GenZ really is the most nihilistically money obsessed generation and I can feel it affecting me, especially as I look around at my (former) literal peers
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This is probably true. But I don’t blame young people for being this way, because greed and selfishness is coming from the top down and permeating society.
We are after all a deeply interconnected species and influence from leaders at the top really matters.
there's a kind of double-edged practicality to our generation's approach to work. when you see work as a means to an end, it's easier to set boundaries and create meaningful work-life balance
at the same time i think a lot of young people have abandoned the idea of there being any greater meaning or purpose to work. that forms a permission structure for genuinely amoral bag-chasing and normalizes things like crypto schemes, sports gambling, etc.
Like I have support from parents and make a livable salary that will probs get a raise in 6 months and am literally just starting my career(which is public service oriented) but I look around and see what the people I was in classes with can make and start to think about the future and stress.
It’s the way 100k sounds like nothing to me, while being a life-changing amount of money for others. I have peers younger than me already making that and I’m like 27.
Like, I don’t want to be patronizing, I know your generation have novel and real problems, but 20s is for learning; 30s is for earning and you seem pretty with it
this is one of the things I honestly enjoy about federal service. I know how much I'm making, I know how much I might make in the future, and that lets me just relax about what it is and could be.
Gen Z may or may not be the most nihilistically obsessed with money as you say, but the insecurity you describe is far from a new one. It has been easy to keep tabs on your peers and their careers for at least 20 years, and no one likes feeling left behind.
I promise that you don't need the word "become" in there. We were always like this. It's just that the cool ones got the press coverage in the 90s. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bryant were hard at work back then, too, but Rolling Stone and MTV weren't paying attention to them.
imo it’s the reaction to millennial student debt. The death of college = good job convinced us optimal choices prevent destitution. ie those who aren’t STEM-pilled or financebrained are stupid and doomed. i was a library kid inoculated against specifically that but …
… but I still had a mild obsession with FI content. it wasn’t until starting college I actually understood i wanted to center my values and personal aspirations. I didn’t wanna live life like it was a video game to optimize.
What sucks is that GenXers worth a damn are the ones writing our history, but in reality there were always more Ted Cruzes than Dave Grohls. More Alex P. Keatons than Bill or Ted.
If it helps, as a millennial I know that the amount of time I have influence over is roughly 160-200 years. You have control over every narrative passed to you: from the moment your grandparents are born, the stories they tell you, which you then shape for your children and grandchildren.
Share that message with your friends to outnumber the Cruzes out there. The historical narrative we can shape among the people we know directly lasts from roughly 1930 to 2100, and we can give them positive narratives:
-A coalition of resistance groups fought fascism and imperialism from the 1930s onward and won in many cases: Germany fell, Vietnam cast off France, resisted the US, and overthrew a dictatorial gvt, etc.
-Indigenous people across the world are fighting climate change
-Labor rights can come again
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We are after all a deeply interconnected species and influence from leaders at the top really matters.
But it would track because Gen Z's parents are mostly Gen X.
I'm watching Gen X become Conservative trash, pulling up the ladder, doing nothing for anyone else.
They could use some lessons from Frances McDormand in Fargo
-Indigenous people across the world are fighting climate change
-Labor rights can come again