< You say that a lot of millennials never really matured and I understand what you mean but I don't agree with phrasing: a lot of millennials saw their parents working themselves silly even though they already had more comfort and wealth than 17th century noblemen. And the question the millennial generation has been asking is 'what is the point of all this "progress" if life still feels like suffering?'
> Yeah, you're not totally wrong, but the point is continued progress, continued human evolution, extending human society into a multiplanetary species. That should be the goal of our civilizaitonal output. We feel lost because we're one of the first generations without a clear purpose.
> The purpose for people in the late 1800s and early 20th century was to civilize the world. To spread western ideas to uplift all the non-westerns and give them a better standard of life, so that all of humanity could progress. Then in the early/mid 20th century the goal was winning world wars for our nation states and regions. Then, even for boomers, who are depicted as selfish, the goal was to destroy communism (or if you were born in Russia, the goal was to spread communism and destroy capitalism).
> But by 1990, when the oldest millennials were just 10 years old, the cold war ended, and there was no clear purpose beyond just working and making money and engaging in various hobbies. The lack of pressure made us lazy and listless. It's why the last era for really good music was the early 90s, and why everything has sucked since then despite some rare moments of brilliance here and there.
> I'm not saying boomers were right about everything, but they basically lived normal lives. Some of them went into the corporate world, a lot of them just worked blue collar jobs. Plenty of them started their own businesses for themselves. While more racially homogenous, they were more economically diverse. For their children, they beat the drum that you had to go to university