In einer neuen Rubrik „Fremdgegangen“ stellen wir euch interessante, fremdsprachige Texte vor.
Dieses Mal spricht Emma Engberg aus Minneapolis darüber, wie es sich anfühlt, von der eigenen Generation ausgeschlossen zu sein.
Sudden thought: When it comes to the point where I feel like a bad person, because of my hopes and dreams, based on the ideals of my peers, I think there is a problem with the way my generation is absorbing information and identifying themselves. Let me start at the beginning…
I’ve done a lot of thinking the past couple of weeks in my late night muddling over articles on the internet, and the more I think about how I fit in with people my age, the more I feel isolated and alone in my ability to be an individual, and think rationally. Maybe it’s just the people I know, and I need to branch out a little, and yeah the point I’m getting at is that I’m a little better than everyone else, but maybe that’s the one thought I have in common with my peers. I’ve tried breaking down exactly how my generation, Gen Y, thinks as a collective group and why. I’m blaming the parents, and this is because what Gen X has in common as reproducers, is the idea that their children are special, precious snowflakes. Since us Gen Ys started going to whatever educational institution we went to, that was drilled into us. We are special, unique, and we should celebrate the fact that we are all different in some way or another. The problem is though, that we’re really not, we’re pretty much all the same. This is becoming more apparent as we grow up, and I think some special snowflakes can’t handle the idea that they aren’t as special as they thought.
It should be recognized that each individual person has individual thoughts, and we can all bring something unique to the table, yes. But we Gen Ys are so stuck on the idea of individuality and that “I am special and different and that’s a great thing” that finding some way or another to separate yourself from the group has become a full-time obsession (I believe the Hipster was born from this). I think the older Gen Ys and Gen Xs can completely relate to this idea with how separated our country has become politically— People pick a side and that becomes part of their personality and if you try to argue with them, they take great personal offense to it. I feel that people have done this with religious beliefs for a while before. Now people are using social media and modern social liberties to do it in a whole mirad of ways.
Now, I don’t think that we shouldn’t tell children that they’re unique and awesome and can grow up to be anything. I think that a mix of that need to feel unique and basic human flaws are what’s creating this Snowflake complex in Gen Ys that are the young adults of today.
- Humans are Selfish and at least a little Egotistical (People love to talk about themselves)
- People tend to be hypocrites
- People stopped teaching kids how to think critically
Mixing these People Flaws with Gen Y’s Snowflake Complex, I think, have made our generation really freaking annoying. To sum it up: I think these are the reasons that today’s young adults have the need to find some fad/idea/new identity/look/et cetera that makes them feel they are unique, feel the need to broadcast it as loudly they feel necessary and want everyone to know.I think these are the reasons that once we find some fad/idea/new identity/look/et cetera to make us feel good we feel that whatever we chose or made up is the ‘best’ and ‘most unique’ and that everyone else is somehow lesser than us, and we refuse to admit that we may be wrong. And the worst part of it all is that we are not listening to what other people have to say.
We are so wrapped up in our own individuality that we forget to celebrate other people’s uniqueness. We are so obsessed with how to be different, we forgot how to see how we’re all the same, and that it’s not a bad thing.
To confess, my hope and dream has always been to fit in with everyone else and be really normal and have a really stereotypical middle-class white person life. And I feel like a bad person for trying to block out embracing everyone else’s ‘new’ lifestyle and trying to fit into normal. I believe that we all have the basic right to feel and do whatever we want with our own lives be that public or private, it’s just that my generation can’t keep it private, and feel the need to push their uniqueness and identity down my throat. I’m tired of people focusing on not how WE’RE all unique, but how THEY’RE so much more special than everyone else. I’m worried that this is going to cause really weird political conflict in the future, but also confident that we’ll all get so tired of finding a way to be different than everyone else that we’ll grow out of our Snowflake Complexes eventually. It’ll be like adult puberty.
We all feel different than the people around us. That’s the beauty. We are all the same: Different. And yeah, we’re all different, but no one is more different than anyone else.
