Why the Boomer-Millennial divide does the world no favours
Social media has been gleefully alight in recent days, millennials have had enough of being vilified by the generation that left them out to dry and have lashed out. This may have passed unnoticed except for the passionate reaction of some boomers to the phrase ‘OK, boomer,’ a relatively innocuous but definitely passive-aggressive reply to dated advice and unsympathetic responses to modern problems. From millennials ‘killing’ just about everything, it is now the boomers who are the villains, the money-grabbing yuppies of the 80s and 90s didn’t care about the environment and sold just about everything in order to be a homeowner, to have two-car households, to spend and eat and drink enormously and still have ‘stuff’ to throw away or waste.
While there is a certain irony is seeing the generation that labelled anyone younger or (arguably) more sensitive than themselves as ‘snowflakes’ behave with such sensitivity, in the meantime, the Amazon burns and no one is doing anything about that. It is human nature for our personalities to change as we age, becoming more or less conservative and previously lightly-held beliefs settling themselves in stone, and it is all too easy to forget that boomers (those who were born between 1946 and 1964) were also those who were hippies, who wanted to make love, not war, who campaigned against nuclear armament and who began to make strides in environmental concerns.
Early vegans and vegetarians were boomers who cared passionately about the environment, this was the generation who introduced the Clean Air Acts, and who campaigned for equality on many fronts. They may not have won all their battles, but to ignore their contributions is disingenuous, unkind and unfair. Millennials (born between the early 80s and 2000) have definitely had harder lives than their grandparents in many ways, and yes, much of it was due to economic factors that favoured older generations instead of investing in youth – but finger-pointing and blame will not resolve any of these issues, because hatred works in generalisations and people are individuals.
Instead, people of all generations should work together doing what they can, and spending what they can afford, to make positive changes. It may not seem like much, but a billion small changes will add up to an immense change for the environment and that can only be good for all of us.
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