But it would be unfair to say that today's underachievers are simply spoiled. Many are just unsure where to turn in a culture and economy where nothing seems certain. That's the story of James, 27, in Toronto. His mother is a journalist and his father is a lawyer, but he is having trouble finding his own way.
Since he graduated with honours from Concordia University two years ago, ”nothing has really happened,” he says. He moved home while his parents spent the fall in India. Four months later, he moved out to live with two friends. He describes his career so far as ”glorified data entry” and ”glorified scanning.” He found his first job menial and dull, and the atmosphere so oppressive that he developed irritable bowel syndrome, which ceased as soon as he quit.
No one doubts that James is bright. His friends would tease him when he blurted out random medical knowledge absorbed by osmosis in his dull days handling legal documents from drug companies. Everyone knows he could do more with his life. Why he has refused his parents' attempts to help, including the names of useful contacts, is beyond them —— and him.
”It's quite stupid,” he admits over coffee, then pauses. ”I definitely fear putting myself out there. . . . My girlfriend tells me to get my shit together, but if anyone else says it, I find it really patronizing.”
In the past, his parents tried to push him. ”I'm an only child, so their parental ego is at stake as well. They used to try and take a more active role in correcting my behaviour, but it never really worked.”
”The situation affects our relationship. They try not to say anything and it makes things tense. But if they came out and said something, then we definitely wouldn't be able to spend time together.”
Oh, you’re good, James. You’re very, very good. Not for you the angry young man railing at the perfidies of capitalism, privilege and religion, and demanding a perfect world by tomorrow--or else. No, your parents closed that off pretty well, didn’t they? With Dad setting precedents on gay marriage and Mom busy finishing her twelve-part series on the terrors of climate change, what's left for a lazy young alienated rebel today? Nothing, it seems, but playing the therapeutic card wistfully and trying to make us feel guilty we haven’t all quit our day jobs to make a lifelong vocation out of trying to unravel the elusive, multi-layered mystery that is you.
Articles on feckless youth, even good ones like this one, tend to invite immediate indignant challenges. Young advocates weigh in with economic complaints that betray their impression previous generations all bought BMW’s at age sixteen. Couch sages point out that youth has always mystified and maddened their elders and so, whatever the problem is, there is no point in second-guessing our modern ways or thinking we’ve made any mistakes–it’s all going to work out just fine. My favourites are those greying middle-agers anxious to show they haven’t lost the Woodstock spirit, who insist that, while modern youth may appear a tad light on the old get-up-and-go, they are the “best-informed” generation in history and, unlike the rest of us greedy philistines, worry terribly about human rights and the environment. But these are all boring objective arguments that miss the truly exciting story–the angst of the misunderstood parasite.
It is astounding how versatile the young have become with psychobabble and how adept many of them are at throwing the “parenting” jargon we replaced grandmother’s wisdom with right back at us. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to work this way. Psychological insight was meant to come as an earth-shattering revelation to troubled souls trapped in Victorian mind sets. Alan Bloom recounted how, as an undergrad in the fifties, he was enthralled by the fresh and dangerous appeal of Freudian thinking and all its derivatives, and what a turn on it was to be lectured about sexual repression with a cute, prim mid-Western co-ed in a crisply ironed white blouse sitting in the next seat. But today’s youth began cuddling up with their parents to watch Dr. Phil at age four and by age twelve their world view was formed, not by Sunday school, but by the lingo of the self-help book, thus giving fodder to the sublime wit of the inestimable Philip Larkin. Sexual repression? Yawn, let’s talk about me.
Note how deftly James combines feigned self-criticism and analysis of his inscutable inner workings (and conveys without actually stating that he feels badly and is working hard on the problem) with not-so-subtle jabs at his clumsy, narrow-minded parents and girlfriend and threats to abandon them. C'mon people, this isn't all in his head, you know. We're talking irritable bowel syndrome here. If they really cared, they’d give him his psychic “space”, by which he means a few more years to learn how to get up in the morning. It takes years to master this gobbledegook and many more years to see through it, but this is the jargon that drives our courts, boardrooms and schools today, and the prizes go to those who know how to use it to manipulate others and justify whatever they do. It would indeed be a negligent parent that didn’t ensure his child excelled at it. But how do you do that while at the same time making them understand it is just voodoo and doesn’t apply at all to their relationship with you, so they had better get a job fast if they know what's good for them?
7 comments:
Great post, as always. This is an interesting topic, especially for me with a 19 year old HS graduate who my wife and I are trying to motivate to take on the challenges of an independent life. She's living with my wife in Phoenix and is starting junior college this week.
There are so many angles to discuss this problem from. I think that the inflated expectations about self-fulfillment that came out ot the 60's social revolution and are still going strong today has made it very difficult for anyone to accept the proposition that work is a means to an end and not the "golden ring" itself that will fulfill all aspirations and expectations.
I remember a period of floundering about in college trying to figure out what I wanted to be, when I toyed with the idea of changing my major to Art. I had the idea of becoming a cartoonist or an illustrator, something "creative". My father, seeing me ready to blow a chance to break out of wage servitude by pursiuing a career in engineering, a choice he regrets not following, gave me advice from the wisdom of a past generation: "all work is boring, get a career that pays you the best for your boredom."
I'd have to say that for the vast majority of us that is the best advice to follow. Ironically it is our acheivement oriented culture that has inculcated the very attitudes that is leading to underacheivement. How often are we presented with inspirational stories of people who "beat the odds" and acheived great success in the entertainment, or sports or business. And this person inevitably gives this piece of advice: "reach for the stars, set your goals high, you can acheive anything you set your mind to. You can change the world!"
What is denied by anyone who makes these claims is that overacheivers all share a common temperament. They are driven personalities, their desire to focus on one goal over all other considerations, like relationships or relaxing on the weekend, is unusual. These are unusually unbalanced people, they don't have the normal desire to balance different things of value that most of us posess. AOG has a good discussion thread going about these kinds of people.
As a culture we've lost the ability to value hard work of whatever level of income generation potential. We refuse to accept that people are born with inherent aptitudes, temperaments and levels of intelligence which put them on a scale of acheivability. We have to keep the illusion alive that anyone can grow up to be a CEO or a billionaire entrepreneur or a star athelete.
Rather, we should be focusing on a set of behaviors that just about al l but the severely disabled can acheive, which is to pay your own way in life. A hardware store clerk who can pay his own rent and raise his children to be self-sufficient members of society should be treated as a success, not a failure. Once people like that could take pride in themselves. As the article states, these kind of people are now looken on as chumps.
Your posts are always interesting and I find this one particularly so, both as a parent and a recently retired teacher and education adviser.
While not subscribing to the idea that there was ever 'a golden age' in family life or education, I do think that life for my generation was simpler than it is today.
My parents lived through years of economic depression, war and then post-war austerity. They had to save hard for 'luxuries' which are now considered necessities of life. Their aim was to provide their four children with a good education so that we would have secure careers. Knowing the sacrifices they made to put us all through grammar school and college, how could we not work hard? We had plenty of motivation.
On the whole, higher education for my generation was a means to entering a profession such as medicine, law or education. Things are different now; my husband and I encouraged our children to study subjects they would enjoy, with no particular career in view. Fortunately, they have chosen well, but many of their peers have ended up with degrees that are pretty useless in the workplace and they drift from one unsatisfying job to another, or laze about waiting for the right opportunity to make its way to them.
As our society has become more affluent, so it has grown to value less what it has. My children never had the thrill I had of going to collect the book I had saved for six months to buy - they log on to Amazon and order six at a time. I'm glad they grew up with plenty, but maybe this generation has missed something of the spice that hunger, perseverence and struggle add to achievement.
Re: Boredom
This guy isn't bored, he's boring.
Bottom line is: The parents permit it.
In reading the comments made about the article at the linked Globe and Mail site, these stood out to me, and echo Duck and monix:
"Karl Junkin from TorontoTokyo, Canada writes: [E]ven when you think you know what you want with your life, when you finish uni/college, you find out 'oops... not what I thought'. This usually hits about half way through post-secondary. This is a gigantic failure on the system. They are supposed to prepare us for this decision before we're 17, not after we're 22!
In today's world, the people that figure it out by 22 are still the lucky ones, and I'm among them, but I still have to correct an inappropriate choice of college course (could have been worse, but). It's difficult, the system isn't designed to allow for such corrections since education is prohibitively expensive if you aren't rich.
It's not just Canada either. Japan has exactly the same thing (they call them 'Freeters'). How are we supposed to achieve our dreams when we can't figure out our longterm dreams until after all the foundations (post-secondary included) are already laid and set? You gotta draw up the plans before you build the ship.
"Walt O'Brien from Binghamton, New York, United States writes: It used to be said that the father who does not teach his son a trade raises a thief. Now, it's the parents who do not teach their children a trade raises a sponge, which is the same bloody thing as a thief.
If a child isn't raised with the understanding that they'll have to meet their own bills and obligations at 18 or so, you can't blame the kid. How about a 'Life Skills' channel on the idiot box, please? Parents won't do the work anymore, and TV is the only thing the new crew take seriously.
Part of it, a large part, is that with temp work being the norm, it makes no sense for unskilled workers to commit to an apartment or to anything independent when all they will be is jobless again in a couple of weeks. The workplace is also about ten times more brutal than it was 30 years ago: kids are scared to death to tangle with the real world for this reason. I also don't think that the senior year of high school is too early to provide training in starting one's own business: it's ludicrous that drug dealers are acquiring their own skills suite in marketing and customer fulfillment on their own yet straightshooting kids can't obtain the tools they need to do their own business from their school systems.
You can't blame a horse for not taking the hurdle when it hasn't been trained to do so.
"j p from Canada writes: I am getting pretty tired of my parent's generation whining about how they had jobs/families/houses by the time they were my age (I'm 30). Their university tuition was a few hundred dollars per year - now it's up to about $6000. Moreover, a high school diploma is no longer sufficient for a job, and a Bachelor's has devalued tremendously. So: the need for more/longer education at something like 10 times the cost, and rental and housing costs that have skyrocketed, and you wonder why we don't have houses?
Maybe it's because our MBAs cost as much as their houses did."
[R]each for the stars, set your goals high, you can achieve anything you set your mind to. You can change the world!
That's simply true. It doesn't necessarily take single-minded obsessiveness, it usually only takes a mental commitment to persevere, and a willingness to possibly fail. The latter is the hardest part, but the former seems to come with difficulty to the average American as well, for reasons unknown to me.
Now, if you want to be another Madonna, or POTUS, then forget the part about "no need to be obsessive".
For instance, one of my brothers set a world record for running, basically on a whim, and one of my sisters has turned a talent for arranging flowers into a decent second income, (net profits in the extremely low five figures), working very part-time out of her home. She did that by being willing to be rejected by 99% of the people that she approached, and then talking to enough people that the 1% added up to something.
A hardware store clerk who can pay his own rent and raise his children to be self-sufficient members of society should be treated as a success, not a failure. [...] As the article states, these kind of people are now looken on as chumps.
Well, in my neck of the woods those kind of people are still seen as successful, just not enviable. Your milage may vary.
On the whole, higher education for my generation was a means to entering a profession such as medicine [or] law...
Things are different now; my husband and I encouraged our children to study subjects they would enjoy, with no particular career in view...
[M]any of their peers have ended up with degrees that are pretty useless in the workplace...
No kidding. That's what unprecedented prosperity will do to a society - ordinary people feel comfortable getting a fairly useless education and accreditation, (although such might be intensely rewarding personally), of the sort that in the past only the children of the elites would pursue, as they knew that they wouldn't be working for a living in the usual sense.
Which, really, is at the root of the whole "stay at home" phenomenon. The parents can now afford it, whereas in the past, that wasn't always so.
That's simply true. It doesn't necessarily take single-minded obsessiveness, it usually only takes a mental commitment to persevere, and a willingness to possibly fail. The latter is the hardest part, but the former seems to come with difficulty to the average American as well, for reasons unknown to me.
Your sister's flower business is great, but she's not "changing the world". And I'm afraid that many kids have been conditioned to expect to be the next Madonna or POTUS.
I don't think that living at home with parents was so unusual in the past, especially when people were still single. But marriage was usually the point when young men knew they had to be a provider and establish their own homestead, especially as that was a sign to women that the man had what it took to provide for her.
Oro, you're right that we can afford it now, particularly due to the fact that we have less children. Houses are much bigger and are occupied by fewer people in the past. If you're from a family of 6 or 8 kids, and you're living in a three bedroom house of around 1500 sq ft, home was so crowded that you couldn't wait to escape to your own place. Now an only child can have a whole wing of a house for themselves.
The complaints about college and career pressures are true, and I think that the old wisdom has been turned on its head. Unless you have what it takes to be in the top 10-20% of your field, a high-tuition college education is probably a waste of money and time. You'll be competing with the best of the world. But skilled trades like carpentry, plumbing, electrician, which can't be outsourced to China, are becoming lucrative, especially as there is a shortage. Plus the internet has made running your own business a low entry cost, low overhead possibility for many more people than in the past. My wife and daughter have started a pet sitting service, which for my daughter, if she sticks with it, might be more lucrative for her than anything she learns in college.
"Unless you have what it takes to be in the top 10-20% of your field, a high-tuition college education is probably a waste of money and time."
If if this were generally taken as true, how many parents in these Lake Woebegone days, that their precious isn't in the top 10%?
P.S. I can't use a BLOCKQUOTE tag? Is that some sort of Canadian content restriction?
SH,
No doubt true, but there's always cow college. I got an undergraduate degree from the University of Rhode Island (cow college east) and only went into debt to the staggering sum of $1700. And as a slightly better than "meets expectations" business analyst I'm earning in the top 20% salarywise. And working 40 hours a week.
Breaking into the top 10% just isn't worth it.
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