THERE is a lot of positive regard in how the emerging protest movement against the return of the Marcoses is fueled by the newfound convictions of the millennial generation.
Pew Research defines the millennials as the generation born after 1980 whose ages are between 19 and 35 by 2016. It is a handy identification of the cultural markers that separate one generation after another. Before them, were my generation, the GenX’ers and before us were our parents, the baby boomers.
There must be some sociological value to the aggrupation of people born in more or less the same era for they share distinct cultural markers as a generation. The postwar baby boomer generation inherited the Cold War while we the GenX’ers had MTV.
What is distinct about the millennials is that they are the first digital natives, they were born or grew up in an era when the internet, as a feature of social life, was already a given and not the stuff of science fiction. They are known as couch potatoes eternally plugged into the matrix or the grid of the virtual.
That is why people were caught by surprise by the large numbers of the young during the two protest rallies against the burial of Marcos last November 25 and 30, 2016. Does this indicate a last quarter storm of sorts or a sudden shift in the young’s political beliefs and practices?
I am more pessimistic than hopeful about the political potential of this generation. Because for every radical millennial out there, there seems to be many more arrogantly conservative millennials spewing out nonsense, no doubt aided by the veneer of anonymity and privilege afforded by their digital screens. There is nothing in the context of this generation that makes them more predisposed to become progressive compared to previous generations.
For instance, just check the threads about the protest actions all over. Quite a few were not just apathetic but were even rejoicing over the general sense of malaise of the studentry that they are a part of. While their counterparts trod the streets with their anger and passion, this set were relieved that only a handful joined the protest in their particular school. How embarrassing it was to the supposed builder and founder of their school – the Marcoses, they reasoned that students should
It seems that for these misinformed millennials, all infrastructure or government projects were legacies of the dictator’s strongman rule. The digital age sure has not erased enduring feudal mindsets as evidenced by the automatic attribution to the supposed benevolence of their great dictator and his family. It never occurred to these people that the wealth and privilege enjoyed by the Marcoses and will continue to enjoy until the 10th generation of their family were paid for by their own and their parents’ taxes.
There are many variants of this troll-like thinking that one begins to wonder if there is some kind of digital disease coursing through the interwebs that make critical faculties shrink or atrophy. Must be all that porn just a URL click away dulling the minds of the young and making instant gratification their default mode.
If I were to make a hasty opinion about this generation’s mettle as a whole, it would be that they are thoroughly self-absorbed and arrogant about their ignorance. They can only look at public issues from the standpoint of their idiosyncratic personal bubbles and scoff at those of their kind beginning to see the troubling events from a larger socio-historical point of view. They are doomed to repeat if not worsen the failures of the previous generations and thus the future is ever so dismal and hopeful.
But come to think of it, I heard the same criticism leveled against my generation by the older set when we were younger. And no doubt, earlier generations have had the same accusation leveled against them by previous ones. It is unfair to make generalizations against the millennials when the earlier generations did not exactly fare well during their time bringing about change.
However, at this crucial stage in our nation’s development, when the remnants of the dictatorship are making a comeback, and the nation is being made to choose between the known abyss of the yellow oligarchy, and the yet uncharted but already revealed indications of violence and iron hand tendencies in the Duterte administration, everyone especially the young will be weighed and counted.
The history of the nation will attest to the fact that for every Eman Lacaba, Liliosa Hilao, and Erika Salang of a generation, there will also be an equivalent number of bureaucrats and technocrats who will work against the change. It is the same then as it is now. Among millennials will be the vanguards of an enduring and relevant radical political consciousness. Unfortunately, there will also be those who will also work tirelessly to preserve the system because of their stupidity and arrogance.
