Reruns, part five

Originally posted April 22 2009

The generation debate

Gustav Fridolin has written a book called "Blåsta - nedskärningsåren som skapade en generation" (loosly translated as "Screwed - the cutdown years that shaped a generation".)

In Sweden, don't know how it is in the rest of the western world really, the children of the 80s have been called spoiled, demaning and hard to please. This critique usually comes from the babyboomers, the ones that are recently retired or about to be retired. The ones that are slightly too young to be our grandparents and slightly too old to be our parents. (oh yeah, in Sweden we don't generally pop out kids until we're about 30, or after)

Either way. Amelia Adamo, a magazine queen here is one of the loud voices in our generation debate. I've had nothing but respect for her, up until, well about now. Her opinions have been nothing but stupid and full of self pity. Is it bitterness? Is it jealousy? I don't know.

But what I do know is that in the early 90s when Sweden had one of the biggest recessions we've ever had, actually worse than the one we're in now. Everything had to be slashed. Teachers, day cares, libraries, hospitals, buses, you name it it got to a point where you should be glad if your book in school had most of the pages. The outlook for the future was bleak. I was living in a small town, and the majority of the parents of my classmates lost their jobs, and basically we were told that we should be lucky if we ever managed to find a job, or a place to live. As the well known Swedish public housing buldings were being sold off as well.

What we learn when we're becoming aware of the world shapes us, and for the ones born about the same year as I we learned that the world doesn't need us and we have to take a step back and let our elders get the things we want. We shouldn't ask for anything, it's not ours to have.

This is where the thing Amelia Adamo critizises the most comes in, the individuality and "underground" values come in. She claims we're a selfish generation. Well, what choice is there, when you're shut out of society you have to create your own cliques. It's a human need to belong, Where can you belong when you're not allowed on the conventional arenas? She also has not so nice things to say about the children of the 80s seeing other parts of the world and refusing and grow up. See the previous sentences... It's all explained there.

Actually I feel a bit offended. I've always worked hard. I've worked like a dog just so I could get to work at all, waiting tables, substitute teaching, running my own business, telemarketer, cashier, clerk, all those jobs, except businessowner that people of Amelia Adamos generation wouldn't touch with a stick but still rely on. Who will give her her coctails when she goes out and spends her money if it's not for the masses clinging to every paycheck to pay their subleased apartments?

I'm well aware of the fact that we always have greater sympathies for our "own kind", but I can't shake the feeling of that there is no room for me, and people like me, and in just a few years the people born in the 90s will pass us by and we'll be left behind only because we were too individual to form a common voice to scream at the top of our lungs "we deserve better and we're worthy of a humane life".