Overcoming the Millennial Malaise

No longer are we the young people in the room.

By guest contributor TJ Martinell.

Recently, Ryan Howard wrote a piece for Old Glory Club regarding Generation X. I must confess, it was rather a godsend for myself, as I was toying with an essay I’d wanted to write for quite some time, but hadn’t been able to find a good way to frame it. In his piece, Howard critiques issues he sees with Gen X and the changes that need to be made. Inasmuch as it’s wise to avoid generational conflicts, they shouldn’t be evaded by ignoring systematic problems that put people of different ages at odds.

This is something I hope can be prevented when it comes to Millennials like myself. We can help others outside of our generation understand us, our struggles both past and present, as well as how to overcome them.

Millennials had a childhood very different from that of Gen X. Gen X were neglected latchkey kids whose parents needed to be reminded by the local news station that they existed. In contrast, we Millennials had a healthy balance — though that wouldn’t last. As kids growing up in the 1990s, we could go outdoors and play unsupervised, or we could check out the latest cool NES game or high-quality Disney/Warner Brothers cartoons geared toward us. We grew up witnessing the rise of 3D graphics and the Internet. We experienced the perfect blend of digital–physical realms.

The curse of all that is that we thought our best days were ahead, and I think I speak on behalf of my fellow Millennials when I say that our hopes and dreams were among the victims of 9/11. As one meme put it, we were “raised to live in a world that doesn’t exist.”

The difference with Gen X is that they were allowed to become adults — mainly because their parents were too indifferent to bother with monitoring their development. Culture was shaped around them when they were in their twenties, rather than when they were kids as it was with Millennials. The 1990s and early 2000s were full of entertainment geared toward Gen X, but also starring Gen Xers and portrayed from a Gen X perspective.

In contrast, my generation is suffering what I describe as “the Millennial Malaise.” The wave of Baby Boomers who raised Millennials, generally speaking, still carry on in a collective sense as though they haven’t finished rearing their offspring. People might think this isn’t a big deal, but when your entire society is rooted on the premise that a certain demographic is the perpetual child, that shapes all social interactions and the presumptions that drive human behavior.

This is why Millennials have the lowest marriage rates of any generation; there’s no social context for it. Millennials are hitting 40 and still being treated like children.

The other problem is unique to our generation. When we entered the workforce during the Great Recession during the Obama presidency, there was a massive cultural shift emphasizing the hiring and promotion of nonwhite males. This meant that young Millennial women were given advancements by Baby Boomer supervisors and managers, while Millennial men were put in a corner and told to shut up and be quiet. This was also the era in which women became the majority in many institutions, including college attendance and degrees. “Millennial culture” was created by nonwhite male Millennials under the supervision of Baby Boomers.

I strongly suspect that these dynamics are what led to the rise of various factions of the Internet, including the Dissident Right and the “Manosphere” during the 2010s. Millennial men may or may not have created these spaces, but they were the ones reading, commenting, and discussing, as these were the only places left where they could collaborate and define their own culture.

Unfortunately, online spaces do not substitute for physical ones, and many of these spaces also discussed matters over which a young man concerns himself. Millennial men are now in their late thirties and early forties. We are no longer the young people in the room, and it is time to stop acting like we are.

However, that still leaves us with this problem: Millennials are still denied opportunities to transition beyond that role and assert themselves the way their parents did in their early twenties.

We can observe the effects of the Millennial Malaise in how my generation has suddenly regained interest in their childhood stuff. It would explain why adults make up a significant percentage of children’s toy purchases as they, to paraphrase Obama, “bitterly cling” to a time from their past where culture catered to them.

It explains a phenomenon observed by Scott Greer of Highly Respected as to why many men in their late thirties and forties interacting on Twitter act like they’re still young; I’d wager a lot of that is because of how they’re still perceived and treated by older people. The term “adulting,” I suspect, is Millennials’ way of doing ordinary adult things while still being treated as though they’re not yet capable of handling that responsibility.

There’s also something else going on. I’m not the one to coin the term, but somebody somewhere on social media proposed that Millennials were “children of vanity”; they weren’t raised with the notion that they would one day become adults and have their own families.

If Millennials do not ultimately find a way to break out of this vicious cycle and take on healthy forms of leadership for the up-and-coming generations, in particular Generation Z, they will ultimately revert to a childlike state and wallow in toxic nostalgia for a past that will never come back. Their lives will be perpetually caged within limitations set by those who raised them until, to quote Eowyn, “use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

Despite this danger, there is an enormous opportunity to take these hardships and losses and channel them into meaningful action. Due to circumstances, Millennial men were forced to relearn much of what was either forgotten or neglected. We learned how to build edifices we’ve been barred from maintaining by those who occupy them, but haven’t a clue how they were constructed.

Unlike most of Gen Z and subsequent generations, we witnessed old America, even if it was on a course that brought us to this point. We remember with our own recollections what we are expected to forget.

Simply put, Millennials must build their own spaces — and not just in the digital realm. It is through these spaces that we will at last be able to define ourselves, tell our story, and establish our own traditions. It is through these spaces that the next generation of men will be mentored outside the confines of the Longhouse. These spaces must be defended at all costs, for they are the incubator in which a revived America can be hatched, the same way the flame of a dying fire ignites a new blaze.

We Millennials cannot accomplish this on our own. It will take the collaboration, effort, and support of men of different age groups, whether it is with money, property, resources, or participation. By our conduct, we must set the example we expect and require in those we lead.

I’ll conclude with this note: the young men of America are the French crown lying in the gutter.

Will Millennials pick it up, or will we instead reach for a childhood toy?