Call us the "Me-Me Generation."
As it continues to age, Prince George, like the province and the country, is discarding allegiance to tradition, family, neighbourhood, community, workplace and even friendship. The very idea of allegiance and loyalty is old-fashioned.
This new generation can't be identified by age, the way the original Me Generation of the 1970s could with its focus on individual rights and identity politics or the way Time magazine framed it two years ago with its declaration of the millennials as the "me-me-me generation" of lazy narcissists. The Me-Me Generation is a broader, cultural phenomenon that transcends age, wealth and most other demographic classifications. The Me-Me Generation is made up of the unruly children of the original Me Generation, the logical outcome of a philosophy that embraced individuality without limits.
The Me-Me Generation is causing massive damage to society and communities as citizens back away from citizenship and the responsibilities and commitments those entail (like voting, for example) and become simply residents, mere occupiers of a place, or worse, taxpayers, individuals who pay taxes and expect a return on their investment no differently than going to the store to buy food and furniture.
The latest victim of the Me-Me Generation in Prince George is the Mardi Gras of Winter Society.
The annual winter festival has closed its doors because a lack of new volunteers has meant no new ideas and nobody to take over as longtime supporters moved on.
"The need for festivals just isn't there anymore," said Mardi Gras past-president Aileen Snow. "People don't volunteer the same way they did 20 years ago either. They just don't have the time."
Actually, it's worse than that.
People have the time as much as they ever have. They just refuse to give it to anyone else, particularly when the personal benefits are unclear. The Me-Me Generation isn't just a group of apathetic under-30s hooked on social media and too poor to even pay the rent in their parents basement. Their parents are just as bad. Out of the active child-rearing business, they have more time than ever before but most of them are distancing themselves from their communities. While a noble few are taking that extra time and devoting it to community service, giving back the way their parents did, the vast majority are retreating to their living rooms with their big screen TVs, their backyard patios and their scotch and wine collections or they're fleeing town altogether to their cabins or with their travel trailer in tow to places where their cell phones don't work or on a plane to Vegas or Phoenix or Mexico for some sun, pampering and retail therapy.
Even those members of the Me-Me Generation who can't afford such luxuries are tuning out, binge watching old and new TV shows on Netflix, puttering in their gardens, taking the dog for another walk or aimlessly meandering through shopping malls and garage sales.
The Me-Me generation is changing how people come together in every circumstance. Family get-togethers are incomplete without checking smartphones. In many workplaces, staff camaraderie and going for drinks at the end of the shift has been replaced with a "I see you people enough at work, why would I want to spend my off-hours with you?" mentality. It's bad news for employers and managers from a staff morale and engagement standpoint and it's even worse for labour unions, whose members increasingly resent paying their dues ("what's in it for me?) and are unwilling to stand up for their colleagues in other departments in the same operation, never mind members of other unions in other sectors.
Rich or poor, young or old, the Me-Me Generation's rallying cry is "somebody should..., " as in somebody should organize fun community and workplace events, somebody should pay for these events so they're free, somebody should make everything better. Somebody should, of course, means "anybody else but me." They are the Me-Me Generation because not only are they shamelessly focused with their own individual and personal fulfilment, they honestly believe they are entitled to guaranteed satisfaction in life, each and every day, solely because they show up and act like they care.
The Me-Me Generation is creating the community and society it so richly deserves, one cancelled local event, one dissolved staff club, one dismantled non-profit service organization at a time.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
