When I recently heard Hillary Clinton say my generation thinks "work is a four-letter word," I saw red. Until then, what we were called -- X, Y, Echo, i, Millennial, or the host of other monikers people have come up with to describe our enigmatic group -- never mattered as much as who we were. Right now, though, it's high time we stood up and were counted.
Books like Strapped and Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young chronicle the meteoric rise in economic complexity that we (that is, most of my generation) who are attempting to get into good schools, graduate, find a job, advance, become viable adults, and perhaps start a family one day, are forced to grapple with. Today's politically conservative climate, in collusion with corporate America, yields an economic paradigm that threatens to sink the majority of us who don't come from wealthy families: living paycheck to paycheck. At best. Which, frankly, sucks. Not to mention there's nothing resembling a level playing field that might give those who start off even lower on the fiscal ladder the tools to help them move up.
This Byzantine fiscal reality makes it more difficult, then, (not to mention a little bit unfair), to so unquestionably and negatively define my generation's social mores. But Jean Twenge, Ph.D., a sociologist and professor, has no such problem -- which is all the more puzzling to me because in her mid-thirties she happens to actually be a member of the group she dumps on. If you subscribe to what she peddles in Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before, you'd believe that our generation is either responsible for, or directly (and adversely) affected by everything from today's decline "in basic consideration for others" (demonstrated by the fact that sometimes people hold loud conversations in hotel hallways) to less formal work environments and "business casual" attire to the 74% drop in paying the suggested candle-lighting fee at Roman Catholic churches. And commitment to jobs or relationships? Forget it. According to Dr. Twenge, we usually Just Say No.
I don't dispute Generation Me's claim that people in my age bracket have high self-esteem, believe in the "we can be anything we want to be" motto and are maybe more self-focused than previous generations. What I do disavow — categorically — is her thesis that those qualities, along with positive participation in our communities and the world around us, are mutually exclusive. And when she says, "Unlike the Baby Boomers, GenMe didn't have to march in a protest...we've been taught to put ourselves first," Dr. Twenge also fails to acknowledge that in today's globalized world, working for the collective good and/or achieving revolutionary societal change is a tad more complicated.
But that's not to say that my generation isn't trying. In addition to being more than willing to work two and three jobs (case in point: for years I worked at a magazine during the day, freelanced in my spare time and then bartended at night) to both make ends meet and our dreams comes true, we slave away at unpaid internships, we readily give up vacations to work relief missions, and are volunteering more than ever. Through our participation in movements like moveon.org and Generation Engage, we have single-handedly revitalized our interest in and access to the political process.
Jean Rohe, the New School University student graduation speaker who scrapped her originally planned speech at the eleventh hour and wrote a poetic protest to commencement speaker John McCain, is the perfect representative of my generation. Maybe our purported self-focus and individuality might mean more micro level changes like Jean's efforts (versus the Boomer contributions to the sweeping socioeconomic shifts of decades past), and while to a certain extent I might agree with Dr. Twenge's statement, "back then [during the 60's and 70's] respect for others was more important than respect for yourself," I think the main difference is not that we care less about others than our Baby Boomer predecessors -- we just happen to be more adept at balancing self awareness and community concern.
So when Dr. Twenge explains, "Narcissism is the darker side of the focus on the self," adding, "All evidence suggests that narcissism is much more common in recent generations," I have to throw up my hands in protest. To equate our self-interest and independence with what she admits is one of the most negative traits in modern psychology, and then explain that its domination in our generation accounts for a higher than normal prevalence of depression and anxiety feels just plain wrong to someone like me, who embodies the resilience and resourcefulness of people my age rather well. And I simply don't feel like I'm an exception.
Hillary immediately apologized for her gaffe, because like my mother, she has a daughter who's been raised to reach for the stars, but also to understand and personify the necessary work ethic -- and human interest -- to make the realization of our dreams actually mean something.
I found it really interesting that at the end of the book, Dr. Twenge conveniently curtails her less-than-constructive criticism of our generation to focus on the racial and sexual progress the Baby Boomers started and we have solidified. She says our generation is less tolerant of inequality than anyone before us and "in valuing the individual, our society looks beyond race, sex and sexual orientation to the talents of each person."
On top of everything else we do, that seems like one hell of a contribution from this self-involved, self-absorbed, non-committal generation, doesn't it?