My Generation's Fatal Flaws

I'm a proud Millennial. I love the year I was born as well as appreciate my childhood experiences and up bringing. To be honest, I think every generation has it's perks and shouldn't be completely undermined, but I will not ignore the tell-tale flaws of my generation or any generation of that matter. We all have issues and instead of constantly patting each other on the back for each and everything. We also need to take a look in the mirror and see what our issues are as a collective whole. For those under the age of 40, our biggest problem is the expectation for instant gratification and the intense need to virtue signal. I see it everywhere on social media platforms and it's almost always coming from people from my generation and the generation after. I have been seeing it more mostly because of the covid vaccines that have recently come into public distribution. For the record, I respect every individual's decision to either take the vaccine or not, but (and this is a big but) the instant gratification and virtue signaling has gone too far when it comes to the covid vaccines.

When you take any vaccine or medication, you take it for your own individual needs. I would hope to God that if you decide to take any shot, medicine, or any medical procedure that you research it as thoroughly as you possibly can and make your own educated decision going forward. This includes the covid vaccine. Instead I see eager young people wanting to get their covid selfies and tiktok videos. It's not about their own medical needs. It's about getting in on the latest internet trends. Who does that? No one in the history of ever has made a spectacle at this kind of scale out of what should be a serious medical decision. For some it's not enough to get in on the selfie trend. They need to go a bit further and get a cute little trendy tattoo on their covid shot location to post all over the internet (gotta get those likes and follows, huh). Like I said before I respect people's decision to take the vaccine or not, but making getting the vaccine a trend is disgusting. It's a serious medical matter that everyone should research before they make their final decision. Making it a trend is going to end up killing some poor 20 year old who shouldn't be taking the vaccine due to their own individual medical issues. The only reason why this hypothetical 20 year old is getting the vaccine is to get that vaccine selfie and maybe even a cute vaccine tattoo complete with the vaccination dates. No research done. Just pure virtue signaling and attention seeking. That's whats wrong with making a serious medical decision “trendy”. I could go on about the dumb things my generation has done during the pandemic that completely ignores actual science and glorifies trend setting while looking like a good person. Let's just turn the page to instant gratification because that's a deeper issue in my opinion.

While social media in my opinion started virtue signaling, I believe the American school system is to blame for the need for instant gratification that we see in people under 40. Personally, I never went to a school that gave out participation trophies, but I hear enough of it that I can believe it's a real thing. I just happened to be an uncommon, but fortunate case for my age. It's not just the trophies, it's the way a lot of teachers lecture when it comes to protests and going to college. That's something I noticed with certain teachers I have had throughout my childhood. We're taught that women and minorities throughout American history had to fight (protest) to get many of the rights we enjoy now. In my personal experience, I recall that most of those teachers taught the fight, but not the timeline and court procedures that went into actually getting those rights. I just happened to be fortunate enough to have gone to a school where the constitution and government system were heavily hammered into our heads. You couldn't even pass the 7th grade if you got less than an 85% on your constitution test. I remember that test vividly because it was so intense. The test itself was probably more than 10pages long and our teachers stressed the importance of it to the point that it scared us. For years I thought my constitution test experience was normal until I went to college. To my shock and later horror, I learned that it was a very uncommon experience for people in my generation. Now when I see young people protesting for less than a month on gun control and getting upset that nothing has changed. I understand why they don't understand why things aren't instantly happening for them. The vast majority of people in my generation were not taught how the government and laws work in the United States. They were taught that change happens with peaceful protests and spreading awareness, but they weren't taught the procedures taken to make those changes happen. So they expect it to happen right away. Unfortunately because change isn't happening fast enough for these people, they have resorted to burning down innocent businesses and terrorizing innocent people in the name of whatever cause they are fighting for. These people pretty much believe their cause is more important than the well being of those around them. Sadly, these tactics are now under the umbrella of “peaceful protesting” to most people under 40. Why would burning buildings and hurting innocent people be called peaceful protests? Many in my generation will argue that businesses have insurance to pay for their damage. As for the people they terrorize, they are simply white supremacists because it's convenient to call anyone you want to hurt a white supremacist. Which in my opinion is a dangerous practice because the only people who would love this practice of calling anyone a white supremacists when convenient is an actual white supremacist. It makes it significantly harder to identify an actual white supremacist. So basically the expectation for instant gratification is a big reason why many buildings burned and innocent people were beaten to near death.

I did use very extreme examples of virtue signaling and instant gratification, but these are very real things happening right now. You could sit there and say well I'm not under 40 so I can't be to blame, but you are. The older generations were the adults that instilled these dangerous flaws into my generation. Many people my age were never taught that there are consequences to every action. We weren't taught how our government works and why it was set up the way it is. We just know that there is a left and a right and one is worse than the other. We've turned government parties into high school cliques. Comments like, “don't talk to Sally over there because she's a Republican” or “Richard is a mouth breather because he's a Democrat”, are thrown around among young adults. This is because it is literally all most people under 40 know what to do when it comes to politics. Don't associate with your opposing party because they're bad people. No one taught us anything and now we're expected to function as productive adults in society. No wonder we have an issue with instant gratification. No wonder we can't help, but show everyone that we're a good person without doing anything to help anyone or anything. My generation can sit there and make it everyone else's fault, but now as adults we have to take a look in the mirror. We have to take responsibility as adults and face our flaws in order change them for the better. It may be too late to change these flaws for many Millennials and Generation Zs, but lets step up and not ruin the up and coming Generation Alpha kids. Let's go back to teaching kids how the world actually works along with the skills to be successful in life. Not the weird fairy tale dream land that many people under 40 had shoved into their brain. What was done to Millennial and Generation Z kids is just tragic and now we're all suffering from our mistakes.