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Fewer men and women attracted to each other. Lots of hopelessly single individuals.
More competition for everything, e.g. jobs and housing.
Rising cost of everything. I went to Red Robin to get a burger and 1 beer the other day and the bill came out to $25 (beer was $5.50, got a $1.99 "entertainment fee" for reasons unknown).
People "working" longer hours (not necessarily being more productive, but staying at the office for 10-12 hours either out of a sense of obligation or because they really are overworked).
Little social cohesion; technology makes it so easy to not need others in your life, but people are feeling isolated as a result. Back in the caveman days, if you tried to go things alone instead of being a contributing member of a tribe, you would die.
Technology creating problems that need to be solved with more technology. For example, thanks to technology, most jobs are not physical labor anymore, but as a result people need to buy gym memberships to exercise, which adds an extra hour of work to their day.
I'm curious how a Millennial would suggest these perceived societal problems are resolved or at least mitigated. Would you care to answer? Even if offering suggestions on only one or two of them?
What about debt and along with that the futility of a college degree to guarantee a meaningful productive sustainable career path? i.e. A future of living in mom and dads basement.
And then there is the prolonged adolescence that 6years of college on someone else's dime seems to promote.
Look at these forums - full of people who can't get over a friggin election that will barely effect them. Social media has increased individuals perception of their "bubble of influence" where they somehow get offended by a Brexit vote ... or whther someone in a state across the country votes to disallow men in a women's restroom!
We all get caught up in it - even me, how recognizes this 'disorder' - still must consciously disconnect and NOT CARE about crap that I cannot control.
Fewer men and women attracted to each other. Lots of hopelessly single individuals.
More competition for everything, e.g. jobs and housing.
Rising cost of everything. I went to Red Robin to get a burger and 1 beer the other day and the bill came out to $25 (beer was $5.50, got a $1.99 "entertainment fee" for reasons unknown).
People "working" longer hours (not necessarily being more productive, but staying at the office for 10-12 hours either out of a sense of obligation or because they really are overworked).
Little social cohesion; technology makes it so easy to not need others in your life, but people are feeling isolated as a result. Back in the caveman days, if you tried to go things alone instead of being a contributing member of a tribe, you would die.
Technology creating problems that need to be solved with more technology. For example, thanks to technology, most jobs are not physical labor anymore, but as a result people need to buy gym memberships to exercise, which adds an extra hour of work to their day.
1) There's no reason to think fewer men and women are attracted to one another. As for the rise in singleness, most people are told they are successful by achieving material things. Remember what Bush said after 9/11? Go out and shop. This hyper consumeristic mentality means people choose to focus on their careers rather than personal relationships.
2) This sort of ties into the last point as well. With more and more people simply aspiring to climb the corporate latter, the competition becomes heartless.
3) Indeed. Some would chalk this up to inflation, and that's partly true, but when adjusted for inflation, average incomes haven't really risen in the past few decades. Nominal growth has increased quite a lot, but real income and wages are stagnant or declining. People's pending power is dropped.
4) With point 3 in mind, this is highly problematic. People work more for less. What's more, going back to point 1, many families have two working parents. Conservatives warn us of the consequences of abandoning traditional family values, while simultaneously tell us unions fighting to increase wages so perhaps a family could afford the lifestyle they're told will make them happy with just one person working are a bad thing.
5) It's not really the fault of technology. The culture of today would have similar effects if the most advanced mode of communication was radio. It's that Americans, millennials in particular, all want to 'got their own way.' It's an apolitical position that diminished the benefits of social cohesion.
6) I think you're identify a real problem, but not putting it in the proper context. It's not the fault of technology that a machine can build a car faster and with more precision than a person. This is not the issue. The problem is that technological development and social development has diverged. It was pretty widely believed in the early 20th and even 19th century that technological growth, if used in the most logical and efficient way, will lead to more people having more time to invest in their families. Instead, people have less. There are certainly a number of reasons why we've all been lead to think this is good. One could be that Marx was a prominent person advocating the technology will lead to more leisure, and since he's a communist, that's bad, so too are his ideals. Another is probably the remnants of the protestant work ethic.
I'm curious how a Millennial would suggest these perceived societal problems are resolved or at least mitigated. Would you care to answer? Even if offering suggestions on only one or two of them?
I have a few:
1) Socialism. I know many think it's a bad word, and most don't seem to fully understand it. Socialism is giving the workers (not the government) control over production. The exact form of socialism will very. If I were to be realistic, it would be the "socialism" of Western Europe in the form of democratic socialism, which is, in my mind, not significantly different than Keynesian economics. What giving workers control does is 1) allows them to democratically determine wages, 2) allows the allocations of resources in a way that is most beneficial (contrasted with most profitable) and 3) will eventually streamline productivity; production will be based on need, as opposed to the current state of overconsumption.
2) End Post Modern thought. Post Modernism, in a nut shell, is the idea that all words can be open to interpretation. It's like saying all moral views are consistent or valid, when this is clearly not what anyone actually in practice believes. Post Modernism encourages people to become politically indifferent, saying things like "well, politicians all lie so who cares?"
3) Bring back liberal education. And I don't mean Rush Limbaugh liberalism, but rather what college used to be. Most college students leave never having read The Second Treatise of Government, or Leviathan, or Rawl, or Nietzsche, or Aristotle, and odd are, if they did, they really didn't understand it. College has been turned into a jobs training program, leading to more thoughtless people who are at least productive. But they're stupid and politically indifferent, and not really of any fault of their own. Post modernism made them that way and somehow, this ideal is everywhere now. In order for this to happen, the first two points would have to occur to some degree.
Look at these forums - full of people who can't get over a friggin election that will barely effect them. Social media has increased individuals perception of their "bubble of influence" where they somehow get offended by a Brexit vote ... or whther someone in a state across the country votes to disallow men in a women's restroom!
We all get caught up in it - even me, how recognizes this 'disorder' - still must consciously disconnect and NOT CARE about crap that I cannot control.
I want to give a brief history lesson: The Roman Republic turned into an empire as it became more invested in the various interest groups in Rome. Plato said a failed democracy would lead to demagoguery and a tyranny of the masses, something the founding fathers also feared. I imagine these two things sound somewhat familiar, so I urge you to avoid saying things like "it won't effect you" or "it's out of my control" because neither are actually true.
A year and a half ago my husband and I look a month-long sabbatical and did a 5500 mile road trip in my Subaru from Austin all the way up into Alberta, winding our way through all the major national parks along the way. We had no television and extremely limited internet the entire month. We hiked, swam, fished, attended a bunch of ranger talks, read books, and played board games. It was serenFREAKINGdipitous.
Our takeaway from that trip is that people are devoting entirely too much time trying to keep up with everything happening in the world as a result of 24 hour news and social media pounding crap into our minds. We spend more time online (in forums just like this) keeping up with current news, trends, arguing with strangers, and living our lives more through the fisheye lens of social media than we do simply enjoying the in-person company of the fellow human beings who are a part of our physical daily lives. All I've seen as a result of this lifestyle switch are people growing increasingly unhappy by things that aren't important or that they cannot change. Using social media to create a "brand" or image they wish to present but also growing depressed or envious by the images of others. Checking out for a month was a huge privilege that served as a wonderful "reset" for us both.
Since having this "epiphany" we have made some great changes to our lives. We no longer watch 24 hour news drivel. We kicked the habit. We have scaled back dramatically on time spent on social media as well. We attempted to keep our election coverage to a minimum of fact-based data and as little opinion-based garbage as possible. Are we 100% successful in this approach? Of course not, as evidenced by my simply posting this here. lol. But I have learned that it's perfectly ok to read up on topics and not respond, or respond minimally and then let it go, and that it's not an indictment of my entire being if people disagree. Any time I feel myself getting pulled into anything toxic, I find it much easier now to release the string and let the balloon fly into the atmosphere. Our household is much calmer and more pleasant without sitting in front of the tv and growing outraged over things that don't affect us one single bit.
I recommend a break away from electronic life and a foray into nature for anyone feeling overwhelmed with life. It can truly do us human beings good to break away from modern life now and then and rediscover the things that are REALLY important in life.
I think pretty much all of the generations feel the same about the next. But Also...this time is different. Technological change is happening faster then at any other point in history.
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