Generation Lazy

Generation Lazy

William Deresiewicz in his New York Times opinion piece calls Millenials (of which I am one) "Generation Sell". A follow up guest post by Justin Kan builds and refutes some of the points calling us "Generation Make". It's easy to see people our age both selling and making everything from artisinal foods and clothes to multibillion dollar startups in the Bay Area. However such people are the exception not the rule. They are the motivated ones. They may not have the income of the 1%, but they are certainly in the 1% motivation wise. Most of us are simply a part of what I would call "Generation Lazy".

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest and the vast majority of the people from my graduating class are still somewhere within 50 miles of there. They are not innovating. They are working at Ruby Tuesday or the Gap. Some are working for the family farm, or working at the local factories we are lucky to still have open. It's maybe harsh to call these people lazy, but when you work an unskilled job and come home to pop open a beer and watch tv for 5 hours I think it's safe to say you're not making a dent in the universe. With the barriers to starting a business or getting famous on the internet getting lower and lower it is obvious that the key thing keeping our generation (and economy) in the proverbial gutter is laziness.

These are the 99% and far more characteristic of our generation than the scrappy entrepreneurs on TechCrunch. Some areas are worse off than the bucolic waspiness of the rural Midwest, and it's a good bet those people aren't creating (or buying) handcrafted jeans at $300 a pair. More likely they're more worried about their drug addict cousin or whether they should pluck down the $50 to watch the UFC fight at home or head to Buffalo Wild Wings. This is the culture of the Millenials that I know. Calling us a generation of salespeople is far too nice. I'd say the vast majority of people I've come in contact with just don't give a shit. They want as much money as easily as possible and they want to piss it away on entertainment, booze, vacations, cars, and other consumerist trappings.

It is true that we idealize the individual far more than ever. We feel jaded and trapped into a system that's rigged to glorify an elite few and pacify the masses. Each of us feels we are an island to ourself, empowered to make our own choices, but powerless to create true global change, the legacy of political gridlock. The Occupy movement is a prime example of our generation: leaderless and unorganized, bitter and scapegoat hungry, and ineffective (so far).

There's no doubt in my mind that some great business are going to come out of our generation, and probably some great leaders as well (there are many fine prospects). Yet even if some of us create successful large businesses, that means definitionally hundreds more will be working the 9-5. And right now when the people occupying those jobs are millenials it turns out that more often than not they don't care that much about the job. They're working for the weekend. To be clear, I'm not saying "Generation Lazy" is a lost cause, I'm just saying we need to get back on the horse. Saving a dying planet and economy (thanks boomers!) might take something more than self righteous hedonism to figure out.