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The Moral Immaturity of the Millennial Generation
This morning in the PIT, I described my commute home last night from work. For those of you that haven’t heard, I recently moved to Portland, OR, where I work at one of the large hospitals downtown. Because of traffic and scarce parking, I take both the bus and the train into work. Last night, I left work about 15 minutes late. This may not seem significant, but when you’re beholden to a train schedule, leaving even 30 second late can put a major crimp in your commute. I was late leaving work because of the flurry of activity that happened with my patients at the end of my shift. One of my patients had come in with recent neurological changes, and after the work up had been done, at the end of my shift this patient was given a new diagnosis of cancer with a very poor prognosis. The family was sweet and understanding and appreciative; all of the things that make nurses remember why they became a nurse in the first place. I sat at the computer outside my patient’s room to chart, hearing the family cry together. I offered my presence and comfort, but it was clear that they wanted to be alone. At the nurses station, we all spoke in hushed tones about how sad it was, and how the worst diagnoses always seem to happen to the nicest people.
As you can imagine would be the case in Portland, my day had consisted of staff lamenting the election results. There was a litany of “I’m so depressed,” “I cried the whole time I was getting ready this morning,” and “I just can’t believe people would vote for him.” That morning, I over heard a woman tell her friend that Max (the light rail in Portland) had to close temporarily around one o’clock that morning because of protests; however, my commute to work was uneventful. I was anticipating an equally uneventful ride home, but that was not the case. When I got off the bus at Pioneer Square to catch Max, police were out securing crowd control barriers, and I could see an occasional “Trump is NOT my president” sign waving in the air. While running to catch the train that was pulling in, I saw a young hipster woman completely topless with anti-Trump sentiments written across her body. I reached the platform in time, but was informed by the police that the train would not be stopping at Pioneer Square because of the protests; I had to walk up five blocks to the next stop. Now, five blocks might not seem like much, but after a 13 hour day on your feet trying to slay the dragons of disease, it’s a lot. As I walked grumpily past all the 20-somthing homeless and protesters, I became increasingly incensed by the childishness of it all. I wanted to run back to find that young woman exposing herself and yell at her, “Showing everyone your tits won’t make a damn bit of difference or make anyone take you remotely seriously!! Put a damn shirt on and go get a job!” Meanwhile, my sweet patient was probably still crying in her hospital bed, coming to grips with her own impending death.
While I am technically a Millennial, I don’t feel like part of the group. The Millennial generation seems to be largely a generation of children who never got past elementary school in their moral development. In psychology we learned about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Historically, children make up those in the pre-conventional and conventional stages. Adults occupy the post-conventional stage, in which morality is driven by what is best for society or by a higher, empirical moral code. Children are concerned with being a “good boy” or “good girl.” Children see things as being black or white, an eye for an eye, fair is fair. As we mature, we are supposed to come to understand that things are not always fair, and tit for tat is not the best policy for society. Adults realize that our morals come from a higher source, and the rules must sometimes be broken in order to do what is right. The protesters in Portland and those spewing hate and hysterics on my Facebook feed have never grown up. For them, life must always be fair. If Sally gets a lollipop, then Kayla has to get one too. They don’t see inconsistency of their actions as relates to their stated beliefs of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity. They are children throwing a temper tantrum because they didn’t get a lollipop, but the conservatives did.
The contrast between the whininess taking place in Pioneer Square and the dignified sorrow of my patient and her family was shocking and infuriating. I wanted to drag that topless woman to the hospital and make her work with me for a week, to see the best and the worst of humanity. To see that life is not fair, and the nicest people you will meet are often the ones with the most devastating diseases. I’m not sure how to make the 20-somethings snap out of if. I can only hope that they eventually grow up.
Published in General
Back in Ben Franklin’s day, males were often apprenticed or otherwise on their paths to working life by no later than age 14.
In the British Army of the late Eighteenth Century, enlisted men signed up for life. If they had children, those children had to make a decision at age 14. For male children, they had to sign up with the regiment at 14 or be turned out to find work on their own. For girls, they had to marry a soldier or make their own way. (Several famous actresses of the time were in the latter class, often having to prostitute themselves until they became famous.)
The wealth of our days allows us much more freedom to not face reality until later in life. A couple of generations ago, for the majority, that meant getting a real job upon graduating high school at 18 and working the rest of their lives. A generation ago, it meant doing the same for most people at 22 with a college degree.
Now, it means lasting as long as one can without growing up.
Yep! And what it taught you was that you had to get better.
When you can’t accept defeat, it means you won’t do anything to improve yourself and your team. In capitalism, defeat is huge demand that you improve your product. In politics, defeat is supposed to require you to improve.
I take the Democrat refusal to accept defeat as a warning that they’re going to be the same old Democrats next time. I suspect that in a week or so, the Democrats will start saying all the right things, but they won’t change. Government regulation is their one-trick pony. They’ll wait out the next four years, hoping Trump implodes, and recapture the White House and start over-regulating again. They’ll put forth a new Obama clone to proclaim that trickle-down economics never works, and have Paul Krugman call for more Keynes.
Trump ain’t gonna get any Democrat help. I hope he isn’t gong to pander to them, trying to get something they’ll never give him.
Thanks for the good discussion, y’all. I’m going downtown this evening to meet up with @ryanm and @1967mustangman. Hopefully we won’t run into problems with streets being shut down.
Have a great time, and don’t let Ryan dominate the conversation. :P
Well, Ryan’s wife will be there, so I’ll have someone to talk to if the guys get into the zone.
With teeth like that, sharks mean whatever they want to mean.
This argument doesn’t even compute for me. It’d be like a baseball fan complaining “it’s not fair that my team lost, they got more hits than the other team!” You’d have to be deeply ignorant of the rules of baseball to think that hits rather than runs determine the winner of the game.
Wealth is a factor, but I think life expectancy is the biggest factor here. Life expectancy has nearly doubled since 1880:
In 1850 I’d be an old man at 40. You could have a midlife crisis at 20. You could start working at age 14 and die at 39 after a 25 year career. These days you can stay in school until 30, work a 35 year career, and still have another 15+ years of retirement ahead of you.
Not really. The low life expectancy was from more people dying at five or fifteen, rather than everyone’s dying at 40. Even then, if you lived to be twenty, you would be more likely to live to seventy than not, unless a war popped up and you were in it.
Did more die then at younger ages than we would hope for today, such as fifty? Of course. Medical technology was not generally what it is today. Cancer? Heart attacks? My grandfather was born in 1910 and suffered heart attacks from his thirties until he died just a few days past 60. Today, someone like that might live extra years because of all the new surgeries, low-dose aspirin, understanding of many other factors, and emergency care for heart patients. Dick Cheney was born thirty-one years after my grandfather, had a similar heart history, but is still alive at 76. But these are relative exceptions compared to the statistical difference in the number of children who used to die under the age of five.
My compliments. This is more than just an astute political commentary. It’s a beautiful essay. It deserves to be preserved, and re-published in an anthology that students of politics — and of literature — will read decades from now.
Rather than life expectancy, I think it’s more ‘hotness expectancy’. I think people have taken actually taken concern for health and fitness to an unhealthy degree, in the name of staying hot. And as long as you’re still hot, you’re less likely to grow up, because you’re able to perpetually sow wild oats.
“I don’t want to grow up, never grow up, not me.“
Fair point.
Sir, you do know how to make a girl blush.
Correct. There were people in colonial America who lived into their 70’s, but the infant mortality rate back then was stupendously higher than it is today, which really lowered the average life span. Childhood diseases that have been all but eradicated killed a whole lot of people before age 10, back then.
I understand Vanderbilt students led a march today. Pics are in the Tennessean.
I’ll bet Belmont didn’t protest… Go Bruins!
People become more “conservative” by having and shouldering responsibilities. If/when parents shield their teenage and grown children from adult responsibilities they stunt their maturity. When governments do the same the same result is inevitable. And the effects are cumulative over time. Elimination of the Nanny State is the only cure for the infantile population we are cultivating. But there will be pain involved, welcome to real life.
The history of Progressivism in this country show that they improved and then declined. My history of Progressivism in a nutshell: Progressives started in the Republican party to advocate for the little guy to control the excesses of capitalism (late 1800’s to early 1900’s). They moved to the Democrat party, got voted in to power in the 20’s, turned government into a vast machine as the ‘Arc of History’ bent in their direction, and created all kinds of government programs, recognizing people’s dependence on these programs would make them permanently electable. Fast forward to the last two decades, now Progressivism’s objectives seem to be permanently enriching themselves in government at the expense of the people (in taxes and poor quality of public education), with The Clinton Foundation pay to play enterprise being the premier example (and Hillary has proudly identified herself as a Progressive, not as a liberal). They no longer focus on serving the little guy, they focus on serving themselves. They’ve un-improved themselves. The ‘Arc of History’ now seems to point in the Republicans direction.