Simon sounds a bit like a classical evangelist. It’s like he sees millennials as helpless chicks in a bucket, in need of rescue. I don’t agree and think Simon might need some saving. My buddy Maarten send this video to me. I loved it! It made me think. Please watch it first, then read my little rant. 🙂
So, I think he’s got this millennial thing the wrong way around. It sounds like he thinks millennials have no defence mechanism to cope with the ‘real world’, ‘normal’ social mechanisms and above all have no idea what’s really important in life. That view seems weird to me, or at least exaggerated and his attempt to help them seems overly protective.
Faux anxiety
All the anxieties he talks about for example. Millennials are not being hit by their phones, abused by beautiful selfies of their friends or Stockholmized by Facebag! The smothering love and care of their parents are not making them jump of bridges, nor is positive reenforcement and effort-medals making them entitled little princesses. Everybody is an entitled little princes at some point in their life! That’s fine!
People are resilient, flexible animals and live lives differently than their parents. And millennials are different than people like Simon!
BTW: I intentionally don’t use the word ‘generation’, because I think it has to do with whether or not you can view change with an open mind. Generally, when you grow older, having an open mind is though. Millennials definitely have the advantage, because of their age and the lack of sense of history.
Generational gaps are quite normal
There is a disconnect between people like Simon and millennials, and that’s quite obvious and quite normal. It’s called a generational gap, or whatever. Every pair of generations separated by big social- or technological- jumps have this radical divide between the two. AND WE COPE. BOTH ENDS OF THE GAP END UP FINE!
Of course we all get some cuts and bruises from the friction, but we all will be fine.
Mostly btw, it’s the older generation that finds itself triggering the divide with forceful demand for conformism. The ‘younger’ people don’t understand that and fighting back, reenforcing their identity as a group and individuals.
We already experienced this before and after the big wars, draughts, mechanisation, financial depressions, social and sexual liberation, computerisation, introduction and decline of believes and cultural views and everything in between.
Simon skipped the gap
To me it sounds like Simon is the one in distress btw 😉 And rightfully so! He never went through a (real) generational gap. He was probably spoon-fed prosperity and just want similar things for his children, just like his parent did. But he can’t.
He just found out the generation after him doesn’t want the same dreams that he and his parents dreamt. They want to disregard the past and embrace the future, but also face a different future. The propped up prosperity bubble build by the three generations around Simon has been popped and exposed as a pipe dream.
Up is left, black is love, truth is evil and Simon is part of the problem.
The millennials are not ingrained with a sense of gratitude that people like Simon inherited from parents that likely have seen some part of a war. Perhaps they do have a better, less clouded view of the world, but at the least it’s different, and fine!
Pretentious and Xenophobic BS
How Simon is wallowing in his well put, but quite belittling narrative on the lives of millennials seems to me as a detached, pretentious and xenophobic. He might be partly right, but I think the millennials probably have the best tools to explore and thrive in this world. They’re the boss now.
I can imagine this might be frightful for Simon and the like and to his credit, it seems like he wants to help the millennial by inviting him to his comfortable world.
Folks like Simon seem to perceive life in an different way than millennials, they cope with life, problems and lovely things in different way. That’s fine! Trust them!
Simon needs a hug, not millennials
This lecturing Simon gave us in the video, it sounds more like victimisation of normal people that have a different view on life, have different tools to socialise and have different needs for a up and coming society change.
And Simon and other people with similar views, the ‘old guys’, perceive their coping mechanisms as alien, impossible and unobtainable. Their not, it’s not, it’s fine, they’re fine. Simon should be too.