Generation Shiftless
Written September 4, 2005

I once read in Time Magazine that our generation is “shiftless, lacking ambition – ready and willing to mooch off the successes of baby boomer parents.” That was the gist of the accusation anyway; I lacked the ambition to find the real quote and added quotation marks to my vague memory so it would seem more official, more real. I began with a validation of my own shiftlessness.

We apparently don’t have the will to enthusiastically put our noses to the grindstone, to the sterilized corporate desk, to the binding mortgage papers. Instead we go flouncing around Europe , backpacking and exploring and fucking wildly. We skip from job to job, refusing to assemble anything concrete enough to resemble a Career. We disappear into Asia to teach English. Everywhere, we are pulling up anchors, defying linearity and tradition.

Of course, I over-generalize. There are certainly those who live within acceptable parameters, perhaps landing the insurance underwriting job of their dreams and beginning to build a domestic future. But why is it that so many of us are unsatisfied with these prospects, unwilling to grow roots and begin sprouting into a fine tree, to add ourselves to the Forest of the Forward Future?

It’s tempting to say something trite like, “Oh those rebel-rousing Sum41 punk rockers have opened our eyes to the hideous, goatish realities of the world,” but hey, that might be partially correct. Media representations are beginning to rip and tear at the notion that stability equals happiness: The Office, Office Space, and Turbo-Radical Office Shenanigans all deride the long-term corporate lifestyle as unsatisfying. Many other, non-Office related, entertainment suggests the same, at least in passing. It’s a lot easier to resist settling in life if mass media reflects and supports your suspicions. After all, they know Everything!

Our generation also has access to incredible quantities of information via the Interwebnet. While we’re geographically trapped in our youth, we can still learn about global culture and connect with people who’ve really experienced it, and opportunity begins to spread out like a delicious banquet. We discover that alternatives exist beneath the surface of smug advertising and the illusion of freedom. We discover that everything beyond the bare necessities of survival can be superfluous, if we can only make ourselves Not Care. One of the great lies of our time is that we don’t stand a goddamn chance without our manufactured conveniences.

I think Time Magazine got it wrong – we don’t lack ambition; on the contrary, we’re zealous to avoid the pit trap of a comfortable, dull existence that ensnared many of our parents. To many, it may seem irresponsible to avoid financing for the future, to not take career prospects seriously, to reject a stable credit history. It may seem crazy to rip out our anchors and tour the world, writing our life stories, without a cushy home base to return to; to live without a solid plan for the future. In the minds of the established status quo, living without planning is an indication of imminent failure.

But to a generation raised on multitasking in a world that moves faster than humanity has ever dreamt of, perhaps planning is no longer a prerequisite for success. Maybe we’ve learnt to successfully improvise rushed decisions, to survive on a diverse range of skills bred from a life of instability, to actually follow our hearts and dreams instead of scraping along in the fields like peasants past. We can run the burgeoning, nebulous, unpredictable information economy from Thailand, from Tibet, from Canada, from wherever we want to be. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be the first to thrive shiftlessly, without a plan, without an anchor to hold us in our proper place. Maybe we’re learning to be happy again.

Written just days before I leave to teach English in South Korea. Correlation? Hells yeah.