The Very American Tradition of Generational Slander

If you skim today’s business media, it’s evident that there’s nothing more worthy of discussion than millennials. Blogging out a tapestry of generalizations, one dimensional assumptions and the defaming whining that stitches the comment section together forms a very cohesive message; the younger generation is the worst yet. After years of bitter nitpicking on my LinkedIn timeline I’ve come to the personal conclusion that there’s something traditional, almost instinctive in generational slander. What will be always seems to be worst than what was.

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” - Socrates

Younger people have been described as the worst generation yet from the beginning of western civilization. Still, dark age complaints about young people who would rather take on reading than till a field, and renaissance youth and their lazy new habit of writing letters only peppered the history of human complaints. Generational slander didn’t become a journalistic constant until the birth of an entitled new nation in what would come to be known as ‘The New World’.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often cited as the father of American literature. Not in reference to him being the first American writer, because there were many before him, but as credit to his drive to finally carve out a uniquely ‘American’ writing style. In his definition of what the new writing identity would feature, Emerson cited generational conflict as a key and consistent feature in American writing. Appropriately so, as America’s remarkably individualistic culture left a lot of room for parent-child conflict on a small scale, and generational conflict on the larger scale. Such conflicts centered around a younger generation's 'out with the old, in with the new' ethos and an older generation's anxiety about how core that same phrase is to American thinking.

The years after Emerson’s declaration featured a flowering of hypocritical complaints about coming generations of young people. In 1853 they were “Full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self..”. In 1942 “...(possessing) the general tendency.. to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet..it's now the vulgar mob that gives the tone”. The contemporary classic “This new Gen X crowd is entitled.” which dominated 90's newsprint. Then my favorite, The New Yorker and TIME both describing young Baby Boomers and today's Millennials as a group obsessed with ‘‘ME"..

After studying the history of generational slander, I came to the conclusion that it's our generation's duty to break this ritual cycle. Because If Socrates can become bitter old hater, it will take a special person to break the tradition of generational slander... and who’s more special than Millennials?