I sat down this Sunday afternoon as I have been doing for a good part of a year now, to watch This Week In Startups with Jason Calacanis, which has grown to become one of my favorite shows online or offline. Almost immediately he launched into a rant which I have discussed with some of my friends in details occasionally; about generation Y and how we have no fire, no motivation. I’ve tried to transcribe his rant from the episode below:
“Young people started to care about the environment, the world, their own fulfillment, which is great; I really think everybody should be fulfilled and have a great life. But then they got rid of competition in schools. When you went to school you had a winner and a loser when you played basketball or baseball or chess. No participation badges, and so they call this generation the trophy generation. They are people who never lost in their lives, and they were told participation is okay. Let me tell you something very clearly. Participation means ungats, NOTHING, nada, you get nothing in life for participating; it means ZERO, squadoosh, nothing. The fact that you show up for work every day means nothing. If you kick ass at work, if you succeed, if you work harder than the people around you, and you make yourself more valuable, then you've won, and you're better than them, and that is a good thing. You should be competitive with the people around you. You should try to beat the people around you, you should try to dominate the people around you, you should try to win and be successful in life. Participation means nothing, your fulfillment means nothing, nobody cares if you’re fulfilled, nobody cares if you participated, and you were lied too. There is no trophy in life for participation, except your tombstone, that’s your participation trophy. Congratulations you got a tombstone; and it’s not even going to be that big when you get it by the way, and nobody is going to remember who you are or what you did. This is the reason why America is absolutely tanking….Being successful, making money, and being powerful will let you do more good in the world, then being lame and getting nowhere in your career, and having no ambition.”
I agree with pretty much everything he says. People in my generation need to get off their asses, and start doing something with their lives. I have friends who sit there with idealistic views talking about how we need to correct all of these social ills. But they have no ambition; they have fundamental misconceptions in how the world works. My family moved to America in the mid 1990s and I remember the apartment we lived in while my mom went through her residency, when she did residency there was no 88 hour work week rule. I remember when my mom had 30+ hour calls. I hear stories from my parents about how they grew up, and stories from my dad about how he worked in his father’s factory as a child.
I think that members of my generation need to grow up and realized that life isn’t easy; as Rocky says in the movie Rocky Balboa
“The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that! I'm always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain't gonna have a life.”
We need to return to the work ethic of our parents, we need to stop slacking off. As a member of gen y it disgusts me that I have to agree with him when he says generation x will go down as the best generation of all time, and gen y will be a bunch of lame slackers.
So to my brethren in generation y and a reminder to myself, we need to get off our asses and set a fire under it.
Signing Off
Mohammad Arfeen
