The Boomers were a whiny generation from the get-go. They had major issues with authority to their ultimate slow degeneration. Born out of nuclear conformity and hysteria, they marched upon the earth as a bunch of kicks-seeking go-getters, preached universal love and tree-hugging only to crash and burn in a cocaine blitz and set themselves to work confining, restricting, and finding new ways to control the younger generations to the drum beat of "The War on Drugs", "Zero Tolerance", and "Reviving Ophelia."
As a result, their children grew up in a world full of their parents flexing their demons, never knowing a world where holding a squirt gun in a crowd wouldn't find them in the back of a police car, or where they could walk to school unsupervised without having Child Protective Services stop by for a visit, where they could play football or dodgeball in school, or simply be a "boy". If the Millenials have any failing point, we at least know the culprit.
In the meantime, the intervening generation, the X'ers, blazed a trail of self-absorption that now finds them in the throes of mainstream power, working to sedate the younger generations with their technological gadgetry. Their children are growing up never knowing a world where cellphones don't exist, where the internet doesn't exist, where satisfaction doesn't come instantly fulfilled, where dependence on technology wasn't considered progress.
There's a reason the X'ers have been called, for a long time, the Me Generation, because if it wasn't for being able to hop on the latest techno-trend to satisfy themselves before all else, they'd have to take a long hard look at themselves without the technological extensions of their personality and see just how little control they have, having surrendered themselves to their desires. So there's no question that they've set loose their demons on their own progeny, the kids, the Z's.
What is the fate? The Millenials will embrace new thinking about the social structure of society, such as the ill-conceived Venus Project (which so many of them already do), green technologies, gay rights, and other social causes, but they will ultimately fall short because they were bred without a spine to implement their dreams, and will slip slide into obscurity and confusion and wrest scorn from their progeny. They will be lots of talk and little resolve.
For the kids, the Z's, all one can foresee is absolute and total rebellion. Having grown up totally pacified by the internet and instant gratification of desire, they will begin to yearn for something "more," in fact, they may be termed the "More Generation," trying to break free from their parent's "me-centered" egotistical philosophies, they will perhaps embark on more spiritual-fed paths of communal rebellion (subversion of their parents' internet). Such is a prediction.
Your post makes me wonder about what will happen in our next generation, which our kids will grow up into. It is very true that we don't need to repeat the trends that the previous generations made. A lot of norms came from those generations, which some of them became our newer traditions. I do admit that some traditions needs to be kept, but definitely not all of them. This generation and the next generation needs to question and get rid of the bad traditions that are out there. Only be doing that, we can make bigger and more bolder changes in our society.
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