I was in New York City last week. I traveled with some students from my local University and had some very interesting interactions with this up-and-coming generation. About 50% of the group had never been on an airplane, and the majority had never been to the City. I anticipated watching the students step into a new and larger world. I encountered something very different.
This generation of students is less mature than I was ready to admit. Whether it be coddling by their parents and previous teachers, the near-term effects of the COVID shutdown, the influence of social media and attention spans, or other reasons altogether, they wore a pliancy on their shoulders that was simply arresting. In every interaction I had with them, they were polite — exceedingly polite — but the natural curiosity of someone who wants more, who wants to grow, was lacking in a very disconcerting way.
There were exceptions, of course. Several of the students were thirsty for mentorship, hungry for perspectives that they didn’t possess. I spent an enjoyable round of drinks with a recent graduate of foreign origins who literally pulled out a notebook to take down the advice I had to give. At dinner another evening, a student asked several of the adults at the table so many questions that it became funny. He was eager to take advantage of the path that others had already walked. But these were the exceptions.
When I was at University, I studied the Paston Letters, a collection of letters from a London-based merchant family who had saved every piece of correspondence between their members for hundred of years. They are interesting because they give the observer a view into 15th and 16th century English life in the commercial classes. More interesting to me, though, was the common themes that ran through the transition between each generation.
“This generation is lazy, don’t want to work, want to coast on the efforts of others, aren’t ambitious enough, don’t know how easy they have it, etc. etc. etc.” was the very common theme, and I’m cognizant that my opinions of younger people today may be more informed by my age than their traits. I’ll watch with continued interest to see how this generation comes to shape the world they live in, and I’ll probably grow old and confident in my belief that my generation did it better, but I’ll know enough to question that conclusion at each stage.
“Do not give way to astonishment.”
—Terence McKenna
While in New York, I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), a destination I never miss when playing the tourist. I love how violently Modern Art assaults my understanding of the world, and how it can bring revelation about me, to me. But its a visceral process for someone who is always so very sure of how much I know about the world is right.
There were wonderful pieces that spoke to me this time, including “The Black Pope” by Charles White:
and “Blue Monochrome” by Yves Klein:
and especially, American People Series #20: Die, by Faith Ringgold:
There were also things I hated, not being they challenged me, but because I felt like they were self-indulgent, and self-aggrandizing pieces of intellectual masturbation on the part of the “artists.”
A retrospective of the artist, Joan Jonas, was a perfect example of the poseur’s way, in my opinion. Videos from the 1960s of people clapping discarded pieces of wood together, gazing into the camera with intentionally smug and vacant looks; film of men walking down a line of topless models, ignoring them with the same smug looks; a room of bloody banners with alien fonts scattered amongst them; all of these were the product of a mind that seemed to me to want attention and credit for being new and radical. I’m sure those who know more than I do would say I missed the point, and perhaps I did. Judge for yourself here.
The current installation of video art was much the same, just skinned in modern iconography, colors and special effects. Shana Moulton’s “Meta/Physical Therapy” video installation was so banal and basic that everyone in the room was rolling their eyes at someone working so hard to seem clever to others. Bright lights, and video tricks and stupid explanations of what the nonsense means: ““It’s a critique of consumerism,” Moulton said to me at the museum, “but I’m critiquing myself and my own guilt around consuming and being a clueless white lady.” are par for the course here. This puff piece gives you all need to know of the performance piece that’s ongoing for 22 years.
Modern Art is supposed to challenge me, and maybe these two pieces did exactly that by what they showed me about video and performance art, but surely meaning and beauty can be found in more profound works?
“Infuse your success with significance.”
—Lloyd Reeb
I always like to do a Broadway show when I’m in New York, too. I haven’t seen Hamilton, the Book of Mormon, or Spamalot. I don’t like what I’ve heard of the Hamilton soundtrack, this halting, street-speak, rap style of musical seems awful to me, and when visited on what my life’s primary heroes, its just not for me. I’ve heard great things about the Book of Mormon, but some of my closest friends are LDS and I just can’t comfortable with the idea that I would intentionally participate in something poking fun at their belief system, it just isn’t in me. I saw Kimberly Akimbo last month and didn’t love it. That left Spamalot the Monty Python musical. It was a lark, light, full of inside jokes for Python fans, and several quips lampooning New York social and political issues.
In conversation with another attendee, I learned that Broadway is in serious trouble. In fact, 7 shows are slated to close within the next 30 days, Spamalot among them, and only 3 are expected to open to wide audience appeal. This is a problem because when you put Broadway actors out of business, they tend to find other means of earning a living, never to return to tread the boards. Less talent on the stage means less appeal of any new show, and a vicious spiral begins.
One thing I noted, was how many shows were based on movies and calling on nostalgia to draw in the crowds. There is a Back to the Future show running now, Mean Girls has been a hit for a year or more, the Lion King is a mainstay (and rightly so), but how far can this trend go. How many movies are you willing to watch set to music for $150+ per seat?
My seat mate said he’d been going to Broadway shows for 55+ years and had never seen such a dearth of interesting and new productions being staged. He wondered if he’d even attend 2 shows next year. Beginning of the end?
"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand."
- Colin Powell
In an interesting new study, economists find that each of the past four generations of Americans was better off than the previous one, using a post-tax, post-transfer income measure constructed annually from 1963-2022. This is rocking some boats as Millenials have been taught that they will be the first generation since 1800 to be worse off than their parents. This narrative has been pushed by the World Economic Forum, CNN, The Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and any publication looking to capitalize on raised eyebrows and simmering dissatisfaction.
In reality, the study finds that at age 36–40, Millennials had a real median household income that was 18 percent higher than that of the previous generation at the same age. This rate of intergenerational progress was slower than that experienced by the Silent Generation (34 percent) and Baby Boomers (27 percent), but similar to that experienced by Generation X (16 percent). Slower progress for Generation X and Millennials is due to their stalled growth in work hours—holding work hours constant, they experienced a greater intergenerational increase in real market income than Baby Boomers.
If you want to understand Millennials, you have to understand that they are just late to the party. They do everything previous generations did or aimed to do, just later. They move out of the house later, graduate college later, get married later (and less), have kids later, get career-based jobs later, buy life insurance later, and so forth. Interestingly, it’s the most educated generation in world history, and the most subsidized. Some reason that they are late to the economic game because their parents pay their bills longer than other generations.
“Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.”
— Ray Dalio