We live in a time of vast and unprecedented growth, a cultural and technological revolution. The world is obviously not perfect by any means, but we Millennials have an incredible opportunity at present.
To quote the enthusiastic Schuyler sisters from the brilliant musical Hamilton: "Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!"
And yet there is a weirdly widespread sense of dissatisfaction and rosy glasses towards the past that has made its way quite ironically, into a fundamentally modern, social-media-informed sensibility.
I see it all the time on Facebook and Twitter, as well as in conversations IRL with friends and peers:
“Fashion was so much nicer in the 50s!”
“Rock died in the 70s!”
“Cartoons were better in the 90s!”
“Politicians were more honest in the 1840s!”
“Everyone's so stupid and technologically addicted nowadays!”
The phrases “nowadays” or “this generation” or “Millennial” are almost universally discussed in negative terms, even by the very Millennials who make up this generation!
And it's something that I, as an incurable optimist and romantic, a lover of History and the Arts and Culture and Society everything and anything Human. I can't stand it. I loathe it. It viscerally hurts and infuriates me.
And this is why. It expands the ills of society to insurmountable and denies our inborn ability to grow and adapt and change.
Now let me clarify something. I am not advocating moral relativism. I'm a Christian through-and-through and believe that, fundamentally, human nature is screwed up and cannot change itself.
BUT
That does not mean that all the good we can do isn't layered and growing. The geniuses, the forward thinkers, the rebels and the revolutionaries who made their mark and changed things, in some small way, for the better -- they have always been innovators. They always use all the tools available to them, past and present, and created new tools where necessary.
Just imagine what Da Vinci could've done today with computers and robotics. Just imagine what the Founding Fathers and the abolitionists could've done with Social Media.
We're all revolutionaries; and we're all, quite literally, writing the annals of history with our Twitter and Facebook feeds.
And yes we use slang, and silly memes, and YOLO and trap music and the Kardashians, but the Medievals had their equivalent silly bits of culture, and that did not in any way undermine the importance of their contributions. This is the most educated, vocal, unified and literate generation of all time, with the most resources of all time at our disposal, and we write more than anyone before us, even the least of us, even if just in the captions of our Instagramming we ate for breakfast.
Yes, bad things can come of modern culture because we are fundamentally the same screwed up people we've always been. And yes, technology and arts can be abused or misappropriated.
But don't be a pretentious pedant who refuses to acknowledge the beauty and grace that can be made from these things. Because these things are, in the end, more good than bad, and we are hugely privileged to have them at our casual disposal.
We don't want our children to look at us and think we were stupid for railing against innovations, or complain that we didn't work to better our present situation because we longed for an invented, irretrievably past “Golden Age.” We don't want to be swept away into irrelevance for stagnate longing.
As brilliant as Socrates was, he looks incredibly ignorant in his opposition to writing as a tool that would inevitably corrode intelligentsia and culture. Especially since his railing only exists today precisely because it was written down for posterity.
Don't be Socrates crying doomsday at books; instead, be someone who writes the books that prove their value. Don't be someone who rejects smartphones as the bane of our generation, but instead, be innovators and forward thinkers who embrace the gorgeous potential of these things, and use the past as a stepping stone towards a better future. Don't get caught in nostalgia's treacherous trap of pessimism and complaint and clawing at old dead things, but preserve the past to draw from its example in creating something new, and understand that Mozart probably would've loved hip-hop's innovations, that Shakespeare would've reveled in Internet slang, and that for all of us, YOLO, so make the most of what we got.
So heed the immortal words of that sage, Edna Mode from The Incredibles:
“I never look back, darling; it distracts from the now!"
Just whatever you do, don't miss the beauty of today for the doneness of yesterday, 'cause that would be such a shame and such a waste.
