You should read this book if you want to understand how the millennial generation differs from baby boomers.
This book debunks three myths.
- What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
Many millennials are known for lacking dependence and taking less risk for multiple reasons.
Boomer parents grew up in a different time, when a college degree was paramount to a good career. So they started prepping their kids for college when they were in grade school, filling their time with extracurricular activities and padding a resume so they can get into a prestigious school.
These activities replaced unsupervised play and activities such as exploring outside and playing sports that built grit by experiencing failure, bumps, and bruises.
So kids spend less time unsupervised and relying on adults to plan the majority of their waking hours. While millennial’s parents were roaming the streets and babysitting younger siblings at age 12, it’s illegal in many states for a 12-year old to stay home by himself now (I’m looking at you, Illinois). Thus, many have delayed typical activities that mark independence and risk such as drinking alcohol, sex, and getting driver’s licenses.
This book exposes the lie that kids are fragile. In fact, they are antifragile: meaning that if they don’t experience challenges and struggles, they won’t grow. This is the same concept as working out. When muscles are pushed past their limits, they tire and tear, which is the only way to grow stronger.
Just like working out, kids need to endure failures and frustration to build grit.
2) Always trust your feelings
This is the major driver behind student shouting down college speakers, rioting on campus, and the birth of microaggressions. Because students feel mentally threatened by ideas, and they respond as if they were physically threatened.
You can blame this on a lack of critical thinking skills or just immaturity. These protesting students don’t want to debate the speaker; the students want to preclude the speaker from sharing ideas.
This is laughable because these institutions were allegedly founded to discuss ideas.
Words on a page don’t care about feelings. If a student wants to “shut down” a speaker, he should do so by disarming their argument through columns in a school newspaper, or civilly debating that speaker.
Millennials can’t trust their feelings because life is difficult. Traveling through life with the motto “Good Vibes” doesn’t hold water when facing cancer, death, and divorce.
This is a dangerous belief because no employer past college will allow it — mainly because the student won’t be paying the employer $100,000.
No employer cares if you felt like getting up for work, completing that project, or closing that deal.
Trust your mind, not your feelings.
3) It’s Good people -vs- Evil People.
This lie has been prevalent since the dawn of man to modern day media. The tribal mentality may be seen best through the Stanford Prison Experiment. As soon as “teams” were assigned, the situation and violence escalated. This is the same with identity politics.
Journalists often speak only with people of their own beliefs, which leads their followers into an echo chamber where only those with the same belief exists. Instead of finding common ground with people across the political spectrum, the media often conflates polar opposite issues.
According to data from Pew Research Center, there has been a 21-point increase in the distance between Republican and Democrat beliefs from 2004-17.
Whether Fox News or Buzzfeed, I believe the media would benefit from civil, public discourse about beliefs on each side. Partisan politics often “catastrophize” the other’s viewpoints, whether it be that Democrats want an “open border” or that Republicans don’t want to raise the minimum wage because “they hate the poor.”
Each side has relevant points to air, and neither is evil. I believe that if people spent their time talking face-to-face with people of different political opinions instead of fighting in the Facebook comment section, the disparity between political parties would converge.