Millennials Need to Take Responsibility Before Taking Over

Washington, DC, is a fascinating town. It’s incredibly beautiful in many ways. Graceful, wide streets lined with beautiful ambassadorial residences abound. Stories from American history are alluded to everywhere, from the grand statues that make us proud to the little details. Did you know that Bataan and Corregidor have streets named after them? Even horrific American defeats in the jungles of the Philippines during those first dark months of 1942 are commemorated.

Yet there’s also a darker side to the city. Every institution in the world that has anything to do with world power wants to have an outpost in DC. The Human Rights Campaign is headquartered just down the street from the University of Southern California’s satellite campus. Major corporations, too, increasingly can’t do without a DC office. There’s a air of everybody trying to grab a slice of the pie. Unsurprisingly, with this attitude in the air, Congress can’t agree on a way to face the nation’s problems.

Frustration with the federal government makes sense. Frustration with the two-party system makes some sense. It seems that both the right and left increasingly agree that technocratic manipulation of the masses makes sense, marginalizing any institution like the church or the family that might claim independent authority.

Which brings me to the article that stimulated this post: The Atlantic‘s “How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?” I found it perceptive in its assessment of the strange mix of cynicism and idealism that young Americans possess. There’s a frustration with the reigning political paradigms, no patience for the conjugal view of marriage, a skepticism with market economics but a fondness for globalism, and a longing for community.

Yet the article loses credibility, to me, when it begins to eulogize the vast power for good that Millennials supposedly possess: “The largest and most diverse generation in U.S. history is goal oriented, respects authority and follows rules… They are more likely than past generations to see the world’s problems as their own. Millennials are eager to serve the greater community.” In particular, Ron Fournier makes much of prowess and confidence in navigating technology as a measure of young American’s ability to impact the political system positively.

To me, what’s powerful about my generation is that we’re so willing to stare at our phones instead of listen to a friend’s moral question. Our horizons have broadened with technology, but also narrowed. We know the gory details of what’s going on in Syria, but do we know who said, “They that live by the sword shall die by the sword”? Transcendence—anything that would make an objective claim on our allegiance—is hard to deal with, and so we marginalize it.

We’ve got a lot of growing up to do before we can reform Washington. It can start by asking the Big Questions all anew and making the time to listen to answers—free of the distractions of technology. Before we can order the commonwealth, we must order our own souls.