Dilip 23 Dec 2020 ======================================================================== Millenial responsibilities. I have been thinking about when a generational cohort can muster sufficient influence to move civilization, and what happens when the forces that compel a civilization to make a decision and navigate come at a generation faster than the generation can react. Millenials are unlikely to be the only generation that has to deal with an aging population of elders who are perceived as ill-equipped to handle millenial concerns. However, as a member of the millenial generation, I worry that as our generation ages into senior roles in society, we will be laser focused on solving the problems that bother us today and fall into the same bucket of ill-equipped seniors struggling to comprehend the concerns of the 2050s and 2060s. Even worse, we might end up being a cohort that completely fails to organize into a generation worth taking seriously. If video games and social media kill ambition, if a booming economy seduces our generation into "safe" desk jobs making presentations and compiling spreadsheets, if our generation discards history and all its lessons and wastes its remaining lifespan deriving philosophies from first principles without success, we risk being yet another failed generation. Our generation has two responsibilities that we should adopt today. First, we must ask our elders to teach us their experiences, what worked for them, what they failed to accomplish and what advice they would give us. We are a generation that is severely at risk of not inheriting tribal knowledge that's been passed down to promising young men and women for centuries. Second, we must start thinking about how we engage with those younger than us. It seems very likely that we will not be able to solve problems that we face in time to make a difference for our generation. We can however plant seeds today to help solve the problems of the generations following us when we are able to. If we succeed, we will be the last generation that faces challenging issues with our hands tied behind our backs - we can leave behind a tradition of elders assuming responsibility for the younger members of society instead of being deaf, self-obsessed, naval gazing failures. We were taught to respect our elders, but we have all come to question it as a viable philosophy. Let us be the generation that earns respect as elders, without having to compel or teach anyone to do so.