10S403 General Paper

GENERATION OMG

This article shows how youth today are shaped by the Great Recession(2009) and the way they are similar to the Silent Generation. Silent Generation refers to the generation coming of age at the time, born during the Great Depression and World War 2. The reason for such comparison is because most of the youth today bear the same characteristic as the silent generation who are cautious and resigned. The characteristics of Silent Generation are grave, fatalistic and conventional. According to the passage, youth's ambitions have shrunk and the youth today are lacking of confidence.

I feel that it is because of the small generation population in response to the financial and global insecurity which in turn, uniquely poised the youth to take advantage of economic opportunities and resulting in the reduced competition. Hence, youth are becoming more apathetic and self-centered. Youth are just waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders and meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. By comparing the flaming youth of their fathers and mothers, today's youth is still a small flame. However, we need to also note that the description of silent generation is abit of misnomer. Many revolutionary leaders in the civil rights movement came from the Silent Generation such as Martin Luther King and Loria Steinem as well as rockstars the Beatles. There is no simple cause and effect relationship in how economic adversity pushed a generation into any one kind of behaviour. It is still dependent on the context and the mood of the time and how children understand the spirit of the times.