monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
millenials
sixty minutes recently (on nov 11th) ran a segment on the current twenty-somethings, that they’re calling millenials, that they claim possess a quality of narcissism that employers are now forced to deal with. other scholars are calling that generation the echo boom. i’m curious what is your experience of this age range and do you agree with their proposed causality - that mr. rogers and lack of competition are to blame - or if you have other ideas.
i’m guessing the post cold war situation is at least part of the causality. as i grew up, the threat of nuclear war created a constant sense of anxiety and need to be on guard. but this next generation did not have that. they were born into a post-war period of peace and were born into tremendous prosperity. why is it surprising then that they feel on top of the world?
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20. November 2007 at 6:47 am :
We have a lot of millenials in our office, and it is sort of a problem. I think it has to do with questionable parenting. I think you have to make the choice to be the parent first, then their friend. That means making hard decisions sometimes, like letting your kids feel the experience of losing sometimes and saying no because it’s what they need, even if it’ll make then unhappy. The kids that we work with often come in and expect to be VP within a year and have everything that everyone else has, even though a lot of us have been at this office for decades. And a lot of them seem to have a sense of entitlement that a lot of my contemporaries don’t have. I’ll be the first to say that I think most management structures are antiquated and need to be restructured in a manner that integrates the human element more fully. But working with the extreme expectations of these kids is often incredibly frustrating.
21. November 2007 at 6:59 am :
Having an imagination would help. You can’t be too much of a narcissist if you can imagine all sorts of scenarios about life on a daily basis. But, when egos are fed with instant gratification, individual, original thought is suffocated. They/we just want to shop. We shop compulsively. I don’t think it’s just the millenials. Many people have this problem now.
21. November 2007 at 8:59 am :
good point. thanks for the comment!
22. November 2007 at 2:20 am :
Wow, thank you for reminding me why I hate CBS and the yellow journalism of 60mins. The reporter’s voice just dripped with distain and elitism, every other phrase was a not so subtle jibe at 20 somethings. Why can’t they just report the story and discuss the facts without trying to illicit a cackle from their 52.8 year old viewers.
“It’s a safety net, or safety diaper, that allows many kids to quickly opt out of a job they don’t like.” A diaper how witty!
Now onto the point:
The quality that 20 somethings posses is not narcissism, that is the wrong state and entirely missed the point. If they were narcissistic it would bleed over into their person and family lives, and it would be more evident in society in general. Even at work they don’t demonstrate the quality of self-obsession, or self-absorbtion, more the quality of inverse of a work obsession. Obsessing about everything other than work: play, family, friends, etc. To me this seems like a much healthier perspective on life.
Every generation seem to think the one that follows them is disrespectful, doesn’t have the same strong work ethic they did, and lacks moral fiber. I don’t see this changing anytime soon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_x#Generation_X_in_the_United_States
24. November 2007 at 2:54 pm :
I think I’m technically one generation above the Millenials (I actually remeber when the Berlin Wall came down), but I tend to know quite a lot of them. I know that many, many of them true narcissists. Parenting does play a roll, but so does media and society as a whole. (My mother recently refered to her own parenting method as “benevolent neglect,” which allowed me a kind of freedom to make my own decisions, but also live with my own consequences.)
But I would warn not to paint all Millenials with the same brush. The truth is, though I see the narcissistic ones all over the place, but I know so many more of the generous, kind, compassionate, and energetic kind. I’ll tell you, having spent several years in cubeville myself, these are not the kind you will encounter working in an office. These are the kind who are working for peanuts at some summer camp somewhere for disadvantaged youth, or volunteering for the Peace Corp, or teaching yoga to seniors in some church basement. There are places where they gather and circles they move in which taken them completely outside the mainstream. They (and by that I really mean “we”) don’t get noticed much, but I’ve seen enough to feel generally encouraged. These compassionate and long-viewing ones are there in enough numbers to temper the course of society as the Millenial generation matures.
25. November 2007 at 2:33 pm :
wonderful comment, love your point of view on this, thank you!
29. November 2007 at 6:01 am :
I think that you’re right, Monica. Parenting is only one aspect. I’m doing some management work on the “McDonaldization” of global society right now, and the fact is that we’re all learning to want everything yesterday, and as cheaply as possible. That impacts everyone. I think that it’s a lot more evident, because is the first generation that’s been totally McDonalized and Starbucked, but that we all exhibit these aspects, to some extent. And it is turning into a cultural clash, but may just be the passing of the guard. At 40, I’m in the middle… Still young enough to change some things, but wondering why the next generation is doing it *that* way.