“The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
This quote may sound like a Baby Boomer berating a Millennial, but the writer lived more than 2,000 years ago.
These are the words of Socrates.
Every generation is bound to incite the wrath of its elders. As we age, we then become the target of the younger generation.
This is nothing new, but the current Boomer vs. Millennial feud stinks of fomented discord.
“Don’t trust anyone over 30” was the catch-phrase of the generation born after World War II, the Boomers who are now, according to the AARP, “cast in the role of aggressor in a war against their children and grandchildren that they never declared and had no intention of fighting.” So, the counter-culture generation that came of age in the 1960s is now the supposed target of a new generation’s judgment and spite.
From social media to The New York Times and the Associated Press, stories of the friction between these particular generations continue to make headlines, but the Boomers who fueled the movements for civil rights, women’s liberation, environmental protections and a slew of other changes may have more in common with people born after 1980 than the authors of this false narrative would have us believe. Both generations inherited a world they sought to change. Many Boomers did their part; surely the Millennials will do theirs.
Whether written to sell newspapers or to distract us from the real issues at hand, the media-created Us vs. Them generational war ultimately benefits no one. The war is useless, unless the goal is to divide. This
false dichotomy, this manufactured dissent, only serves to separate us even more at a time when Americans are already so deeply divided in so many ways.
Australia is on fire. War with Iran is a distinct possibility. A presidential election is looming.
None of these problems is generational. We are all in this together.
Let’s act like it.
Robbi Pounds is the staff writer for The Graham Star. She can be reached by phone, 479-3383 or email, rpounds@grahamstar.com.