Generations pass
Last week, Penelope Trunk (of the Boston Globe) posted one of the most interesting blogs I’ve read in a while related to generational differences in today’s society and workplace. An excerpt:
The victories of Generation Y will not look like the Boston Tea Party or Kent State. They will look like this Iowa caucus: Gen Y, playing by the rules, and winning.
My friend Alicia had forwarded the posting on to me, and it was so strange that it came following a long conversation just a day earlier I had with a colleague about generational differences particularly in the area of racism and systemic change. In fact, it was that colleague who had the best summation of today’s change:
Many baby boomers have been ‘fighting’ for so long we don’t know how to stop and assess the ‘victories’ and ‘changes’ that have already occurred in our society.
I see it at work. I see it with my friends. I’ve seen it growing up — my mother’s best friend likes to poke fun at me for a remark I made when I still required others to wipe me: “Does it matter?”
Of course it matters, but that gets followed up by another question: “So what?” And there’s the root of the friction between the generations. The outgoing Boomers think the so what means a fight. The Gen Xers think the so what means proving themselves on the backs of others. And the incoming Millennials think the so what is working together with what is, imagining what can be from it, without spending a dizzying amount of time decrying what it isn’t. In the words of Trunk, GenY is seeking its mandate to “do things differently, within the established structures of power.”