I’m Sorry Boomers, But We Gen-Z Aren’t The “Weak Generation”

If you were born any time after 1995, then you’ve probably heard the phrase “You kids have it so easy nowadays” thrown at you by one of your older relatives.

It’s a phrase that the older generation has been saying to the younger generation since the dawn of human civilization. Whether it was the lack of a certain technology, a conflict, a famine, or whatever affliction they had in their time, the older generation always seems to think that they had it harder than the younger generation.

Hard times are good at defining your character. However, they do not do that automatically. How you react to those hardships is what defines your character. And it’s exactly in this relation that there’s a disconnect between the younger generations and the older generations.

Most Boomers believe they had it harder than us Gen Zers just because they didn’t have the internet growing up, or the latest medical technologies, or because they grew up in a rural environment as opposed to an urban environment. It’s all irrelevant at the end of the day, as it isn’t the availability of amenities that defines the good or hard times, but how you go about life. And in that regard, most boomers absolutely failed.

The “Hard Times” That Weren’t All That Hard in Reality

Boomers reached their prime age during the 60s and the 70s, a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity for most of the world (barring a few exceptions).

If you ask an older relative what they were doing in their 20s, you’re likely to hear endless stories about their escapades. Where they went with their friends, the stupid s**t they were up to at the time, how they worked a part-time job and were able to afford to travel around the country because of it.

Ask a Gen Zer what they’re doing in their 20s nowadays, and you’ll likely hear that they are either working all the time or are unemployed, not of their own volition, mind you.

Most Gen Zers do not have the privilege of taking it easy in their 20s. The world we live in today has become so hostile to human life that if you do not work a full-time job + a side hustle, then you’re likely never able to afford even the most basic of necessities.

Sure, we may have all this new technology and a breath of possibilities. However, when we cannot afford the technology and the possibilities only lead us to a dead end, what’s the point of even having them in the first place?

The reality of how much the world has changed becomes apparent once you hear the kind of advice older relatives give you in regards to different life situations.

Want a job? —” Just go up to the manager of the company and ask for a job.”
When your grandpa tells you something like that, it’s not that he’s become senile. It’s that it was that easy back in the day, as they didn’t have the entire vetting and interview process we have to go through nowadays.

You want to meet someone and start a family — “Just go up to them and talk, that’s how I met your grandma!”
Yeah, grandpa, that sounds fine. Except that most Gen Z-ers don’t have the time to go out and socialize because we have to work most of the time. And even when we do go out to socialize, we’re so exhausted from the work week that we cannot physically invest the time and energy needed to bond with someone.

You want to buy a house? —” Stop buying coffee every day! That’s why you don’t have any money!”
Yeah, grandpa. A cup of coffee costs about $2. And the price of the average house has jumped up to $50.000. I don’t think skipping a few coffees will be enough to save up for that.

The Careless That Became Those Who Couldn’t Care Less

The 60s were the time of the Hippie movement and the great cultural revolution. An entire wave of change came and swept away the rigidness of the past.

Whereas their parents’ generation strived to create a world with some sense and order following WWII, the hippies opposed all that rigidness and ushered in a new wave of individualism and liberty.

However, individualism and liberty are only beneficial if you pair them with personal responsibility: something which the boomers never did during the cultural revolution.

Most boomers trampled on the ideas of the past because of their rigidity, not even bothering to think for a moment why those ideas were so rigid in the first place. They were careless and they were self-centered, which earned them the moniker of “the ME generation.”

Living in an era where they could afford to be so careless and self-centered, most boomers developed the notion that everything revolves around them, the me, the I, the person who’s in control of this machine. Anything outside of that is irrelevant, and they proceeded with that notion well into their 30s and 40s. However, unlike in their 20s, when they were just a bunch of hippies smoking weed at Woodstock. Now, in their 30s and 40s, the boomers were the next generation of business owners and statesmen.

Acting upon their “me me me” mentality, the boomers shaped society into what it is today. An utterly materialistic and self-centered cacophony. They removed the essential building blocks of civil society that limited each individual’s liberties for the betterment of the whole, leaving only a husk behind.

I’m referring to Thomas Hobbes’ idea of the social contract in the previous passage. For those who are unacquainted. Hobbes believed that humans invented the social contract, a formal and informal agreement in which we would limit each other’s rights for the betterment of the whole. He believed this to be the case because he observed how destructive human nature can become whenever we do not temper our desires and instead unleash them upon the world.

And unleashing them is exactly what the boomers did in the 60s, starting with destroying the cultural bindings that maintained society, and then slowly moving on to the legal bindings. The cultural revolution of the 60s mainly happened as a response to what was then deemed “oppressive societal norms. ” The hippies believed that contemporary society was too rigid and ignorant for the new world they were entering, so they attacked and altered the social and spiritual foundations of society. Later, when they got into positions of power, they started going after the legal bindings as well, especially in regards to labor laws and the civil services.

You needn't look further in modern America than the Trump administration’s adamant attacks against the social services in the name of “government efficiency.” Federal programs are being cut left and right, all in the name of austerity and optimization. And if you look at the majority of Trump’s cabinet and especially Congress, you’d realize that most members are part of the boomer generation.

This Is What Hard Time Looks Like

There’s some irony in the fact that most boomers like to say that they lived through the hard times, when in fact, they’re the ones who created the latest hard times.

The thing that characterizes hard times isn’t so much the material aspect of a society, but its spiritual aspect. How it’s people view the world and go about their daily lives.

In previous “good times,” the thing that characterized those good times was societal unity: in thought, action, and outlook. I’ll give an example from the Roman Empire.

Marcus Aurelius is often considered the last of the “5 good emperors.” His reign was the last leg of the Pax Romana, a time of unprecedented unity and prosperity in the Roman Empire. During his reign, Rome suffered massive inflation, the Antonine plague, and had multiple barbarian invasions from different directions. And yet, the Pax Romana held on until Aurelius’ death. Even though Rome was going through all of these calamities, its people still held on to the foundational ideals of the empire and remained united. After Aurelius’ death, all of that ended with the ascension of Commodus, who corrupted and broke Rome’s spirit, just because he was too self-centered and egoistical. Thus began Rome’s hard times, which would last more or less until the Western Roman Empire’s fall in 476 AD.

The point I’m trying to make with the previous example is this. Having material abundance in a society is not sufficient proof that a society is doing well. If anything, having material abundance without the spiritual foundations that are needed to maintain and nurture that society only leads societies down a path of decadence — a path on which we are currently walking.

What the boomers did effectively and what no one can fault them for is that they created the systems and mechanisms needed to create the most obscene level of abundance we’ve ever seen in human history. Where they failed is that they never bothered to do was develop their spiritual foundations so that they could keep society going. Something which has been left up to Gen Z and Gen Alpha to do for themselves.

And here is the main difference between Gen Z and the Boomer generation. Our outlook on life. Most Gen Zers I know are actively working on developing their characters, whether by reading self-help books, mentorships, etc… The same can be said about our desires to develop our world views. Most Gen Z I talk to daily subscribe to a unique ideology that isn’t part of the norm, regardless of whether that’s a political, a religious, or even an economic ideology. Gen Z is actively trying to create a new image of the world and its future that isn’t just some generic conception of peace and prosperity, but an actual society that is based and run upon a simple foundational principle, whatever that may be.

This stands in stark contrast to the conversations I’ve had with people from Gen X and the Boomer generation. Most of my conversations with those people simply boil down to hearsay about other people or outright conjecture about different things. It’s very rare to find someone from the older generations with a “sane” mentality, and if you do, it’s almost exclusive among those who have been in academia or other related fields that involve a lot of questioning of the world all their life.

Now, I understand that my previous points are purely based on personal experiences, which is not always an accurate representation of the world. However, when you see certain patterns for years on end, you cannot help but notice them.

How Gen Z Is Having Its Own Cultural Revolution

If you bother to look closely enough, you might notice that Gen Z is creating its own cultural revolution. However, unlike the one in the 60s, which was characterized by massive gatherings and protests for liberalisation. The modern cultural revolution is characterized by mass introspection and a return to form.

Instead of writing a long-winded paragraph, I’ll list a few trends as examples:

1. Gen Z is often cited as being the However, the reason we’re difficult to work with is that we see how all our work just goes into lining the boss’s pockets. And even if we do receive compensation for our work, oftentimes it barely covers the basic necessities.
2. especially during social outings. This might be a curious phenomenon to cite, but it offers an interesting insight into how Gen Z perceives social gatherings should go. Instead of having intoxicated orgies, most Gen Zers prefer to remain sober and just talk to the people they’re socializing with. The thrill of exchanging ideas is a lot more fulfilling and healthy for a society than intoxicating yourself as a group.
3. It’s often joked that Gen Z has absurdly high dating standards. While in reality, that’s how dating standards should be. For a society to thrive and the next generation to be better than the previous generation, both parents have to hold each other to the highest standards, morally, culturally, and skillfully. Fornicating like rabbits with anyone, anywhere, only leads to the expansion of the thoughtless masses, not to their enlightenment.
4. There’s a resurgence of various ideologies among Gen Z that is unprecedented compared to recent decades. I’d even go so far as to claim that more young people are discussing Fascism and Communism nowadays than they were in the early 20th century. It’s the same for religious movements like Christianity, Islam, and Spirituality. Gen Zers are actively exploring different ideologies to find the one most suitable for the future, as we’ve all come to accept that the current materialistic society that we live in is not suitable for the future.

In Conclusion

Hard times are inevitable. Good times are equally as inevitable.

Human history goes in cycles, however, we can all learn a bit from the previous cycles to make the following cycles a bit easier. And if there’s anything that should be learned from the current cycle, it’s this.

Abundance is not all that it’s cut out to be. In the last 60 years, more existential threats have been eliminated than ever before in human history, and we have more resources available than ever before. However, despite all of that, we are all still vehemently poor.

We’re poor because we’ve forgotten how to live with each other and the world around us. The cultural revolution’s push for liberalization freed us from the chains of society, only for us to thrust ourselves with our newfound freedom into the grips of vice.

Thankfully, there’s hope on the horizon. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are actively working to restore some sense and form into our societies, however uncanny and unconventional our tactics might look. We’ll see in a couple of decades how successful we were, and whether we were successful in creating a better society than the one we inherited.

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