Dilip
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[email protected]> 23 Dec 2020
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Millenial responsibilities.
I have been thinking about when a generational cohort can muster
sufficient influence to move civilization, and what happens when the
forces that compel a civilization to make a decision and navigate come
at a generation faster than the generation can react.
Millenials are unlikely to be the only generation that has to deal with
an aging population of elders who are perceived as ill-equipped to
handle millenial concerns. However, as a member of the millenial
generation, I worry that as our generation ages into senior roles in
society, we will be laser focused on solving the problems that bother
us today and fall into the same bucket of ill-equipped seniors
struggling to comprehend the concerns of the 2050s and 2060s.
Even worse, we might end up being a cohort that completely fails to
organize into a generation worth taking seriously. If video games and
social media kill ambition, if a booming economy seduces our generation
into "safe" desk jobs making presentations and compiling spreadsheets,
if our generation discards history and all its lessons and wastes its
remaining lifespan deriving philosophies from first principles without
success, we risk being yet another failed generation.
Our generation has two responsibilities that we should adopt today.
First, we must ask our elders to teach us their experiences, what
worked for them, what they failed to accomplish and what advice they
would give us. We are a generation that is severely at risk of not
inheriting tribal knowledge that's been passed down to promising young
men and women for centuries.
Second, we must start thinking about how we engage with those younger
than us. It seems very likely that we will not be able to solve
problems that we face in time to make a difference for our generation.
We can however plant seeds today to help solve the problems of the
generations following us when we are able to. If we succeed, we will be
the last generation that faces challenging issues with our hands tied
behind our backs - we can leave behind a tradition of elders assuming
responsibility for the younger members of society instead of being
deaf, self-obsessed, naval gazing failures.
We were taught to respect our elders, but we have all come to question
it as a viable philosophy. Let us be the generation that earns respect
as elders, without having to compel or teach anyone to do so.
