A Lonely Existence
Once again, author David V. Stewart incisively unpacks the deeper spiritual and cultural implications of a recent post from this blog.
Though his video slightly blurs the line between Gen Y and the Millennials—which makes sense when much of the public remains subject to mass media conditioning—he makes the clear differences come through.
Note to Boomers who pontificate "'Gen Y' is just a name that Millennials who are embarrassed by the latter half of their cohort invented to differentiate themselves." Ys born 1979-1984 are not embarrassed by Ys born 1985-1989. The entire cohort is, however, confounded by Millennials.
Only someone terminally deluded by Madison Ave. snake oil would miss the deep and real divide between kids raised on ubiquitous internet and smartphones and kids who grew up without them.
Related: Marketing Millennials
Generation Y are a generation that was raised by institutions, media, and each other.
You're born, very quickly you end up in daycare or preschool, where you spend most of your time. Very early in life, you're spending most of your time not with your parents. You're spending it with peers, primarily, and peers are not the best guides for developing minds--although you can develop social skills with peers. And so you're kind of learning by blind rote. You're learning through trial and error how to operate social relationships, because you're not with an adult who's managing that stuff.
You go to elementary school; you spend all day in elementary school. Not only do you spend all day in elementary school, you spend most of that day parked at a desk where you don't want to be, doing things you don't want to do, not even interacting with other kids. Maybe you have to go to daycare after school. Then you get home, and you have to do homework. Comes down to it, you're only really getting to see your parents a couple of minutes a day, maybe an hour. You're not spending much time with your parents at all.
Is it any wonder Gen Y is defined by atomization and greater facility with forming attachments to things and ideas than people?
Another reason conflating Generation Y with the Millennial Generation is a category error: Millennials are the herd. Ys are the lonely crowd.
[My generation] was the first generation--while the Xers might've been the first generation raised in daycare, I feel like ours was the first one raised entirely in a completely materialistic and material-focused universe.
In my early 20s I went to a Tridentine Mass, and I was awestruck by the difference between that and what was comparable in a Protestant church. Whereas in a Protestant church everything is focused on your immediate emotional state, not so in the Latin Rite. I never felt, till I saw that, like I was in a religious ceremony. The people executing that religious ceremony believe in what they are doing. They believe in the mystic nature of what they are doing. They believe in the sacraments. They believe in the dogmas of the Church. They believe in God. Everything is true when you're watching that.
Unlike Gen Xers, who grew cynical as they watched familiar institutions fail, and Millennials, who never knew the old traditions and largely embraced the anti-culture, Ys ended up adrift with only secondhand accounts of a functioning society to go on.
It was a lonely existence, contra Millennials’ playdate-rife, consensus-dominated childhoods.
We had to wake up at 6 AM, go to school, sit in a desk and repeat facts that we didn't care about. Go home, do a bunch of busywork homework, go to soccer practice, and go to bed.
And we played with our toys in the margins, and we played Nintendo on Saturdays, and so our nostalgia was for the Nintendo on Saturday; not for any meaningful experience. It was for the moments of meaning awash in a sea of nihilism.
That is why Scott's tale resonated so deeply with my Gen Y readers. Boomers, Jonsers, and even Xers have nostalgia for significant personal, familial, and spiritual experiences--or even a general time or place.
Related: A Gen Y Tale
Millennials experience no profound nostalgia because they have no history. For them, it is always Current Year.
Ys have nostalgia for brightly colored pieces of plastic, flickering video images, and lavishly printed cardboard.
I think it's powerful for us because we had that entirely materialistic upbringing. It was a very wealthy upbringing. We were raised by the wealthiest generation ever, the Boomers and given everything. But what we weren't given was meaning. And what we weren't given were times spent with our parents and extended family that taught us things about the past.
For more of David's keen insights, watch his whole excellent video.
And for mech thrills torn from a classic 80s anime, read Combat Frame XSeed!
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