The Trouble With Kids Today?

The following is one of my toast masters speeches:

I don’t know what is the trouble with kids today? I think it's their strange music, their long hair and they're just lazy. They're all sitting around drinking and complaining about the government. They don't understand the sacrifices and the hardships we endured to give them the freedom they have today, they're just ungrateful.

Statements like this or others similar to it have probably been said for hundreds of years except the music may have been chamber music, Ragtime or even swing. The hardships endured were numerous ranging from the Bubonic Plague to the current war in Afghanistan. 

I propose that each generation affects the following generation, in most cases its positive is a sociological evolutionary process whereby we learn from our mistakes and make changes for the future but ultimately we really never get it right.

When researching the material for competent communication project number seven I realized that this subject is too deep for just one speech. This is why I intend to make this a four-part presentation starting with number seven and ending with number 10 hoping to inspire everybody to do with they can to facilitate and encourage the current generation in making the changes necessary to ensure the success of our country and our grandchildren.

The topic is “Generational Theory” for my research material I purchased two books, “Generations the History of America's Future” and “Generations at Work”. Over the next four speeches you'll learn about the generational cycles, generational archetypes, turnings of the generations and our current position and cycle.

You might ask yourself “Why do I need to know about generations or how does this affect me” to answer your first question, you need to know about the generations so that you can better manage your personnel and understand the differences and the reasons why a person's much younger than you act the way they do. This knowledge will close the generation gap even though the generational differences remain. The second question how does it affect me, these young people today will be the same people tackling important issues and making decisions that will significantly affect our future and way of life. Remember when we are seniors they will be making all the decisions and paying off our debts and possibly deciding if we go into a home or if they pull the plug. So we must understand them now if we hope to influence them down the road.

So let's start with how we define a generation.

Basically a generation is a span or phase of life but not necessarily a lifetime. Take for example, the first 20 years of your life you felt one way the next 20 years of your life you felt different and if you live long enough there will be yet another and so on.

You have probably heard about the “Baby Boomers “or the “Generation Xers“ that’s likely because you fall into one of those categories. If you're young enough you might even be a “millennial”. Some call the millennial generation the “I generation“ the I stands for Internet or information. Basically they have ready access to a plethora of information on virtually any subject and exposure to both pleasant and unpleasant information and images.

Take for example the games they play, these games expose them to a level of violence that boomers never saw unless they had been to war. Some fear that this generation has been desensitized by seeing so much violence. They are worried because some are at the point of when seeing somebody ride his bicycle off the roof of a house and break both his legs and lay on the concrete unconscious, their friends keep the camera rolling. They then post it to the Internet and share it with all their friends and the rest of the world, many of which find it hilarious. This scares the hell out of us boomers, but it's less scary to the Xers and the millennials can hardly see why we make such a big deal about.

Have our children or our children's children gone off the deep end, is our future doomed and what's wrong with kids today? The answer is no, no, and nothing.

As you well learn during the rest of this series, we are cycling between Awakenings and Crisis. Awakenings are basically eras of cultural or religious renewal where society focuses on ethical and or social values. We are currently nearing the end of a crisis cycle. Crises cycles begin during great peril. I offer that 911, Iraq and Afghanistan war, social and the economic uncertainty we experience today has placed us there.

I believe by the end of the series is my hope that you'll agree with William Strauss ,Neil Howe and myself and we say that the current generation “The Millennials” are heroes and they will fulfill their civic duty. With their help our future will be in safe hands and society and way of life is secure. But it's up to us, are we going to make their Job more difficult or are we going to continue to pile the economic and social burdens on them. I hope not for all our sake.