thing, but it feels like so much flailing of the arms while careening into a deep hole.
When the eventual reckoning materializes, we’ll wrench our guts, stick to our guns, and accept or oppose the new values-package, whatever it ends up looking like. The next technological/infrstructural New Deal will be argued about for decades, just like the last one.
The generational component cannot be understated, even though I’m far from understanding it. All I know is that the largest birth cohort in American history appears to have gone off its nut, and many of us who came after it are scratching or nodding our heads, respectively.
I feel as though a bunch of institutions, through no fault of their own, have set up a complex path of dominoes that they wish to admire in some pristine, untouched state. A bunch of jobless, desperate, and increasingly angry toddlers are stretching their flicking fingers, though, and I have no good answers for them. Only an “I’m sorry” before I watch more of the things fall down.
That point 5, in whatever variant it comes in, always reminds me of how much it used to suck to be a nerd. For 200 years before the internet, nerds would still stay inside, only they’d read books instead of actively engaging with … anything. The most mental activity involved in previous generations (unless you took it upon yourself to mess around with rockets or chemistry sets that would be illegal now), was daydreaming.
Or you could go outside and burn calories by struggling to breathe while a bully sat on you.
That aside, I was fully on board with the 80s movie theme of realizing that 80-hour corporate jobs were BS, and I still think that such jobs are BS. (It wasn’t a new idea then, either. The Haymarket protestors in 1886 chanted “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for what we will!”)
But the thing is, it’s difficult to even get a job in a craft these days. I’ve got friends who would love to be master plumbers, except the economic and institutional union walls make it hard to get in, slanted heavily in favor of Boomers, and hard to find work (I think by now we can agree that new construction is not the way out of the recession). I’ve got friends with JDs who can’t get hired as vacuum salesmen, because they’re “overqualified.” I see the jobs they would be qualified for being offered only to those with 7+ years experience, and at entry-level pay.
I think what’s really going on is that the Boomers have not just continued to hold power, but have used that power in self-seeking and shortsighted ways.
I get grumpy when people paint Gen Y with all this “entitled” talk, and you’re right that the younger generation is what they were raised to be (in my mind, that’s things like proactive, involved, and enthusiastic). In many ways “entitled” and “spoiled” are labels that show up when a Gen Y is being told she isn’t yet old enough to help out in a meaningful way–which sort of plays against the whole “Gen Y won’t grow up” angle. I think that Gen Y would mostly love to move out and have a solid 9-5, buy a condo and all that (and then quickly fill their extracurriculars back out with sports, hobbies and volunteering, as they always have), but not being able to get a 9-5 that will cover the cost of living keeps kids at home.
It’s a generation that isn’t seeking acknowledgement so much as it’s seeking to be allowed to make a difference, and constantly told that they’re not eligible because they’re not old or rich enough.
My heart aches every time I read another sign or hear another story about how these kids don’t want handouts; they just want jobs, and, as you said, to make a difference. It grates on me to catch snippets of conversation that dismiss this reality. And, I swear, if I hear one more person dismiss OWS protesters as ‘hippies’ I’m going to punch them in the mouth. Aside from being dismissive and condescending, it’s wholly inaccurate, and a sign that certain among us are clearly missing the point.
Very well put, Erik. I always value your insights and contributions.