Who names & defines the generations? And why do we need the names? :)
Gen Z does not dream of labor
61–70 of 510 posts
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#62Quoted post unavailable.
Dunno man, sounds pretty fucking utopic to me. Sounds like they're the first generation to really get it after Tim Leary's failed experiment with forced consciousness expansion. “I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, and loving myself and the people in my life.”
It's important to remember it's only a utopia if it lasts.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
Most high school classes these days are filled with kids scrolling social media the whole day. Is that utopic?
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#63> “I don’t have goals. I don’t have ambition. I only want to be attractive.” This apathetic declaration is the start of a TikTok rant that went viral for its blatant message: to reject hard work and indulge in leisure. It’s weird to see these opinions presented as a new phenomenon. Wanting to avoid work and indulge in leisure is a tale as old as time. It’s even a common theme among characters in ancient writings. Wha…
A great trick to make an old pattern sound like news is to present an age-related phenomenon as a generation-related phenomenon. "Teenagers are acting like teenagers" can't be spun as news, but "Gen Z is acting like teenagers" can be.
That's mostly true however there's a lot of data that shows worrying trends. For example, millennials don't have anywhere near as much share of wealth as Gen X had at the same age. Wealth is being pretty heavily concentrated at the top of the age brackets.
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#64I don’t see how this is significantly different than ever prior counterculture disillusioned with the culture and economic expectations they inherited. The only thing they need is a new style of music to go with it.
In the nineties, people said the same things about Gen X; "slacker" was the term.
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#65> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…
Gen Z's parents are my age or younger and IME there were few people who graduated with a high school diploma and bought a house. I bought my first house at 39 though obviously the housing bubble had a lot to do with that. I never felt particularly worried about my lack of home ownership. Pre-kids it allows for a lot of flexibility, one can easily move around as desires and job opportunities change. I'm not sure why anyone would want a house in their 20s honestly.
It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier.
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#66I'm old enough to realize that this is an eternal thing; journalist notices that young people are doing something and immediately writes an article about this new unique thing that young people are doing now that young people have surely not ever done before.
Generally speaking, most people would prefer not to work if they could get away with it. Especially young people. Careerism among young people has always been an anomaly; it's always been common for younger people to have the dream of being an artist or a famous-for-being-famous celebrity or some sort of woodland hermit spending their days frolicking in a leafy glade. Some of them succeed, but most of them eventually give up and get a job and/or a career eventually when they get tired of sleeping on other people's couches and never having any money.
The whole 'Generation' thing honestly seems a little arbitrary to me. I get that there are broad cohorts of people who are similarly affected by large societal trends and have something in common, but 90% of writing I see about generations and their attitudes or opinions is really just "young people be like this and old people be like that" filtered through an absolute blindness to anything that happened more than half a decade ago.
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#67> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…
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Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#68> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…
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Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#69> “I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, and loving myself and the people in my life.” … and our article author thinks what, that Gen Z invented this? That generations before Gen Z "dream of labor"? Dreaming of labor is called a nightmare. I work to make ends meet.
> Dreaming of labor is called a nightmare. I work to make ends meet. I don't know... I think it's possible to think about work not as a zero-sum game but as an opportunity to grow and promote growth. But at the same time this is kind of a white collar mindset... it's hard to sell people on growth when the work is more demeaning
It might be, but it requires the cooperation of employers. And IME, that's not there. Flat or negative real-wage growth, no eye for long-term retention and employee growth, and uninspired work. It feels like if you want to get ahead, you're forced to jump jobs every so many years, as there isn't going to be an opportunity for that in one's current job.
Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor
#70No one dreams of labor. The people who “dream” of labor dream of other people performing labor and getting rich off that. Shit article.
You should be unsurprised by the level of nonsense from such articles published by Vox these days.