A cost benefit analysis of millennial nostalgia
We’ve entered a world many of us didn’t ask for or see coming. So what now?
This. Is. Our. Fault.
It is time for us to stop looking into selfies and look into the mirror.
*The writings, thoughts and opinions here in are the authors own and represent in no way any organization, group, or service that the author may or may not be a party to. To include any state, federal, or non government entity*
Nostalgia, member berries, misguided thinking leading you to assume your generation came up in better times. I’ve never really been that guy, but I suppose I’ve reached the age that I want everyone to get off my land. In an astronomically short amount of time, it seems America has lost many of the things that were quintessential in the American experience many of us had growing up. Because of that, we millennials and boomers are in an uncomfortable position in which we must reorient ourselves to fit into a world many of us didn’t want nor did we ask for. Faith, unless the right brand, is lambasted and men and women are branded fundamentalists, not for going out of their way to prosthelytize, but for simply holding a belief. Mike Pence is an example of this. Masculinity has become toxic, wanting to be the bread winner, standing up for women (in the wrong way), standing up to bullies, hell even being in shape too much, all are evils in today’s world. In the post 9/11 fear and outrage have supplanted courage and optimism as core values. Think that is untrue? Find a person with a CDC prayer candle burning in their house and ask them to play devil’ advocate to their friends, I say ”their friends” because we are no longer encouraged to co-mingle with people of differential thought.
These are simplistic examples admittedly, but aren’t really my point. What are we, as people who grew with a value set we are being told is archaic, supposed to orient ourselves in a new world. In my humble opinion, we first must humbly and fully acknowledge that the fault here is wholly at our own feet. We allowed schools, TV, and social media to raise our children. We sought social validation rather than enlightenment through faith. We have shed the old God, whose promise was one of delayed gratification, and bowed to the alter of dopamine, likes, and back pats. Rather than approval of our family and friends, we began to look no further than the forward facing camera for the person to produce these back pats. Narcissistic behaviors used to get you diagnosed by a practitioner, but now it’s expected daily.
This. Is. Our. Fault.
Tossing your child in a government run school, and being surprised that those schools began to preach the expansion of the powers of that very same government is our own fault. Slaving oneself to a 24 hour news cycle designed to elicit reactions, repeatedly, what did we expect would happen? There must always be a villain and a hero; what better way to build that than to get people to internalize a hero complex and vilify the others. Well we’ve gotten to where the others are 50% of the country opposite of us.
Instead of defending one's faith, something held sacred enough to be enshrined in the constitution, we have incrementally capitulated to every demand of those who have no bearing on our actual lives. In an effort to fulfill a nebulous goal of pleasing everyone, the faithful have bent, torn, and broken their faith to appease a modern perspective. Am I saying we are wrong for no longer stoning people? Of course not, what I’m saying is that, regardless of one’s opinion of religion, it established a moral base for one to build off of. People are now afraid to even say they are a Christian without an immediate qualifier about abortion, gay marriage, or whatever else the mob will target one for.
Okay? So what now? To me there is only one solution.
Fix it.
We must stop seeking social validation in the place of the internal moral compass we have suppressed. We must stop telling ourselves and our kids that the literal hormones their bodies are making are saying the wrong thing. Stop vilifying the thought “act like a man” and pretending we don’t know what that means. I recently read a comments section, the vitriol some schlub was getting for saying “man up” was astounding, and this was on a military subreddit. Everyone knows what one means when they say man up, they mean exemplify traditionally masculine characteristics; courage, keeping one’s word, being humble while being strong, quit whining. This is known and socially accepted and the concept that this is now somehow violence is an attempt to split us from not only our mores and norms, but each other further.
Eventually, each person will be confronted with the scary, uncomfortable situation where only one thing must be done. It seems simple, but it may cost one their friend, a sibling, their “ratio” of upvotes or likes, possibly a job but it is one thing. Other parents may not like you or your classmates may ostracize you. Unfortunately I’m speaking from experience, and I’m still trying to learn how to do this, but It is time for us to stop looking into selfies and look into the mirror. We can’t do anything else until we accomplish this singular action. I must, you must, each of us must stop being a coward.
"We sought social validation rather than enlightenment through faith." Eyup this shows me all I need to know about where this is coming from.