Shift the Paradigm

I finally finished reading a book that offends me, upsets me, and articulates my worst fears: Generation Me, by Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. Anyone who works with young people knows how self-centered, selfish, uncaring, disengaged, dishonest and entitled they are in their teens, but it drives the nail home to read the results of fourteen years of study into today's Me generation. As a secondary educator for the past 30+ years, my fervent hope and prayer has always been that they will outgrow that stage, develop caring and compassionate natures that allow them to transcend the egocentric "me, me, me," and flourish as mature, responsible adults who know and adhere to The Golden Rule.

Well, that isn't going to happen anytime soon, according to this author, which is a shame because the focus on self to the exclusion of anyone else is a dead-end to life in many ways, usually beginning with a sense of despair and ending with full-blown depression which no amount of shopping/spending/partying can overcome. If you have pretty much had anything you ever wanted -- and more -- by the time you turn 18, what else does life have to offer? Who is going to sustain the materialistic gratification you have come to expect? Certainly not the self-empowered young person who has never had to earn anything that has come into his/her life, including food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, recreation, and discretionary income. Why work for it if you can get it without lifting a finger?

The media has created an affluent lifestyle that is the expectation for today's young people. When an individual graduates from college, it is expected that a starting salary will be, minimally, $50k, with full benefits and paid vacation, an expectation that cannot be met in today's tough economic times. Gone are the days of starting at the bottom and working one's way up the ladder of both responsibility and success because that does not pay for the fully-furnished apartment, the hot car, the hip wardrobe, the happening clubs, and the endless array of electronics it takes to keep today's young person tuned in to the world.

Whereas you and I keep our work and our home lives separate, today's young people bring the outside into the work place and take offense when told to turn off the blue tooth, the IPod, the Blackberry, and stop texting. Young workers today think nothing of doing personal business on the company computer and resent being told to conduct personal business on personal time and equipment. There are no technology boundaries in a wireless culture that sincerely believes that if I want to do it, I'm going to do it. My college courses are constantly disrupted by students who take personal calls and/or keep up a running stream of texting during class. When a student brings a laptop to class for notetaking, I have to devote additional time to monitoring the screen to be sure that the student is not surfing the web in what (s)he considers downtime during class, but I call class discussion, group work, or an in-class assignment.

Watching TV during the past few weeks has opened my eyes to just how conspicuous consumption is these days, with the luxaholics, the high-end weddings, the expensive nightlife, the designer clothes, the incredible vacation destinations, the indulgent beauty salons, spa treatments and cosmetic surgery, the wives living it up on their husband's corporate image, the Super Sweet Sixteen parties that cash out at half a mil and a new $50k vehicle. The refrain is "I want it," and the answer is always "I got it." It's all about me, seldom about you, and the concept of there even being an us is laughable. Any TV show that involves multiple people quickly degenerates into total dysfunction, as if no one learns how to behave in kindergarten these days.

I've always believed that it is the order of life for the younger ones to step into the shoes of the old-timers, knowing that they will do it differently, but they will get the job done just the same. I no longer am as firmly convinced that is so because they not only don't know what has to be done, but far too few of them have the skills for doing it if they do figure out what to do. The old saying about who's going to build and repair the electronics applies to far more than just the tekkie toys.

On the back cover of the book is the sentence: "GenMe has created a profound shift in the American character, changing what it means to be an individual in today's society." My response is "that's not good" because they've also forgotten how to be part of that society. It cannot be all about me because there is an us, too, and one cannot survive without the others.