A Letter to the Millennial Generation

Who are we? No, that’s not the right question to ask. We know who we are. The census bureau defines us as between 1982 and 2000, between the ages 15 and 34. Blah. More precisely, we are the generation that heralded the new millennium with our awkward fascinations with 90’s pop and Pokemon: “Hit me baby one more time,” “Gotta Catch ’em All!” Our time is a new era of human history. Sure, the other generations live in it, but we are this new millennium. We totes know who we are, but do we know what it means to be who we are? What we are supposed to do?

Previous generations have left us much to deal with. Sure, we’ve inherited much good. Thanks to “The Greatest Generation,” we’ve been spared from tyranny and evil. Do you ever think about how within our lifetime we’ll see the death of The Greatest Generation? As our grandfathers and grandmothers transcend into the annals of history, as time moves forward, a very important period of human civilization is put to rest with them. Yea, the subsequent generations, like those Baby Boomers, will see their death too within a lifetime. But we are in a privileged position. In our pure naïveté, as children, we listened with open ears about a bygone period in which a great war scourged the earth, devastating humanity with death, of how the world nearly came to its knees when tyranny arose. Decades of separation, of mulling and reflecting, the Greatest Generation kept their stories close to their hearts. And when their grandchildren were born, for whatever reason, they opened up. How many times have we heard from our paternal Generation X’ers and Baby Boomers, “they never talked about their experiences of the war when we were growing up…” Except with us, the Millennials. The Greatest Generation entrusted us with their stories, so we learn to appreciate what we have, to prevent the world from collapsing on itself as it once did.

Progress is not measured by the advancement of technological innovation or spectacular inventions. It is measured by our collective capacity to continually redefine what it means to be human. Only decades before, humanity discovered the means by which utter annihilation could be realized. Nuclear holocaust is a reality. Viral epidemics are an occurrence. Humanity has more concerted means to destroy itself than it has in finding viable alternatives to fossil fuels. More immediate, we’re plagued with countless socio-political issues: social security is a Ponzi Scheme and, as great as universal healthcare is, we Millennials are expected to pick up the tab for the retiring Baby Boomers. This sucks.

Nevertheless, we owe much gratitude to Generation X and the Baby Boomers for the Internet, the computer, and whatnot. And what have we done with all this great tech stuff? Why, we’ve instantiated a crucial social element to it all. We’ve brought down to earth from the heavens the ethereal computer and the Internet. The advent of social media, of startups, apps, etc., well, we can own all that. We’ve conscripted technology for social and economic progress. Once, Google was just a website. Now, we’ve turned Google into a verb, to google, to search the world, not just to learn about it but to discover ways to make it better. And the best part of it all: this is just the beginning. We’ve just started on this grand adventure!

If anything, our attitude as Millennials can be said to be exceptionally optimistic. Baby Boomers were dedicated, Generation X was defining. But only we share the attitude of the Greatest Generation. When they came out of the great war they won, as any victor, they were elated, energetic; they were optimistic. The effusion of their optimism put them to work, trying to make a better world after the great war that almost destroyed the world. Sadly, in many respects, they did not make the world better. War, death, and hatred continued. Could it be said that their candid optimism blinded them from the reality of the world? Who are we to judge. But maybe that’s why the Greatest Generation entrusted us with their stories: they see themselves in us; they want us to learn from their mistakes.

It is said that we Millennials are intent on authenticity. That is our defining spirit. Our need for the authentic, to be genuine, is a gift. We can see bullshit from a mile away. Politics sickens us with its superficiality and lies. We are critical, but not to the point of unrelenting skepticism. We know how to hope from our hearts. We are honest. We are our own selfies. The distinction of the “public” and “private” selfs, to us, is chicanery and clandestinely illusionary — we do not accept this. Rightly so. Who we are on Facebook is a representation of our own genuine self. To be in Sartrean bad faith, denying the reality of our individuality, is what leads to society’s slavery of the self. Our need for authenticity is what keeps us free; free from the status quo and free from a complacency of a world that needs change.

In our sprightly optimism and authenticity, as the Millennial Generation, we can bring about a new era. We must bring about a new age or face the possibility of civilization’s extinction. Climate Change or Global Warming (whichever euphemism one employs), overpopulation, food scarcity — only to name a few catastrophes on our path to progress. The earth will be a better place to live in because we must make it so. “To effect change, not affect change” should be our mantra. This is what it means to be who we are. Baby Boomers and Generation X likely scoff at us as overly naive and callow. “That’s cute, your positivity and youthful attitude, but the reality is or the facts of the matter are…” But let us not resign to their pragmatic indifference! Through the skepticism and cynicism of prior generations, our kindly grandfathers smile, speaking their words of wisdom to us: “Go forth into the world and do great things, with utter optimism in your power to do so, as we once tried to do. But achieve it. Win your war. Be exceptional.” And this we must do to survive. This is what it means to be part of the Millennial Generation, to be exceptional. For if we retreat from that, with all the cataclysmic problems and apocalyptic uncertainties on the horizon of this new millennium, how will we make the world a better place for our own children, and the future generations to come?

Indeed, our actions as Millennials will set the tone of humanity’s prosperity or destruction, as the species ventures into a new millennium.

Liberalism and Democracy: A Philosophical Backdrop

If you want to delve into the core of the Arab Spring, a newfound Russian imperialism, China’s quixotic communism, and such, read John Gray’s recent essay in Harper’s, “Under Western Eyes.” This is a fantastic article that puts into perspective the insidious role of democracy in today’s world politics. The article is a much-needed infusion of realism, enervating the traditional exuberance most in the West hold for the triumph of democratic values, and showing the inherent potential of tyranny in democracy.

As Gray points out, there is a profound difference between democracy and liberalism. When put together, you have a glorious concoction, a pinnacle of human achievement — you have the United States of America.

Liberalism, put broadly, is the exaltation of freedom.

“… the conviction that freedom is the natural human condition, which tyranny suppresses… freedom requires a functioning state, with a competent bureaucracy and a legal system that is not excessively corrupt, together with a political culture that allows these institutions to work independently of lawmakers. In the absence of these conditions, human rights — which are, fundamentally, legal fictions that are created and enforced by well-organized states — are meaningless. Such conditions do not exist in most of the world today and will not exist in many countries for the foreseeable future, if ever. Where they do exist, they are easily compromised. Far from being the natural condition of humankind, freedom is inherently fragile and will always be exceptional.”

In the West, we have a fetish for human rights. But as Jeramy Bentham, the 19th century’s most critical British utilitarian, put it — natural rights are nothing but “nonsense on stilts.” Without freedom, human rights don’t even have stilts to stand on.

We tend to take freedom for granted. Irrespective of how one conceives freedom, whether metaphysically or politically, it’s truly a marvelous thing. Jesus knew it: “… You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Our Founding Fathers knew it: “endowed by their creator… Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

But the sad thing about humanity: our natural inclination for freedom is weak in comparison to other aspects of our nature, such as our perpetual thirst for pleasure. Not that we don’t like it, but that we don’t naturally desire freedom constantly. It’s when oppression thwarts freedom do we appreciate it. Our want of freedom is usually contrived by the misfortunes of life. But at every instance of our lives we have the capacity to be free, not just when we are enslaved by the vagaries of life. Jean-Paul Sartre, the notorious French existentialist shrugged aside by the pretentiousness of history, once proselytized: man is freedom. Alas, we rarely choose to exercise freedom.

Without liberalism, i.e freedom, democracy has a propensity for tyranny, as Plato fervently believed. Socrates’ unjust death sentence by the Athenian masses is a reminder of how tyrannical democracy can be.

“That democracy can be a vehicle for tyranny was well understood by earlier generations of liberal thinkers. From Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill through to Isaiah Berlin, it was recognized that democracy does not necessarily protect individual freedoms. The greatest danger for these liberals was not that the historical movement toward democracy would be reversed, but rather the potential ascendancy of an illiberal type of democracy — a development they saw prefigured in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of the general will. Legal and constitutional protections have little force when majorities are indifferent or hostile to liberal values. Because democratic regimes can claim a source of legitimacy that other forms of government lack, liberty might be more threatened in the future than in the past. Most human beings, most of the time, care about other things more than they care about being free. Many will vote readily for an illiberal government if it promises security against violence or hardship, protects a way of life to which they are attached, and denies freedom to people they hate.”

In an ironic sense, it’s the Russian zeitgeist that showed to the world the realistic expectation that when people are given the choice of freedom and happiness, most times than naught, happiness is chosen.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Jesus has his second coming, in which He gets caught up by the Inquisitions of medieval Spain, eventually confronted by a Grand Inquisitor. The inquisition on Jesus concludes, in a tragically Greek way, when man is given the choice of freedom, which is what Jesus offered, and happiness, as the institutionalized Church ensured to the masses — humanity will always choose the latter. Jesus never says a word while He listens to the Grand Inquisitor. At the end, Jesus gets up and He leaves, back to His Heavenly Father, to allow men to enjoy the infantile security offered by worldly institutions.

“Decide yourself who was right: you or the one who questioned you then [Satan]? Recall the first question; its meaning, though not literally, was this: ‘You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear—for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them.’”

The Inquisitor argues that when Satan tempted Christ in the desert, to make bread from the stones, Christ should have done so, and should have brought the bread back to the people so that they would follow Him in order to win the security of being fed. Christ’s response via the Bible—that man does not live by bread, but by the word of God—gives men freedom. However, as the Grand Inquisitor sees it, Christ has actually done mankind a disservice by keeping people from obtaining happiness. Most people, he says, are too weak to tolerate the burden of freedom.

This is the philosophic backdrop. Now to return full circle to today’s world politics: during the Arab Spring, when the majority of Egyptians chose to taste freedom immediately following the fall of the regime, electing Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, the once-craved taste ended up tasting quite sour. Where is Egypt now? Reverted back to what it was, under a new regime, dispensing with freedom in favor of security.

Note: Another subject for reflection requiring a philosophic backdrop — is Islam compatible with modern liberalism? Recent American excursions throughout the Middle East, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, fueled by President Bush’s quixotic democratic idealism, hint to no.

“It would appear that few world leaders have any knowledge or interest in the world as it was before they entered politics. Their concern is with the present, the recent past, and the near future as they imagine it.”

Russia is not a democracy substantiated by liberalism. At the same time, one could argue, it’s not a democracy that feigns liberalism. It’s authoritarian democracy is blatant. To an extent, one can respect that, as Abraham Lincoln once did,

“As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ Soon it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty–to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.”

For Empathy

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein

I must admit, I’m an avid reader of the National Review, despite being a young, Hispanic male; I suppose I’m a prized outlier from a demographic usually foreign to the National Review. I do tend to have conservative inclinations and sometimes nod my head in agreement with their articles. I like reading well-thought-out, intellectual articles, set apart from the usually vulgar journalism you see in the news media. What can I say? I’m weird.

But I came across this one article in the National Review that utterly infuriated me. It’s called, “Against Empathy.” I had to restrain my utter contempt for his antagonistic approach in explaining what he thinks constitutes empathy.

I thought his political conclusion was sound: President Obama feigns empathy to perpetuate his political agenda etc. Sure, I can see that, whatever. But en route to that conclusion, Mr. Williamson unjustly disparages empathy for the sake of glorifying sympathy.

First, just because he gives etymological elaboration from whence empathy arose does not mean that empathy is some tawdry, irrational feeling.

Secondly, in his glorification of sympathy, he fails to recognize that sympathy is very much akin to hubristic pity, which itself should be put up on a pedestal for criticism. I’m not a fervent adherent of Ayn Rand’s thought, but she did have a reasonable critique on pity (echoing Nietzsche): “But this was pity – this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling – his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.” (in The Fountainhead)

*** Quick sidebar: I once had a philosophy professor who met and conversed with Ayn Rand. His description of her? She was a feisty, angry, and mean woman. But, boy, was she intelligent… ***

As Mr. Williamson puts it, sympathy is feeling with the person. But in “feeling with the person” you make the audacious and arrogant presumption that you know exactly what that person is personally feeling. Sympathy demands arrogant consideration, presumptuous thought, and contrived analysis – empathy wisely precludes them. 

The Ancient Greeks understood sympathy very differently from how we understand it today, something that Mr. Williamson fails to note.

Anyways, that is my opinion on the article. I believe empathy is a far more authentic disposition than sympathy. I think Daniel Goleman does justice to both empathy and sympathy in his seminal book, Emotional Intelligence. One sentence in Mr. Williamson’s article gave me hope however: “And that is why President Obama and those in sympathy with him prize empathy. Empathy, or the imitation of empathy, entirely negates the need for etc.” His article would have been interesting in my eyes if he had refrained from persecuting empathy itself and instead focused on his argument that what President Obama and his supposed cohorts are really doing is an “imitation of empathy.”

But I hate politics and I don’t really care about that part.