I say blame the generation before, no matter which generation, as they reared the current generation of scallywags and degenerates who make up the current mass of wasted youth. Sure, we can blame the boomers as the Millennials' parents, but Gen X owns it for Gen Z.
Since Gen X (and Z) has been predictably brought into this discussion, I wanted to propose a potential throughline specific to them, tracing from their parent’s generation (Silent) to now their children’s generation (Z).
Millennials were raised by Boomers who were raised by the Greatest Generation (born roughly 1900 – 1929). Their value in home ownership and education, and specifically a college education, is a very pronounced throughline for all three generations.
Gen Z is
mostly raised by
Gen X who was
mostly raised by the
Silent Generation (born from roughly 1928 – 1945). For all three, tracing the (d)evolution of their Work Ethics/Ethos is more difficult to pin down, but all over social media Gen Z is vocal about refusing to believe in college or a career; they have given up on work, don’t want to work, and I find this to be their most unexpected trait. In defense of Gen Z, Covid lockdowns broke down their educational paths and now, with many settling into broke adulthoods, they face a stagnant economy, high inflation, and feel priced out of existence.
But how else did we get here? Looking back to the Silent Generation, they were raised during both the Great Depression and WWII. Retrospectives tend to characterize the Silent Generation as conformist and traditionalist, but I think this forgets their learning of self-reliance the hard way, through the lean years of the Great Depression when there weren’t government bailouts or loans to hold everyone over until better days. The Silent Generation’s value in hard work was driven by surviving on dependence on self over anyone else.
Now taking the views of their children, Generation X values a variant of self-reliance that is more accurately labeled as independence. Raised in much more profitable economic conditions that have lasted through their careers (Recessions notwithstanding), they’ve had and taken up their greater options to enlist their careers in Corporate America. But even so, I’ve found Gen X to favor “working for yourself” over working for the “system” or the “man,” especially as Gen X came of working age in the corporate America of the 1990s. Gen X brought the word “sellout” into vogue, as in
don’t sellout to the system or the man. Nevertheless, without the survivability struggles of their parent’s generation, Gen X has been able to most visibly apply their sense of independence to tastes in music and film;
Alternative rock, and
Indie music and film are Gen X shrines.
Keep in mind, Gen X is also known as the Slacker Generation, a moniker arising from their cynicism toward corporatism and well-trod career paths. In other words, the Gen X work ethic wasn’t applied within the confines of the system, an independence which I believe reflects an evolution of their parent’s self-reliance. To repeat, it seems the Silent Generation’s resolve to survive the Great Depression (and WWII) through a work ethic strong enough to maintain self-reliance through poverty later evolved into Generation X valuing a working independence outside the system. So, what about the next Generation?
The next evolution seems to be a vocal chunk of Generation Z not only not valuing work but not wanting to work at all. Again, in defense of Gen Z, they’ve woken up much earlier than Millennials have to the diminishing ROI of a college education that loads students with six-figures of debt. And I can’t blame Gen Z for not looking forward to working a growing number of salary jobs that won't pay enough for a house or reap the financial freedoms enjoyed by earlier generations. As a result, Gen Z appears in an early sort of mid-life crisis, they are clearly airing their frustration en masse across their social feeds, and already sounding like grumpy old men:
