Started From the Bottom and Now We're Lost

Early adulthood was always difficult, but it's challenging now in a way it's never been

One of the most brilliant, influential things I’ve ever read was published on a list based comedy website 12 years ago. It’s called 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. That article was a masterful articulation of every half formed thought I’ve had on a person’s place in society. Go read it now and then come back to this article. It’s well worth your time.

If you’ve poked around my website and read the About section, you’ll notice that I write a lot about trying to be valuable to you, the reader. The importance of being valuable to others, one of my core beliefs, is taken directly from that Cracked article. A recurring theme within it is trying to get sexually frustrated men to channel that frustration into something productive rather than languishing in self pity.

There is a huge group of young men out there who feel lost in life. Lacking purpose, drive, motivation, and (most importantly) perceived prospects, they tend to latch onto confident hucksters who absolve their audience of responsibility for their own personal situation by blaming some sinister outside force as the cause of their woes. To hear the chattering class tell it, there is a crisis within and around masculinity. There have been numerous articles written about this subject.

But that crisis is simply one among many within my generation (Generation Y aka “Millennials”) or younger. It seems like every facet of life within the younger generations is in some kind of crisis. The kids are not alright. Why is that?

The Game Has Changed

Think of the common things we all go through in a typical journey through life. There’s our schooling and education, the romantic relationships we pursue, and the jobs that we work at. Now think about how much has changed in each one of those endeavors in the last two generations.

More and more people go to college. Roughly 3/5 of high school graduates now go to college (although only 1/3 of them will graduate with a 4 year degree in 6 years or less). That means more specialized education, and many high school students taking the SAT or ACT and applying with the intent to go to the best college possible.

Once you get done with your education, it’s time to find a job. The process has changed a lot. Job searches start online by default. You have to create a resume. You’ll fill out form after form for each prospective employer, wait to hear back from either the external or internal recruiter, and go through rounds of interviews.

Somewhere along the way during school or work, you’re probably going to try and find a romantic relationship. Now the common way people find each other is through an online dating application. You’ll browse through countless profiles before you even go on your first date.

What do these 3 things have in common? They now all use some kind of online process to sort through applicants. They’ve become increasingly standardized and objectified in the past few generations.

The Securitization of the Individual

A lot has been made about the financialization of everything, turning everything into some form of securitized investment that can generate a return on capital. Securities in the financial sense are objects that are standardized, fungible, and tradable. We’ve gone through great efforts to financialize and securitize every aspect of life, but most people don’t think of themselves as a security. But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that people have been objectified into a standardized, fungible, and tradable asset.

What does a college admissions officer look at, when determining who gains acceptance to their prestigious university? The relevant metrics in order of importance: GPA, standardized test scores, extracurriculars, and a well written essay. Anybody who doesn’t meet their GPA and test score cutoff isn’t even considered. Regardless of who you are as an individual, if the two numbers that consist of your GPA and SAT score aren’t up to snuff, they’re not going to look at the rest of your application. Two numbers determine whether they even try to consider you as something more than a faceless applicant.

What does a hiring manager at a company look at, when determining who to interview for an open job position? They’ll look at your past work experience. The companies you’ve been at. The roles you’ve been in. The college you went to. They’re looking for a certain pattern that fits the archetype of the ideal person they want for the job. You have to tick the right boxes that the manager is looking before you even get to interview. The manager might not even look at your resume because it’s been filtered out by an algorithm that does 90% of the job for them. And what about those entry level jobs that don’t actually require professional experience? Well, if you want to work at prestigious firms like Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Kirkland & Ellis, they have target schools where they will recruit from. Your chance of consideration effectively goes to 0 if you don’t go to one of those colleges. See the above paragraph for how to get into one of those schools.

And what about dating apps? Well, we all know what a hellhole online dating can be. Pictures reign supreme. I hope you have a good idea where you are on the infamous 1-10 scale. And if you’re a dude, you better have good stats on things like height, education, and job. Girls look at those things with discerning eyes. Mind you, this is all before you even get the chance to communicate with them.

Before you are considered as a serious prospect as a student, an employee, or a romantic partner by the relevant decision maker, you have to be able to fit inside a predesigned box. Once the decision maker sees you fit in that box, then they’ll actually spend the time and effort to consider you as something beyond a mere object that fits inside the box.

The Good Ol’ Days

It wasn’t always like this. The decision makers used to be swayed a lot less by standardized data points. Pre-existing relationships mattered a lot more. Back when the world was a lot simpler, you were much more likely to seek jobs in your home town. To go to school near you. To date somebody near you. And opportunity came as a result of cultivating and leveraging relationships rather than excelling at box fittings.

There were no online Applicant Tracking Systems back then. If you wanted a job, you went into the building the company to was to apply in person. You didn’t need to go to college to get a “good job”. And you met your romantic partners through friends, family, church, or your job.

In short, the process for navigating through life was primarily through relationships. And you leveraged those existing relationships to form new relationships. When you’re in a relationship (whether it’s romantic, professional, or platonic), you are being considered as an individual by another individual. At no point in time were you securitized and objectified before a person would even agree to meet with you (or, at the very least, you would be objectified in person).

There are few things people hate more than being objectified and rejected, to have been effectively told that “you have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting”. In today’s world, we have countless ways to objectify and reject people. Everybody has felt the sting of the automated email telling you that after careful consideration, we regret to inform you that you did not qualify. Or felt the maddening anguish of no response at all. Back then, the only way you could ghost somebody is if you left town completely. If you really wanted a response in person, you could get one.

It’s Hard Out Here For a Beginner

When you’re in school, you’re in a cohort of people who are the same age and around the same academic ability. There’s some semblance of fairness and balanced competition. But once you’re out in the real world, you’re competing with everyone. And you’re competing with people who have been in the real world for a much longer time, who have more money, more experience, more time to make valuable connections. You went from playing a game where everybody was at the same level, to a game where a level 1 novice is in the same room as a level 20 master who knows every single trick and cheat code.

Suddenly being thrown into that kind of environment is nothing short of demoralizing. Yes, there will always be prodigies, rich and connected kids, and other favored individuals who will skate through the hard, early levels with little effort. But for the vast majority of beginners, they have to scratch, claw, and scramble for every single morsel, while those who have been in the game for years are picking up huge prizes with little effort.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the job market. Experienced, connected senior workers make vastly more money with significantly less effort than the fresh out of school novice with no professional experience. If you’re the novice, it’s hard to see and understand the reasons why the senior worker makes more and much easier to ruminate on how seemingly unfair it is. This is the reason why younger people tend to hate capitalism, because they have the least amount of social and financial capital. A system that rewards capital with more capital is going to look incredibly unjust to the person with the smallest amount of it.

As society becomes increasingly complex and specialized, it becomes easier and easier for those starting out to fall through the cracks. And once you fall through the cracks, you’re in a destructive cycle that gets harder and harder to break out of. The person who drops out of college is less competitive on the job market and has loans to repay. Being in a poor financial position with lowly career prospects is less attractive in the dating market. Everything feeds upon itself and creates an endless feedback loop of despair and misery.

Okay, Boomer

When I graduated college in 2010, the job market was incredibly bad. People my age would cope in various ways. One way was making fun of the incredibly out of touch advice by older generations: “When you hand in your job application, make sure to be confident, have a firm handshake, and be sure to look the manager in the eye.” We all rolled our eyes and made sarcastic, mocking replies. But what we didn’t realize at the time was that an incredibly important societal feature had been weakened.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” - Isaac Newton

It’s been theorized that one important reason why Homo sapiens live well beyond childbearing age is for the older generation to impart knowledge and wisdom onto the younger generations. The tribe benefits immeasurably from knowing which berries are safe to eat and which ones are poisonous. The concept of ancestor worship and filial piety are universal throughout ancient civilizations.

Modern society and the incredible prosperity it generates is built upon the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of countless generations, but we may be at a point where society is progressing and changing so rapidly that it has become near impossible for older generations to help and advise younger generations.

Maybe the older generation is giving out outdated, obsolete advice. Maybe the younger generation no longer has respect for the older generation. Maybe it’s both, caught in another destructive feedback cycle. But the breakdown in trust and communication between generations makes it harder for everyone in society and contributes to the increased polarization that we see infiltrate every facet of life.

Even When Your Hope is Gone, Move Along

It’s probably no coincidence that as societies have become both richer and older, it has also extended adolescence well beyond the historical norm. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to meet people in their 30s and 40s who seem quite adolescent, as if they never really left their childhood.

It surprised me when I finally read Romeo and Juliet in my sophomore year of high school and found out that Rosaline, the girl that Romeo initially pined for was 15 years old. It shocked me when I learned that Juliet was a year younger. In an age where there’s a near unlimited amount of real, usable knowledge immediately accessible to the common person, it’s a supreme irony that we have the least amount of historical perspective.

Despite all of the challenges that young people face in modern society, I am utterly convinced that there is no better time to be young than today. We have everything we need to reach a greater understanding of not just ourselves, but of everything around us. All the information is out there, easily accessible to all of us if only we’re willing to seek it out.

Maybe the kids aren’t alright, but their potential far exceeds any other generation in history. And maybe those of us who are older can try and find ways to help them reach it. I certainly hope that I’ve done some small part of that by writing this article.