It seems like there's a lot of dislike and contempt for "boomers" from "millennials" [View all]

[cali]

Last edited Tue Dec 3, 2013, 12:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Or at least from a certain subset of them. I kind of think that that it stems, at least in part, from a weird sort of generational envy and frustration.

Boomers were able to have a real impact on the culture in a way that millennials haven't been able to- and that's certainly not the fault of millennials, but it isn't the fault of boomers either. The culture and political system are far more difficult to sway or change now then they were 40 years ago.

This highly critical subset of millennials appears to believe that the boomer generation is responsible for a host of problems- from climate change to to Wall Street. They have swallowed the MSM meme that's been around for decades that this is a greedy, heedless generation.

Admittedly, I'm part of the boomer generation, but I don't think I'd feel differently if I weren't. I don't look at millennials in such a broad, overreaching way..

In any case, there are good things as well as negative attributes to the boomer generation. The negative ones get a lot more press, but boomers started the organic food movement, they helped to end the Vietnam War, they were on the front lines of the women's movement, the fight for GLBT rights and other battles for civil rights.

A bit about Millennials:

Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe believe that each generation has common characteristics that give it a specific character, with four basic generational archetypes, repeating in a cycle. According to their theory, they predicted Millennials will become more like the "civic-minded" G.I. generation with a strong sense of community both local and global.[30] Strauss and Howe's research has been influential, but also has critics.[31]

Jean Twenge, the author of the 2006 book Generation Me, considers Millennials along with younger Gen Xers to be part of what she calls "Generation Me".[32] Twenge attributes confidence and tolerance to the Millennials but also a sense of entitlement and narcissism based on personality surveys that showed increasing narcissism among Millennials compared to preceding generations when they were teens and in their twenties. She questions the predictions of Strauss and Howe that this generation will come out civic-minded.[33]

William A. Draves and Julie Coates, authors of Nine Shift: Work, Life and Education in the 21st Century, write that Millennials have distinctly different behaviors, values and attitudes from previous generations as a response to the technological and economic implications of the Internet.

Surveys by the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study of high school seniors (conducted continuously since 1975) and the American Freshman survey, conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute of entering college students since 1966 showed the proportion of students who said being wealthy was very important to them increased from 45% for Baby Boomers (surveyed between 1967 and 1985) to 70% for Gen X and 75% for Millennials. The percentage who said it was important to keep up to date with political affairs fell, from 50% for Boomers to 39% for Gen X and 35% for Millennials. "Developing a meaningful philosophy of life" decreased the most, across generations, from 73% for Boomers to 45% for Millennials. "Becoming involved in programs to clean up the environment" dropped from 33% for Boomers to 21% for Millennials.[34]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials