Kids LOL @ Navy Recruiters

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments (3)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  “connect with Millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000” I used to call all the snotty piss-pots born during the Reagan/Daddy 80’s the Raygun Youth. 
  “Hell No, We Won’t Work!”

  Posted by jazzfan on Nov 24, 2007 at 6:10 PM

  Kids of the “millennial” generation are not going to fit easily into neat little categorical boxes identified by the 20-year range of birthdates sociologists (or recruiting strategists) want to put them in. Their tastes, attitudes, prejudices, and expectations will be even more diverse than previous generations’, because they will have been exposed to more various values and fewer unquestionable “givens” than any previous youthful demographic.

  I work with the little darlings every day.

  If there’s anything most of them have in common, it’s that they don’t see the standards and beliefs of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations as binding upon them. The life of the granddaughter isn’t much like the life of the grandmother, any more. They talk about the recent past (e.g. one generation ago) as though it was ancient history. Now naturally you have those who have imbibed and who prize their elders’ values, but they’re the minority. The sheer variety of views and expressions available to them via internet and the social and informational networks open to them mitigates any kind of strategy geared toward getting influence over their minds.

  That’s a good thing, I think. Once they grow up a little and can step outside their own teen preoccupations, maybe it would benefit democracy.

  The Navy is having trouble connecting to them because they anticipate bullshit from vested interests who want their loyalty and for them to go along with the program. They expect to be misled, or at least they don’t take for granted that they won’t be. This applies to leaders in the military, the media, politics, and their teachers. Often their parents, too, in spite of the line in the article that they “like their parents”.

  Even if they do, a lot would say, “What’s to trust?”

  Most of them don’t seem rancorous or pissed off. It’s just part of the background, apparently. They’re used to it.

  My biggest concern about this lack of buy-in comes from what many of them have said to me over the last 5 – 10 years, on the order of, “It’s all futile, it’s a joke, to care about politics or any of that crap. It’s all a lie. We might as well just have fun.” What’s worth them delaying their gratification for? A lot of them would say, “Nothing.”

  I’ve heard this from some pretty bright kids. They’re not a bunch of dummies, whether they’re natural scholars or not. But a lot of them haven’t been given anything real to believe in, so they generalize their detachment into concluding that everything they’re admonished to think is just propaganda, too laced with half-truths or prior agendas to be worth investing themselves in.

  It does concern me, but I can’t say I blame them.

  Posted by Kuya on Nov 26, 2007 at 2:55 AM

  I will quote some powerful thinkers:
  “Only the hand that erases can write new things
  “ (Eckhart)
  “A good world needs knowledge,kindliness and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create” (Bertrand Russell)
  “Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reasonthan that of blindfolded fear (Thomas Jefferson).
  I feel the new generation is doing the right thing by refusing to believe in the power of armed forces.

  Posted by Maria on Nov 28, 2007 at 8:15 PM

  Page 1 of 1 pages

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Also by Aaron Sarver

• Kids LOL @ Navy Recruiters
  Millennials, explained Arthur Mitchell, director of strategic planning for the Navy's Accelerate Your Life campaign, are "narcissistic praise junkies" and "a somewhat alien life force"
• Creating the 21st Century Library
  The Prelinger Library eschews the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress systems, and is organized instead by what Megan Shaw Prelinger calls "a map of my brain"
• A Win for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
  In the face of a giant protest, McDonald's caves into farmworkers' demands for a penny per basket raise.
• Cholera and the City
  
• Witnessing Extraordinary Rendition
  Nonprofit organization Witness uses video like the new film Outlawed, to document human rights abuses worldwide.
• Tracking the CIA Torture Flights
  In their new book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen detail how the CIA transports detainees worldwide.