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The Forum > Article Comments > Gen Y are ready to boil over > Comments

Gen Y are ready to boil over : Comments

By Melanie Poole, published 27/5/2009

Gen Y are molly-coddled, expensively educated, insulated from responsibility, ipods glued to ears. Or so many would have you believe.

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I would give the intergenerational jealousy a rest, because that is just playing into the hands of the cynical policy-makers who invented it as a diversion and remain unaccountable.

What younger generation hasn't felt that 'they' were not being listened to? Certainly older people did in their youth and when they took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations to change things they were beaten and arrested by police who had been allowed by the government of their day to remove their identifying numbers.

The only way to bring government to heel is to actively campaign against and vote out the slack Party hacks who undermine democracy and parliament's role by always toeing the Party line rather than representing their electorates. The challenge is there for young voters to refuse to become automatons who habitually vote for the same political Party and fall for the spin that their right to have a say is exhausted at the polling booth.

Now for a sobering thought: it is not only the young who feel cheated and unrepresented, but who cares about 'them' because they are old, useless and in the way. It is a crying shame to have to wait for their deaths to claim their (usually) very meagre assets, right?
Posted by Cornflower, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 2:04:51 PM
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I think there is a gross contradiction in each generations reactions to the political decisions being made in their time. In their youth, people rage on about how things need to be changed yet when given the chance to play a hand in the politics of running a country the giant leaps needed are not made. Additionally, the rising generation may run around in hysterics claiming that past generations are leaving them a soldering ruin to inherit however i see the youth i am associated with taking incorrect action. They consume more than any generation I've known to consume. Laptops, MP3 players, fast cars, personal TV for those living at home, etc. These are not always necessities. The solution is in ethical consumerism, its all that anyone in power and high end jobs is listening to. Hurry up and catch up before its too late.
Posted by Asdoama, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 3:34:13 PM
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I haven't as yet seen any evidence of Gen Y boiling over, more boiling happening in the baby boomer generation who emerged from the ideological 70s before rampant consumerism took hold. But if they are it is good that the Generation wants to have a say in future policies.

We can learn much from our elders but we can learn to think outside the square and to re-evaluate through our younger people.

Gen Y might be boiling over at some level and the author is right about ideological wantings. Universities have become process lines to churn out job-ready, mortgage aspiring, techno savy consumers of the future.

Where is the passion? The ideas? We know nothing is new, mainly just reinvented or adapted to suit a different time, but without ideological exploration we just become robotic citizens with very little oomph in us to seek change when it might be needed.

Gen Y is the result of this transition and they are not alone in fostering the ire of their elders for some reason or another - in my youth it was heavy metal, men with long hair, socialism and the feminist movement.

The transition started slowly at the tail end of the baby boomers and grew from the womb of economic rationalism and when we became resources rather than people. Gen Y were the result and we are all to blame if we have raised a selfish generation. But you cannot generalise about a generation and the real world is a quick leveller for those who might have received much on a silver platter (mainly from baby boomer parents).

Everything goes in cycles and I think we are coming out of the age of materialism.
Posted by pelican, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 6:37:13 PM
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I feel like I should applaud your optimism. There seems to be some grand sense of promise sewn throughout the weave of this article. And yet…and yet. Generation Y (for what these labels are worth) belong in vastly greater numbers to the stereotype you disdain than to the politically and socially motivated you would have us believe. You mentioned a National Union of Students Rally, I’m not certain, but perhaps you were talking about the 50 or so people I saw lingering around the free sausage sizzle last month in Union Square? But I’m being cynical (label: Gen X); although, I’m happy to match any wager you’d care to set towards whether any real outcome will follow those rallies. Rallies are a bad joke and those in power know it. The biggest rally in Australia during our lifetime was to protest the Iraq invasion. You probably went to one. So did I. I spent almost a whole hour there, which is about an hour’s more time than the 20 million odd Australians who didn’t think the time it takes to watch an episode of So You Think You Can Dance is worth the lives of a few thousand foreigners. What makes the youth of Australia deserve this faux attention you speak of? We have a better life right now than any generation has ever had before (if you’re talking access to resources - which might seem cynical, but ask somebody drowning alongside a hundred others somewhere between here and Indonesia what other quantifier exists) and we are happy to greedily gobble it up. How many people do you know who are genuinely giving up anything of importance to themselves for the sake of a greater good? Ok, you probably know a few, but how many of them aren’t ‘arts/law elites’?
contd...
Posted by deargodimpostingonaforumwhathaveibecome, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 7:36:12 PM
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Even if the youth did deserve to be heard - on, say, the grounds that our futures are pretty much already destined for resource wars fading away as far as hope can see - what possible reason can you have for believing anybody will listen? You mention climate change, evidently the most commonly agreed upon issue amongst the youthful - and Rudd did exactly as anybody with any political savvy knew he would do: nothing.

Look, I really do admire your passion. And I really do respect that your heart is in the right place. But there’s a grievous sin you are walking a tightrope over - the belief that ‘this time it will be different’. Gen Y is completely apathetic. As was every generation before it since the War. And once things actually get nasty, and we’re forced into kilometre-long dole queues and we’re setting up underwater minefields to protect our borders from the millions of environmental refugees that are building like lemmings on the cliffs over there, then people will become motivated again. And the cycle will continue, as it always has. Please, the world needs people like you, with passion like you - but if you channel your energies into the status quo of bull---- appeasement that political nobodies like poor Ms Ellis would have you do, then you are selling your dreams short
Posted by deargodimpostingonaforumwhathaveibecome, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 7:38:35 PM
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Generation Y should not be snagged by the tired old victim industry, nor by the other tired old acorns (and there are many) that serve as daily feasts for the cafe latte sipping chartterati. If they want a really BIG, worthwhile goal Gen Y should put all of their creative effort and energy into ensuring that they and their children regain the family life that has been sadly lost in many developed countries, especially in Australia.

Through their own experience of being baby-sat in front of a DVD and being 'rewarded' with electronic throwaways in the place of parental time, guidance and affection, Gen Y should have the wit to realise what their parents could never understand, which is that there is tremendous worth and joy in living the family life, particularly where the extended family can be resurrected and valued. Remember the simple joy of those mundane family things like making apple pie with mum or the family picnic in the park with Gran along? Whoops, you probably missed out on all that, huh? Are a hundred such experiences worth more than putting rounded ends on a swimming pool or Carla Zampatti outfits? You might differ with your parents on that.

Government needs to be held to account for the part it took and is taking to destroy families. This applies to all levels of government, including local government for its refusal to plan cities and suburbs for people and families, not just for greedy developers, shopping town entrepreneurs and the motor car.

Anyway, what do you think Gen Y, will you treat you children as you and your friends were treated, or are you inclined to do something about it? Should you decide to go ahead you will have quite a battle on your hands, not the least from powerful interests like organised religion who would pervert what you are doing for their own selfish interests.
Posted by Cornflower, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 8:34:12 PM
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Thanks Melanie for a very interesting article.

“…we are ready to boil over”

Well…I should hope so, given the awful future outlook presented to you young folk by a series of hopeless governments.

But I’m afraid I don’t see this purported great readiness to boil over. In fact to this old codger there seems to be a whole lot of blaséness out there in Gen Y land.

Crikey, profound changes are so desperately needed, and they’ve been as obvious as dog balls for at least a decade. So where’s the outrage from the 20 to 30-year old cohort of our population?? Where’s the passion? Where’s the fire within?

What does it take to get this generation politically, environmentally and socially activated?

How bad do things have to get? How bleak does our future have to look before our young intelligentsia clobbers the old guard?

Sorry Melanie, but it seems to me that the Y brigade is just as bad as the rest of apathetic Australia.

“As the biggest stakeholders in Australia’s future, with fresh and innovative insights to offer, young Australians deserve a genuine hearing.”

Yair they do. But they’ve got to want it in the first place. It seems that there are very few like yourself that are even mildly interested in this country’s predicament.

I’ve gotta agree with deargodimpostingonaforumwhathaveibecome,.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 9:13:18 PM
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So here we have young Melanie, never left school, & is not intending to, by the look of it. Naive enough to fall for the global warming scam, & to quote Obama at us, she is still smart enough to have found a non job, sucking at the public teat.

It's about time we made a requirement of any uni course, a 2 year stint, working in private enterprise. At least girls like Melanie would have to get some idea fo what life is like for the real workers in Oz. It might actually pull their feet down to the ground, before they get ideas of grandeur, & a head full of self importance.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 27 May 2009 11:49:07 PM
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Yeah whatever, you Hasbeen, whatever.
Posted by Bugsy, Thursday, 28 May 2009 12:10:38 AM
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Hasbeen,
I agree with you. The Melanie's of this world need to get some practical work and life experiences behind them before they can be taken seriously in any decission making process. Some of the decissions of so called adults are bad enough let alone input from those still wet behind the ears.

Looks like another $8 million wasted by the government on a silly forum.
Posted by Banjo, Thursday, 28 May 2009 2:16:16 PM
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Well I’d encourage you all the way Melanie. I hope we see more articles from you on this forum. We certainly need more passionate Gen Y people like yourself.

But unfortunately, the more I think about it, the worse Gen Y appears to be.

They are essentially just like past generations in their values and practices. But they are worse because it is now so bleedingly obvious that massive changes are needed….and that just continuing with business as usual is akin to social and economic suicide.

The vast majority of intelligent and energetic Yers (pronounced ‘wyers’) just go into jobs in which they can work up through the ranks and maximise their income and their profligacy, with scant little regard for the environment or the grossly unsustainable path that we are on.

This generation is much larger than the last and our degraded environment and resource base are much less able to take the pressure or meet the demand. So the overall damage being done is much greater than with past generations.

By goodness, Gen Y needs to change their ways massively and quickly. We can’t afford to wait for Gen Z to do this.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 28 May 2009 3:40:31 PM
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Ludwig posts blame everywhere other than at his sort's doorstep.
The old guard blames the next generation by identifying their faults; their following along the pathways of his own peer group's culpability.

This is the consummate age of greed and is personified by one set pointing the finger at the other.
Meanwhile the arch squeezer Turnbull bellows at Rudd and Rudd, beyond patience, needs justify his mandate to Turnbull.
Meanwhile Howard turns up once in a while and fuels the flames with his particular brand of superannuate senility.
A Great Nation, this.
Posted by A NON FARMER, Thursday, 28 May 2009 8:22:21 PM
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NF, let me see if I can interpret this bizarre statement correctly:

“Ludwig posts blame everywhere other than at his sort's doorstep.”

Um…you think that I’m not blaming my generation? And therefore unfairly blaming other generations?

I’m a baby boomer and I point my little pinkie at my generation with considerable disdain.

They oversaw some awful environmental alienation, the horrible treatment of Australia’s indigenous people and various other issues.

However after the war there was a need for considerable growth. So I don’t hold that against the boomers.

But after that, moving into Gen X, there wasn’t this need for continuous expansion at all. It was time for the country to mature, which should have meant balancing its books, ie: between humanity and environment and between resource demand and supply capability, rather than continuous rapid population growth and all the added pressures on our environment, resource base, society and quality of life that went with it….and entrenching the absurdity of an economic system that is based on continuous never-ending growth.

Then as I have already explained, Gen Y is a whole lot worse again.

Do you think this unreasonable NF?
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 28 May 2009 9:30:41 PM
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I have just read your article again, Melanie.

I agree with what you say.

It is NOT easier for your generation, it is much harder.
Posted by Ginx, Sunday, 31 May 2009 4:04:20 PM
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“It is NOT easier for your generation, it is much harder.”

Ginx, I’m not so sure about that.

The magnitude of the problems is much greater than with past generations. But the need to make fundamental changes is also much more urgent, which should mean that the psychology behind the necessary changes should be much easier to modify.

Entrenched methodologies, belief systems, thought processes, contentment with a comfortable here-and-now existence, apathy, etc are of fundamental importance. These psychological aspects were not under much pressure with past generations. But surely they are now.

If Gen Y (or the whole of our society) could just make the fundamental psychological switch which would set us onto a sustainable pathway, then we’d have the worst of our problems beat, despite their magnitude. And I reckon that it would be easy to achieve, if there were just a few key people out there pushing for it, who were able to progressively convince the masses to change their ways.

But alas, there seem to be just about no Gen Y people doing this, or older experts and other learned people for that matter. So it seems that Gen Y will continue with the same old iconic Aussie psychosis of business as usual and ‘she’ll be right mate’.
Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 31 May 2009 8:54:14 PM
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I understand entirely what you're saying Ludwig, but it presupposes that GenY HAVE a voice that they are not using.

They do not. They are disempowered. Those that are trying to get somewhere in terms of education, are struggling to survive (not all I know! But very many),-they incur large debt, for most-they must fit work in with studies..etc., That means constant pressure and stress. And THAT means that there is little voice left to take on any issues.

Keep a populous under stress and fear, and it becomes a lot easier to handle.

Those not in higher education have withdrawn into their own world; their own culture; even their own manner of communicating.

I feel damn sorry for most all of them. They are our tomorrow, yet they have been devalued, so they in their turn, devalue.
Posted by Ginx, Monday, 1 June 2009 3:00:50 PM
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Ginx, I can’t accept that argument. They have a voice. They are choosing not to use it.

Gen Y is far more aware of the issues and their magnitude than any previous generation. A person would have to be extremely insular these days to not know about the basic issues and the urgency in dealing with them. The simple truth is that the vast majority are CHOOSING to not be involved.

This is deplorable, as the great majority don’t need to be involved in a huge manner. All they need to do is support the right sorts of changes, the right politicians at elections, etc. But no, they can’t even do that.
Posted by Ludwig, Tuesday, 2 June 2009 6:37:33 AM
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Well that's sorted then!!

We don't agree.
Posted by Ginx, Tuesday, 2 June 2009 6:34:59 PM
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