Thank the Millennials
22/3/20 15:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsTrump Has a New Group to Blame for the Coronavirus Crisis: Millennials
Millennials Aren't Taking Coronavirus Seriously, a Top WHO Official Warns
According to president Trump's latest conspiracy theory, the Millennials are to blame for the spreading of the Coronavirus. Well, I beg to differ. I'd say it's the Millennials who are now becoming the victim; more precisely, they're sacrificing their future for the Boomers. Do bear with me.
The first real victim to the Coronavirus was the myth of the privileged, complacent Millennials. I don't want to hear the constant accusation by their grandmas and grandpas that they're always so individualistic, egoistical, or that they eat too much avocado and whatnot. The thing is, many Boomers now owe their lives to the sacrifice of the younger generations. And that'll become ever more evident as the pandemic spreads.
The self-restrictions that the outbreak has forced many societies into, of course aim at curbing its spread, and allowing enough access to hospital beds, breathing machines and doctors for the people in need. The critical cases, that is. Which is largely elderly people. In the meantime, this blockade on ordinary life is threatening to strip an entire generation of prospects for its future: it's disrupting education, career development, and incomes. Even if in the best case scenario the whole thing lasts for just a couple of months (as planned and hoped for), the effects on the economy will remain for years. Jobs have already been lost, businesses are shutting down, and many careers have been broken.
This blockade is a massive demonstration of the solidary sacrifice shared by many generations. While the virus affects people of all creeds and ages, it's undeniably deadliest for the weaker, sick, and old. Of course society, being a society of humans, would instinctively try to protect the most vulnerable - as it should. But let's be clear about this: many young people are now sacrificing their well-being to give their seniors a chance to survive.
Of course not everyone is happy about the blockade, far from it. Lots of people from all ages are still ignoring the pleas and orders about staying home. But most people do follow them. Young people are missing out school, university lectures, they're falling behind with their work and respectively, their income - whether they like it or not.
Granted, many governments are vowing to give aid to those who've lost income, and I hope they keep their promise. Some jobs would suffer more than others, particularly those in art, the services, the self-employed, the freelance professions. And yes, small businesses too. Them, most of all. But the lost confidence, and the creeping uncertainty about the future of things that have been the backbone of modern society, like culture, and free, open human relations, will remain there to stay for a long time.
Still, in these troublesome times, there are reasons for hope and even optimism. People have largely become more humane, more considerate, more emphatic. After the initial ugly battles for toilet paper in the stores, most people have taken the plea for social distancing to heart, not just to protect themselves, but also with a thought for the most vulnerable. The elderly. The very idea that people would prove too selfish, and refuse to sacrifice something of theirs for everyone else's well-being, has been soundly refuted. On the contrary: people have shown they're prepared to radically re-think their reality, and their way of life. And they've done it over a surprisingly short amount of time.
All of a sudden, new economic models have emerged, or at least started looking viable. Terms such as "government regulation", "market limiting", "public funding for private business and private individuals", "nationalization of vital industries", "cancelling expensive excursions", and even "a refusal of main income", are already being perceived as signs of common sense now. None of this would've probably been possible a few weeks ago.
Now, when the barriers of economic imagination are being transcended, we could go ahead and come up with new sustainable ways of consumption, production, and energy distribution. Those still arguing for the new Green Deal should be using the opportunity to demand a recovery plan that would bring about not just any post-Covid society, but one that's sustainable, and far more responsible to the natural resources that it has at its disposal. Because the climate crisis, as abstract as it may seem to you right now, is potentially far deadlier than the Covid-19 in the long run; its victims, albeit not precisely being diagnosed and tallied, are just as real, and are overwhelmingly more numerous.
The younger generations have long been driving the movement for a dramatic reaction to the climate crisis, only to be halted and blocked by the stubborn elders at every corner. Now, the younger are sacrificing their liberty, their prosperity and their future for the sake of those same elders who not only have frail bodies but also weak arguments in this debate. If there's anything that the young deserve in return, it's a more meaningful response to what they've already been asking for a long time: a future in a world that's not dying around them, but flourishing. Is that too much to ask?
Millennials Aren't Taking Coronavirus Seriously, a Top WHO Official Warns
According to president Trump's latest conspiracy theory, the Millennials are to blame for the spreading of the Coronavirus. Well, I beg to differ. I'd say it's the Millennials who are now becoming the victim; more precisely, they're sacrificing their future for the Boomers. Do bear with me.
The first real victim to the Coronavirus was the myth of the privileged, complacent Millennials. I don't want to hear the constant accusation by their grandmas and grandpas that they're always so individualistic, egoistical, or that they eat too much avocado and whatnot. The thing is, many Boomers now owe their lives to the sacrifice of the younger generations. And that'll become ever more evident as the pandemic spreads.
The self-restrictions that the outbreak has forced many societies into, of course aim at curbing its spread, and allowing enough access to hospital beds, breathing machines and doctors for the people in need. The critical cases, that is. Which is largely elderly people. In the meantime, this blockade on ordinary life is threatening to strip an entire generation of prospects for its future: it's disrupting education, career development, and incomes. Even if in the best case scenario the whole thing lasts for just a couple of months (as planned and hoped for), the effects on the economy will remain for years. Jobs have already been lost, businesses are shutting down, and many careers have been broken.
This blockade is a massive demonstration of the solidary sacrifice shared by many generations. While the virus affects people of all creeds and ages, it's undeniably deadliest for the weaker, sick, and old. Of course society, being a society of humans, would instinctively try to protect the most vulnerable - as it should. But let's be clear about this: many young people are now sacrificing their well-being to give their seniors a chance to survive.
Of course not everyone is happy about the blockade, far from it. Lots of people from all ages are still ignoring the pleas and orders about staying home. But most people do follow them. Young people are missing out school, university lectures, they're falling behind with their work and respectively, their income - whether they like it or not.
Granted, many governments are vowing to give aid to those who've lost income, and I hope they keep their promise. Some jobs would suffer more than others, particularly those in art, the services, the self-employed, the freelance professions. And yes, small businesses too. Them, most of all. But the lost confidence, and the creeping uncertainty about the future of things that have been the backbone of modern society, like culture, and free, open human relations, will remain there to stay for a long time.
Still, in these troublesome times, there are reasons for hope and even optimism. People have largely become more humane, more considerate, more emphatic. After the initial ugly battles for toilet paper in the stores, most people have taken the plea for social distancing to heart, not just to protect themselves, but also with a thought for the most vulnerable. The elderly. The very idea that people would prove too selfish, and refuse to sacrifice something of theirs for everyone else's well-being, has been soundly refuted. On the contrary: people have shown they're prepared to radically re-think their reality, and their way of life. And they've done it over a surprisingly short amount of time.
All of a sudden, new economic models have emerged, or at least started looking viable. Terms such as "government regulation", "market limiting", "public funding for private business and private individuals", "nationalization of vital industries", "cancelling expensive excursions", and even "a refusal of main income", are already being perceived as signs of common sense now. None of this would've probably been possible a few weeks ago.
Now, when the barriers of economic imagination are being transcended, we could go ahead and come up with new sustainable ways of consumption, production, and energy distribution. Those still arguing for the new Green Deal should be using the opportunity to demand a recovery plan that would bring about not just any post-Covid society, but one that's sustainable, and far more responsible to the natural resources that it has at its disposal. Because the climate crisis, as abstract as it may seem to you right now, is potentially far deadlier than the Covid-19 in the long run; its victims, albeit not precisely being diagnosed and tallied, are just as real, and are overwhelmingly more numerous.
The younger generations have long been driving the movement for a dramatic reaction to the climate crisis, only to be halted and blocked by the stubborn elders at every corner. Now, the younger are sacrificing their liberty, their prosperity and their future for the sake of those same elders who not only have frail bodies but also weak arguments in this debate. If there's anything that the young deserve in return, it's a more meaningful response to what they've already been asking for a long time: a future in a world that's not dying around them, but flourishing. Is that too much to ask?
(no subject)
Date: 23/3/20 10:40 (UTC)The young have been exploited by the old for most of history in a similar way that capital exploits labour, excepting in our modern world what most of us demand from children is that they learn - we no longer send our kids up chimneys or put them in the cotton mill.
How could we? Few of us have chimneys anymore and I don't know of any working mills left. Methinks some younger folk in the extreme capitalist societies will be inheriting jobs as well as property in a Darwinian social upheaval. Or maybe they could co-operate as a society and rethink their almost unmoderated capitalism as a rational modus operandi.
Obviously, as societies, those with the greatest levels of redundancy in their day-to-day operations will be least stressed by this pandemic. Germany's health services are the best supplied in the world; so finding out their mortality rate is less than a third of the UK's which is in itself half of Italy's... let's just say it is unsurprising.
(no subject)
Date: 23/3/20 14:47 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/3/20 19:04 (UTC)It appears that in the rationing imposed by the overstretch dealing with Covid19 Spanish doctors are taking the respirators from old people and giving them to young ones. Oooh! The generational phoney war continues...
(no subject)
Date: 25/3/20 04:48 (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTgahyvBMk4
So it feels rather odd to hear someone a generation younger than me saying something similar. I'm not sure, though, that I can regard all of us Boomers as thinking in the same way, any more than all the people in my parents' generation thought the same way.
Now, as to sacrifice: I am deeply moved by all the talk - not only by Millennials but by anyone younger than me - of making these sacrifices in order to protect older people. I only wish I could be sure that younger people would be safe. But according to this--
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200317/millions-at-risk-of-major-covid19-illness
--29.2 million American adults under the age of 60 are high-risk for COVID-19 because of another medical condition. And unfortunately, while the COVID-19 death rate is highest for older folks, the rate for serious illness is turning out to spread across the age spectrum in the United States.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/coronavirus-in-young-people-is-it-dangerous-data-show-it-can-be
So while the sacrifice may be intended for the older folks, it's likely to end up also helping many young people, including children.
Dusk (who is heartily sick of all the cliches about Millennials)