feedIs Gen Y conservative?
Some digging around on the newsfeed today led me to an article by Penelope Trunk, who has written a book and maintains a blog. She’s pretty damn fascinating — and a good writer –, and I imagine I’ll be linking to her stuff a fair bit.
Today, though, I want to focus on her claim that Gen Y is inherently conservative. Penelope isn’t using the word in the political sense, of course, instead speaking of the fact that, when you get right down to it, Gen Y really isn’t asking for that much.
But here’s what else is going on: Gen Y does not admit it, but their top priority is stability. This is a fundamentally conservative generation.
Her point is well-taken, but I still struggle with it a little bit, perhaps because I am Gen Y and refuse to admit things. Stability, it would seem to me, is pretty high on the priority list for everyone, regardless of generation. (And, to be fair, Trunk says as much.) To really get at the heart of the issue, you have to break down the idea of stability into more precise chunks. That is, is it financial stability we crave most? Career stability? Social & personal stability? Intellectual stability?
To get the obvious out of the way: everyone needs financial stability. It’s impossible to disregard that, even if some of the Boomers actually did for a while. (The 60s will never happen again.) But Gen Y tends to approach it a little differently, since we’re not starting our career while simultaneously buying a house and paying for baby food. As such, we’re able to focus more on other types of stability, particularly the intellectual.
This isn’t ‘intellectual’ in the sense of reading a lot of books or doing science experiments, but rather it’s framed around the notion that Gen Y is, generally, unwilling to sit at a desk and be bored out of their mind for their career. That’s not to say we won’t work menial jobs — I’m pretty sure Gen Y is driving the call centre industry in North America — but we’re very reluctant to do so under the banner of ‘career’ simply to achieve financial stability.
Instead, we’ll work the bad jobs to achieve money to put towards those intellectual pursuits I was talking about. Be it seeing the world, or starting a business, or just taking a summer off to write a novel. I’d frame it as emphasizing individual stability over career stability. And I think it might even be that the latter is a concept that no longer even exists.
All that said, something Trunk writes earlier in her post really struck a chord with me:
[These companies] get the best candidates because these companies have been the fastest to react to the new workforce conditions that place young people in the driver’s seat .
The driver’s seat is it. There’s the intellectual stability. There’s the individual stability. There’s that continual movement forward. There’s that meaning that Generation Y needs.
Photo by Ozyman. Licensed under Creative Commons
Tags: generational shift, money, penelope trunk
I think there is definitley something to be said about Generation Y and it’s proclivity towards Conservatism, not necessarily politically speaking, but as a temperament in general. The fundamentals of the demographic can be examined from a nature versus nurture perspective. Many members of this large and ethnically diverse generation are the recipients of a standard of living and an access to technology that is unprecedented in the history of the world. In addition, many in Generation Y have been reared for achievment, either via close familial influences, or through observations and emulations witin a meritocratic culture. An achievement ethos requires self-control, restraint, an attitude of stewardship, and a focus on development through education. Another important aspect that has shaped the empathy’s of Generation Y is globalization. The internet, a positive consequence and advancer of Globalization 2.0, allowed a level of tecnhnological interaction that gave birth to unprecedented pluralism, both in the United States and abroad. This conciousness of connectivity has allowed a generation of people to understand that ideas, and inparticular, ideologies, have consequence. To further expedite the afformentioned learning curve, a global financial crisis has given this generation certain instincts relating to how one maintains individual security (emotional,intellectual, and financial) in a world in which there are no guaruntees. Out of this flow’s the realization that it is important to control the things you can control. Your education, your spending, the education of your children, and how you treat your neighbor. Conservatism, at the essence of it’s philisophical purpose, was a demonstration of individual responsibility, a conciousness of consequence, intellectual development, and believing the families are something that can be created to reflect the application of a steady hand and a focus on life’s many virtues.
Conservatism also speaks to how we treat people. This generation is empirically demonstrating it’s passion for community service because when we help others we are also helping ourselves mature, exhibit patience, and use our highest gifts to improve someone else’s life. I think that although this generation exhibits many of the Baby Boomers narccissistic traits, it will excercise a set of instincts that are intrinsically more conservative and conducive with personal responsibility and strong community.