Millennials
Credit: Forbes
For the better part of a century, from Hiroshima through the Cold War, people around the world lived in visceral fear of nuclear annihilation. At any moment, the “finger on the button” could launch the end of civilization.
In Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, Spencer Weart, a scientific historian, chronicles the psychological toll this anxiety took on individuals, especially the young. “Well after the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he writes, a poll “found 40 percent of adolescents admitting a ‘great deal of anxiety’ about war.” He cites another survey from 1965 asking schoolchildren to predict the state of the world 10 years ahead. Though the questions made no mention of nuclear bombs, “over two-thirds of the children mention[ed] war, often in somber terms of helplessness.”
Today’s youth live with a different kind of dread. For the post-Cold War generation, the primary global threat comes not from action, but inaction. Last year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that within a few decades, climate change will have “massively disruptive consequences to societies and ecosystems,” including widespread famines, lethal […]
Stephan, I may have missed or forgotten if you posted any articles about the Charter for Compassion or the movement of cities in signing on to the principles of the Charter, but it would help to lift this type of stress for people to know about this growing movement.
The worst thing the executives of the boomer generation have done to the millenials is that they have gutted the economy through off-shoring.