The Millennial Dilemma

A generation of highly ambitious, positive and creative people but mostly lost souls.

Graphic by iconicTYPE

We are the product of two previous post-war generations reaping the rewards of a peaceful new world. Anything you could dream of would be possible, so why do most of us feel lost? In short, we now live in a world where most of the rewards have already been won. Now we can only assist those winners in becoming multi-winners. Yet there is still hope for our generation, we all grew up being told we were winners when we came 7th place in a race, so let’s create that world. Everyone can be winners in a fair and just world.

Before we explore new ideas for the 21st Century lets rewind back to the late 1940s. Baby boomers (1946–1964) are the post war generation (your grandparents) who grew up directly after WW2 with no memory of the war other than the fresh stories from their family. In this new age most countries who fought or were impacted by the war were being rebuilt, giving nearly any member of society a chance of success. Then came Generation X (1965–1980), this generation (your parents) saw the success of their parents, giving that its been ~30 years since the war ended, most of the rebuilding phase had now been complete. We are now in an era of liberty, were people can express themselves freely. This new modern age is also advanced by technology, which gave Gen X the ability to continue succeeding.

Now welcome the Millennial (1981–1996) who will enter the 21st Century young with ambitious dreams and surrounded by success stories. Unfortunately the reality ends up being quite different. Of course there is much success in all generations (as well as failure and contentment) however the millennial generation happen to be born at the peak of the post war opportunity.

I am speaking generally in terms of opportunity, I’m well aware that the internet gives new opportunities to everyone with access to it. My point is that most opportunities even created by the internet have already been taken. All we have now is huge corporations and conglomerates and copycat brands and services. We did have small businesses with fresh ideas and a unique local vibe however the pandemic is raging war against those, leaving the big guys to clean house.