Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Millenials vs. Boomers

I read a piece by Andrew Romano. I was very taken with his discussion of the collaborative vision-hungry millenials who vote for Barack Obama and the somewhat cyncial realist boomers who go for Hillary. His blog serves as the political voice of the millenial generation, the voice for change. I began to wonder whether or not we could understand something of climate change in these terms. Many of the boomer generation want to solve the problems of the environment by substituting technologies, or products while maintaining the same old consumer dependent economic structure. These millenials, however, are closer to my heart and seem to understand that the climate crisis will require full scale change - in how we live, think and behave; a move perhaps to a more collaborative economy, one that cooperates with the limitations of our planet. Full disclosure: I'm neither boomer nor millenial, a member of the lost generation in-between.
I felt saddened by Romano's piece as much as enthusiastic. The millenials - now I know to call them that - that I work with organize around a type of nihilistic narcicism - and a kind of crude sexuality, obliterative partying and a wierd dissociative materialism. Yet, at the slightest encouragement they sit up for hope. They want something to be required of them, to be of service, to know something of what it means to be inspired, to believe, to experience authenticity. I think we took this away from them when we took the earth and nature away from them when they were children. It isn't too late to give it back. More on this to come.
In the News: Other people are catching on to the reality that climate change is happening now, to us. We are the earth's face, and understanding the relationships between our minds and our environments can help navigate climate change.

1 comment:

Habanera said...

I haven't read Andrew Romano's piece (please fix your link, Susan), but the millenials will have a lot of cleaning up to do.

The first global-scale study of human influence on marine ecosystems was released today. We have soiled, contaminated or damaged almost every part of the ocean.

Life originated in the primordial sea; it cannot survive without it.