A common denominator of Generation Y is the experience of being mugged by reality. This generation grew up during the last flowering of post-WWII economic largesse and post-Cold War optimism. In an era when every day was Christmas, Baby Boomers’ promise that getting a liberal arts degree would guarantee a place in the middle class made sense to their kids.
Gen Y can be thought of as the checklist generation, and not in the way Conservatives on Facebook mean. Ys’ formative experience of the effort-to-reward ratio dictates that if you get five gold stars on the reading chart, you get a pizza. If you make straight A’s, you get a Nintendo game. If you drink your milk, stay off drugs, and sleepwalk your way to a generic degree, you get a McMansion in the suburbs.
That’s just how it was supposed to work. Nothin in Gen Y’s world indicated otherwise until 9/11, the 2008 mortgage debacle, and mass migration brought reality crashing down on that fools’ paradise.
A generation who’d been conditioned to think of anyone without a white collar job as a loser emerged from the young adult daycare of college to the paradox of Clown World. The cognitive dissonance that set in produced what I call the Breaking.
What does this rather melodramatic term mean? Different Ys break in different ways, but each is symptomatic of a wholesale retreat from grim reality.
Let’s explore a few examples.
Steve grew up in a nominally Christian household that was split by divorce when he entered junior high. He studied computer science in college but failed to land the coveted internship required to get his foot in the door of a major company. He took a job at Geek Squad and had to room with two other guys to make ends meet. While letting his car warm up on cold winter mornings, he would fantasize about sitting back in his dilapidated garage and just drifting off into oblivion. During the aughts, Steve read The God Delusion and spent the decade pestering his shrinking sphere of friends about selfish genes.
Justin had always been aware of Star Wars, but his love for the holy franchise didn’t take root until he got Super Return of the Jedi for acing his math test. He soon took to collecting action figures from the re-released toy line and reading the Expanded Universe novels. Those hobbies led straight into the Special Editions. Seeing his beloved trilogy in theaters for the first time gave Justin the closest thing to a religious experience he’d ever had. He made the local paper for camping out to be first in line for The Phantom Menace and spent the next three years convincing everyone–including himself–how great the movie was. His collection has grown over the years, to the point that he devotes what would have been his kid’s room, if he’d had any, to Star Wars merchandise. He pays for new items, and rent, with superchats from his moderately successful YouTube fandom channel.
Being raised by a single mom wasn’t easy for Kevin. He and his three sisters learned to fend for themselves since their only parent worked all the time. In school, he suffered from social anxiety and never had more than a couple of friends. Going to college for a communications degree saddled him with fifty grand in debt, but it was worth it to get out of his mom’s house. Kevin also learned why everyone from his family to his mostly female teachers and bosses had seemed to resent him. His professors’ lectures on patriarchy and colonization finally cleared up the confusion he’d felt his entire life. Kevin joined a campus activist group. There, for the first time, he felt a sense of belonging and could be around women he wasn’t related to. After graduation he started writing for Gawker. Now a foreign NGO pays him to police Twitter for violent language.
During their weekend visits, Tom’s dad always told him that the secret to happiness was finding a good woman. Since the messaging he heard from his parents and the media implied that all women were perfect, he operated on the assumption that finding his soul mate just meant manning up and being worthy of a strong, capable gal. Despite showering a succession of girlfriends with gifts, praise, and attention, Tom struggled with relationships. Even when he found out his GF was cheating–which a troubling number of them did–Tom always tried hard to forgive and forget. Since he’d been taught that any romantic problems must be his fault, he vowed to work on himself. But somehow, it was never enough. Tom’s 20s passed him by, leaving him without the wife and kids he’d been led to expect. At age 35, Tom finally hit the jackpot and married a great lady with three kids from two prior relationships. Even better, she turned out to be totally trad, insisting on staying home with her kids while Tom worked to support them. Lucky for them, Tom can work lots of overtime since he dropped most of his hobbies and ditched all his male friends in the pursuit of love.
These are just a few representative scenarios. They may not seem to have much in common at first glance, but all re united by a common motive: escaping reality by withdrawing into false idols. The NuAtheist copes with his middling intellect by worshiping it. The Pop Cultist tries to fill the void of meaning left by materialism by consuming more product. The Death Cultist deals with being a nonentity by embracing a negative identity. The Beta Male installs a fellow fallen creature on the throne reserved for God.
It’s been said before, but these hypothetical case studies bear it out: The answer to the crisis of meaning is re-embracing Jesus Christ. When man places He that is most worshipful in the proper place of worship, all other areas of life fall into right order.
That’s not to advise retreat into the equal but opposite error of thinking we can bring the 80s back. A second major cause of the Breaking is Gen Y’s lack of the courage to part with the past and contribute to a fundamentally new future. Regardless, tomorrow is going to happen with our without Gen Y. Their choice is to show up for it or keep wallowing in nostalgia.
Goes beyond analysis into action
