Kids These Days: Part I

Lately the New York Times has been all about some commentary on college kids and twenty-somethings and what we’re doing with our lives. David Brooks says we’re taking longer to find ourselves and we’re taking ourselves more seriously in the process. Tom Friedman thinks we’re playing it too cool and says the reserved activism of today is for wussies. A Yale history major’s says we’re writing a revolution, we’re just trying not to look too into it.

Since I happen to be one of those wussies taking myself too seriously and trying to save the world but pretending not to care, I've been thinking a lot about it. This is as much as I could organize the first part of my thoughts, but more to come.

Nicholas Handler set off a comment board frenzy when NYT revealed his essay as the winner of a national student essay contest on “Why College Matters.” His response, a curious effort to blend blasé and idealism, drew enthusiasm from a few sympathizers and harsh dejection from more than a few disappointed readers. So yeah, he didn’t present anything very new, hardly anything cogent and on the whole the article was more annoying than entertaining. In a kind of sad way, he finally answers the question “why college matters” with the unexpected and incredibly uninspiring summed-up response: online organizing. It’s the activist style du jour, the response of the rally cry-skeptics, tired of prefab protests and trying to get at change from another angle. And our parents, and especially Tom Friedman, just don’t get it.

In light of his own lackluster take on activism, I can't help but think he was trying to polish off the essay with something nice and hopeful but he’s not even sure he has convinced himself, so it came out very strained. That said, in some nuggets of his article are very on. This is the passage that stuck out to me:

“On campus, we sign petitions, join organizations, put our names on mailing lists, make small-money contributions, volunteer a spare hour to tutor, and sport an entire wardrobe’s worth of Live Strong bracelets advertising our moderately priced opposition to everything from breast cancer to global warming. But what do we really stand for? Like a true postmodern generation we refuse to weave together an overarching narrative to our own political consciousness, to present a cast of inspirational or revolutionary characters on our public stage, or to define a specific philosophy. […] We are a generation for whom even revolution seems trite, and therefore as fair a target for bland imitation as anything else. We are the generation of the Che Guevara tee-shirt.”

For the most part, I’m with him. More than a few of the social justice sparkplugs that I went to school with are flippant about getting involved, doing it as much for the t-shirt as to raise the extra $1 of the t-shirt’s proceeds that go to charity. They like the idea of the cause more than they know about the cause. (I’ve already said my piece on the shirts.)

The more interesting thing he hits on is the transformation of activism that results from everyone getting fed up with the over-hyped LiveStrong bracelets. From the sixties picket-sign stereotype, we’ve been strewn in two directions: first plasticization and now professionalism. The first part of it consists of the Che t-shirt (or bikini) wearers who don’t know who Che is. This type is certainly still around and in full force, but the others are coming out of the woodwork now. Handler calls the professional side “the organization kid,” someone who is using savvy and non-traditional methods of activism to make things happen. I think a better term is the divestment kid, (maybe even the DMill), who is wearing suits and attending board meetings to persuade some pretty big wigs to move their money out of Sudan. And ironically enough, those two work very much in tandem on campuses these days.

Facebook, as ever, provides the case in point. NYT shows that three of the most popular tags for Handler’s essay are “facebook,” “activism,” and “Darfur.” Facebook Darfur activism. Our activism is conducted through social, sometimes superficial and incredibly image-conscious means. At its core, Facebook is a tool for expression – yes, you can use it to retrieve information but it’s real purpose is to dish it out. You can definitely still go to a campus Darfur event without a facebook RSVP, but you use it anyway because the planners want to be seen as the planners, the attendees want to be seen as attendees, and the MIAs wait to decide to go until after they see the guest list. It's personal marketing for free. The organization kid knows how important it is and seizes the masses through an e-invite. (The divestment kid goes a step further.)

It all comes down to what I think would be Handler's activism timeline:

1. Activism defined sixties style: Hyped-up, long haired, peace sign, rally crying, poster carrying rebels with a good cause.
2. Activist spin-off causes burst out from the seams: Hunger, AIDS, tsunamis, polar bears… how can one girl choose?!
   
3. Activists and wannabes lose their credibility; kitsch activism emerges: For every 100,000 people that join this facebook group, I will donate $1 to Darfur.
4. The post-modernists point and laugh and turn up the Shins.
5. The new activists decide to change tactics. Welcome Dan Millenson.
   

But as far Handler’s critique of our post-modern refusal to define an overarching theme, can you blame us? You’ve just got to chalk it up to the fact that we are immature and we don’t know what drives us and we’re not rushing to decide to what causes we want to dedicate our lives. And in that sense, it’s okay that we’re a little cheeky with our activism and that dip our feet in here and there without any larger cohesive theme or purpose. Political parties exist to weave an overarching narrative, it’s up to individuals (especially young ones) to figure out where they fit – or not – within that. Fickleness is in part the point and in part the luxury of youth.

It just means we get to embark upon the Odyssey years to figure it all out. (Next.)