Millennials and why I write

I write to help organize my thoughts on many topics I am asked about.

I am strongly averse to cynicism and malaise, and do not like seeing these things increase with my Millennial peers. I think we need an even stronger sense of our cohort and togetherness if we want a chance of making a world that matches our ideals. I have been writing about the “Millennial’s Search for Meaning” and hope to concretize these ideals in future posts.

All of us remember entering the workforce amongst a surge of articles for and by the managerial class, complaining about our attitudes towards work and life. It is also not lost on us how fast and hard the media piles on those of us who push for more and sometimes stumble along the way. Yes, this includes everyone from AOC to Taylor Swift to Mark Zuckerberg.

Much has been said about Gen Z observing Millennials online behaviors and choosing pseudonymity or completely avoiding any sort of controversy. I am strongly against that mindset, especially when it comes to negotiating the future. I think part of navigating the Information Age is having the grace to realize that as more information is made available, people can update their beliefs.

Growing up through bubbles

Millennials grew up through at least three major bubbles and busts.

Many of us were young during the bust of the dot-com bubble, but we certainly remember the subprime mortgage crisis, the spike in gas prices (I learned to drive with a Suburban when gas was $5 per gallon), the slowdowns of the 2010s, and then the pandemic. So rather than something transitory, bubbles and busts have become our normal. Many of my Millennial peers saw jumping on the crypto and WallStreetBets bandwagon as a way to break out of that cycle.

And we felt this being part of the largest demographic cohort since the Boomers. So we should have had all the numerical inertia on our side. I am very curious how we will adjust to having smaller cohorts come after us.

Our would-be insurgents

My age cohort in the US has lived through an interesting political rollercoaster.

We certainly made history with electing Obama. Even though I regularly listened to conservative talk radio at the time, I was ready for something completely new and happily joined in on the spontaneous street celebrations that broke out in Seattle on election night. He brought in interesting people to the conversation, and the Millennial in me wanted to at least listen. Yet, as bailouts were doled out to banks (and not the people losing their homes) and not even one person responsible for the financial crisis faced any prosecution for their role in it, the enthusiasm diminished. Additionally, I never imagined that a “secret war” would be something my country would do, but under his watch, American troops entered silently into yet another Middle Eastern conflict 🤷‍♂️.

Given how badly so many of the expert class had seemingly done over the past decade, I was once again ready to try something completely new. At that time, I had recently left a PhD program in Applied Math. Being in academia was once a big part of my identity, but I found it hard to accept how disconnected many of my peers were, and worst of all, most of my professors had abysmal family lives. I looked carefully at the outcomes, and the empiricist in me decided not want to continue in that path.

So when then candidate Trump publicly humiliated the professional politician Jeb Bush and his family at the debates, I was sold. I didn’t really care about much other than not seeing another wave of my generation’s lives lost in yet another faraway conflict. Once again, there was an interesting band of characters who assembled around the could-be insurgent, but unfortunately that opportunity seems to have been largely squandered 🤦‍♂️.

Non-representation at home

Even though Millennials have long since reached the age where we can legally enter Congress, we are far behind past generations when it comes to representation.

I truly think we need to implement a maximum age in the US House and Senate. There is a great advisory role that the Silent generation and Boomers can play. Perhaps rather than leaving this to a web of think tanks (which are prone to strange funding and incentives), there can be some sort of formal but non-binding, meaningful role for them to play in the future.

I am impressed by countries like Oman and Qatar, whose leadership and ministries are headed by Millennials.

Generational Attacks - war & drugs

I was born in 1990. The generation that was first called up for combat roles in Afghanistan and then Iraq was the generation of my older brother. I always looked up to those who volunteered, and still think of them as my older brothers and sisters. They gave a huge part of their lives as pawns for Boomer grievances. I am proud to say that I have done what I can to help those who transitioned into software careers and my door is always open to them.

Naturally, I am very angry at those who put my older brothers and sisters into the situation they were in. I am angry that these people who volunteered were repeatedly put into dangerous situations by people who had no long term plan for them. I am angry that they were often forced to do terrible things that led to the suffering of so many Iraqis and Afghans. It is a long list, and it is important that the architects and profiteers of the situation are never rehabilitated into polite society.

I know that many of them keep a strong stiff upper lip and say that would rather talk about literally any other topic. There is a big stigma too, because many do not want to be thought of as walking cases of PTSD. And they are not. By far the best software team experience was when I worked with a team of veterans at an IOT startup.

There have been over 7,500 combat deaths and at least another 40,000 deaths from suicide by the soldiers of my age cohort. Over ten thousand of these soldiers lost limbs, and many more live with other kinds of injuries. Each of these have a family that was forever changed.

Drugs

It is hard to describe or even try to measure the effect of drugs on the US, and especially Millennials, over the last decade.

Look at this map from the CDC.

You can see that in many states, the yearly deaths from overdoses surpasses that from 9/11. The data is broken down by age by this site and shows that Millennials are the most affected group.

My age cohort is now aggressively being marketed everything from legalized marijuana to legalized ketamine in the guise of medicine. Those who have visited states with legal recreational marijuana sales and gone to a restaurant or purchased something at a retail store have likely interacted with someone under the influence. Our investor class is now pouring hundreds of millions of dollars each year for the past few years into a new generation of “psychedelic” treatments.

As Millennials continue struggling to progress through the standard steps of growing up, it seems that the luminaries from Gen X will create a few more “unicorns” out of addicting my peers.

Looking forward

The point of laying this out isn’t to be negative. I am actually a very positive person and am genuinely excited for the future.

But I think one of the important roles that Millennials will rise to (and a way we will finally find meaning!) is in assuming leadership and charting a better path forward in line with the optimism and ideals we grew up with.