Baby boomer here, I have often listened to people jump on the young and heap all sorts of scorn on them.
But lets take a different slant on the 'entitled' generation as we have come to know them.
Did they fight WW1 and WW2? Nope. They were not even the slightest vestige of an idea yet, as their parents were likely just children at the time.
My father went through the Depression the real one not the pathetic excuse depressions the economists like paint as being so bad. It scarred him to the point he simply couldn't comprehend the point of going for a drive with the family for the purpose of a lunch out at someplace NOT a fast food store. He just never got to live as a youth where food could be taken lightly. He was working at 16, not so that he could afford to buy gaming equipment or go to college. Nope, he was supporting his mother. He had no youth really, he graduated to adult at 16.
My mom knew what it was like to worry if her dad would come home from the war. Not a war that was on the news every evening, not a side show political event like Iraq was or Afghanistan, but a global world war where millions were dying and whole countries destroyed.
I grew up in the shadow of WW2, the cold war, what a wonderful time it was, never knowing if there would be a world next year. It was a time of great unrest and great change and great events. But as awesome as walking on the moon was, it was still a world full of nerve wracking worry. Korea and then Vietnam, and then all the other events, Cuba, all of the central American wars. East vs West was everywhere in my youth. I recall watching the Gulf war and too me it was no more than dinner theatre. Sorry, but it doesn't compare with real wars. A mouth piece named Saddam, who had lost worth to the people that created him, had to be put down by force. Many men died thanks to that decision, but today we mourn each individual as a news item, back in WW2, men dropped in tens of thousands some months at places like Omaha, and Tarawa and Stalingrad and Salerno. And then Afghanistan and we seem to have forgotten the men we are fighting, we put them there too. And all the men that have died trying to fix something we actually created to begin with. My youth was spent surrounded by the results of the previous horrible wars, my later years are being spent watching the results of pointless wars.
So much of what is wrong with the world, was made my my grand father's generation, put into motion by his father's generation, and then the machine was run during my generation. That there is even a world still here is incredible. My generation though is responsible for the massive exploitation that resulted from the innovation of my parents generation. That exploitation has created the marketplace that exists today.
My son is not responsible for the automobile domination of our planet. And he is barely old enough to drive one. He is not responsible for the pollution that has been created by all of the industrialization created by my parents generation that is being exploited by my generation. My son is not responsible for the water loss due to corporate greed, the forest loss due to corporate greed and all the other forms of environmental harm. He isn't scarfing down burgers on the way to the office or work by some other name. He is not the one responsible for urban blight, nor the creep of suburban rape of farmland. That is a combination of my parents and my generation.
My son has arrived to a ransacked world, that has been fought over, and despoiled, and abused and polluted and slowly going climatically insane. The jobs have almost dried up, the debt load is getting grossly irresponsible, the internet and gaming have provided us a means to hide from each other, but it wasn't my son's generation that created the internet, he merely likes using it. I don't actually feel very good about the shape of the world that I am leaving to my son.
They call them the entitled generation. Sadly, I think they are indeed entitled, but rather than dump on them for being seemingly spoiled by so much consumerism, I think they are entitled to an apology. Because, they very likely will be inheriting a world that is bankrupt and out of luck and out of time. If the glaciers are any indication, the clock might be ticking to a very dangerous time.
My advice to anyone under 20. Grab what you can, smile and enjoy it while you can, because, you might not have a lot of time left.
The bill is about due, and it looks like none of my parents are going to pay the bill off and I can't say that my generation wishes to, and the generation between me and my son, the 30 somethings, I am not sure they realize the situation they are in. Stop assuming your retirement plans are going to happen, I am not sure mine will either. They are already unsure my parents will have enough.
