A Battle Of Ideas about Generation Y

The weather outside may have been blustery and wet but the atmosphere inside the Barbican last weekend was a rousing whirlwind of sharp wit, impassioned opinion and fervent discussion. The 9^th Battle of Ideas certainly did not disappoint with its latest weekend long series of debates, covering everything from technology, education and healthcare to politics, the law and culture. The complex layout of the labyrinth-esque Barbican Centre was fit setting for the gnarly, polemical subject matter within.

I was lucky enough to attend the whole weekend as part of a film crew with WORLDBytes, a volunteer-led “citizen TV channel” dedicated to advancing knowledge and broadcasting new ideas on challenging issues. My team were shooting two strands of debates: “Institutions in Crisis” and “Generation Wars”.

A particularly spirited debate we filmed on Sunday, and one I have heard discussed regularly by my peers in their mid twenties is that of the baby boomers and their impact on our future. “Honey, did we bankrupt the kids?” offered some vehement opinion as to whether us young people need to buck up our ideas and get on with it as generations before us have with whatever lot they were dealt, or if our parents really have left us to inherit a bleak future of debt-driven austerity and dwindling resources.

3 of the 4 speakers (Francis Beckett – author of What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us, Shiv Malik, who wrote Jilted Generation: how Britain has bankrupt its youth and Holly Pattenden from event sponsor Statoil) were adamant that the failings of the baby boomers had left us in a dire state and the young are now paying the price.

Even my parents would agree that many lucky baby boomers lived and worked in prosperous times and are now riding the contented cruise ship of retirement while their progeny are struggling with high unemployment and a debt-ridden economy. But surely one generation cannot be the sole cause of the unacceptable level of inequality that reigns in UK society today? In a shocking report by the United Nations Development Program the UK has the fourth highest gap (beaten only by Portugal, the US and Singapore) between rich and poor out of a list of 23 developed countries. Or at least what we would traditionally have viewed as developed. This has not been caused by a bit of frivolous spending by our parents. This is the result of decades and decades of a system failing the majority of a country.

Source: The Equality Trust, citing U.N. Development Program Human Development Indicators, 2003-6. - See more at: http://inequality.org/inequality-health/#sthash.hC7gpMg8.dpuf

 As a generation Y-er myself I am in no doubt that times are tough for us; what with unemployment in the under 25s hitting 1.09 million recently and entry level roles – even kitchen porter jobs! - requiring significant (and often unpaid) “experience” to even get a look in. However, should we really be wasting our time looking for a scapegoat? And is the culprit really as close at hand as our dear ma and pa? The baby boomers did happen to benefit from prosperous times but they also worked hard to make the most of it. The economic decisions of our parents’ generation is a convenient red herring distracting us from the major issue, and one which is not easy to solve. The entire monetary system has been on the road to implosion for a lot longer than 50 years so in my opinion we should be looking not outwardly for someone to blame, but inwardly at own attitude and our own actions as the future generations.

Firstly: Action.

Until recently I, along with most of my peers, fatalistically accepted our lot and continued to fight against hundreds of other ambitious graduates to nab that precious (and exploitative) 3 month-full-time-unpaid internship to obtain that coveted resource: experience, I now feel somewhat frustrated and significantly disappointed in our acceptance and passivity.

As one silver haired baby boomer in the audience pointed out, young people today appear to be simply parroting the doom and gloom of our elders rather than making our own statements about our future. Every new generation has had challenges to overcome whether it was the post-war rationing of the 50s, high inflation of the 70s, or the dubious fashion of the 80s, but, as is a rite of passage for young people, there was always a process of diverging from the belief systems of one’s parents. Why are we not doing so?

Regardless of decisions made before we were even a twinkle in our parents’ eyes by governments, bankers and corporations, we need to be taking the world into our own hands and claiming ownership of the future however bleak it may seem. Rather than philosophising about the pitfalls of the past and despairing of our helplessness we should be creating new opportunities and, more importantly, new systems to replace those failing us. As the future generation of such a resourceful and innovative species, surely we have the capacity to do something? If we don’t like the hand the current societal structure has dealt us, we should be doing more than just talking about it; we should be coming together to change it, just as many dissatisfied new generations have done so before us.

Secondly: Attitude

The attitude of the youth today seems to be under constant scrutiny by our elders, the media and indeed ourselves. A commonly voiced opinion seems to be that we are a bunch of idle whiners with inflated egos and a misguided sense of entitlement.

The widely read blog post “Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy” certainly seems to agree. It blames our high expectations and subsequent dissatisfaction on the message ingrained into our psyche by baby boomer parents still riding the wave of prosperity that we are each special and can be whatever we want to be. We grew up unprepared for the real world having (apparently) envisioned a success-filled one of flowers and rainbows and unicorns (see below)

“Follow your passion” is the catchphrase for our generation, upping the ante for career aspirations and making a secure career seem old hat compared to the fulfilling career we believe we are all entitled to.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should be striving for anything less, as why should we not expect to be as successful as (if not more than) our parents? It has been the trend for decades now. But perhaps we do need a bit of a reality check. A survey carried out every year since 1966 by psychologist Jean Twenge demonstrates a trend of “ambition inflation” in young people. Over the past four decades, the number of students describing themselves as having “above average” academic ability, drive to achieve, and mathematical ability has risen dramatically. Yet, nearly 50% of students in the 80s said they studied for over six hours a week, while only a third of the class of 2009 did. (Read the BBC article Does Confidence Really Breed Success?)

Ay there’s the rub. Such high opinions of our own abilities but apparently such little desire to put in the same effort as previous generations to fulfil the even higher expectations. It’s not the aspirations that are too high but the attitude that is too lax. We should feel capable of great things and we should continue to strive to find a fulfilling life, whether through a career or other. But we need to remember it’s not an entitlement, there are lots of people as special as we think we are and it’s certainly not going to be an easy ride.

We also need to focus less on individualistic goals and perpetually trying to bang our heads against the brick wall, glass ceiling or whatever barrier this society is proffering. Surely we should be proving our worth, exceeding our high expectations and making the world our oyster. And a new oyster at that. We need to be spending less time on self-analysis and scapegoating and more time on collectively questioning the situation we are in and exploring how we can equip ourselves to change it for our own benefit, and indeed those generations to follow. If this involves an overhaul of politics, economics and power as we know it then we should be talking about it, not just passively accepting the path delivered to us by our forefathers. And let Russell Brand be our leader as he says it all way better than I ever could!