{"id":471,"date":"2016-07-28T16:02:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T16:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=471"},"modified":"2016-07-28T16:02:04","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T16:02:04","slug":"millennials-wont-survive-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"Why Millennials Won\u2019t Survive the Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span>ihir\u2019s heart is pounding in his ears as he scrambles down the street he has lived on for three years. The zombies are closing in \u2013 he can hear their unwieldy march in the background \u2013 and he has no idea where to go. Is the way to the main road past this bhajiwalla?\n\nSuddenly, there is a piercing scream behind him. Damn, they\u2019ve got Sia, his next-door neighbour. Her death was certain the moment she paused to consult Apple Maps for an escape route: When have those ever worked?\n\nWith a sinking feeling in his stomach, Mihir realises his 4G connection is not working yet. Shit, he thinks, I should just have inserted the SIM card on my own instead of waiting for the service provider\u2019s guys to turn up and do it. His Vibrams are not helping either. Ought to have put them to an actual road test, instead of the treadmill. Out of nowhere, a female zombie materialises on the road ahead, dawdling toward him. His first thought is to take a picture for #latergram, then his survival instincts take over. Oh no! In his rush to escape, he\u2019s also left behind his $24,000 <\/p>Z.E.R.O. kit<\/a>. But hey, he thinks, all is not lost, at least I didn\u2019t leave without my emergency beard trimmer…\n\nMihir will not survive a zombie apocalypse. Mihir is a millennial. Don\u2019t be like Mihir.\n\nMihir is also a dilettante, or \u201ca person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge\u201d. The dilettante millennial or Generation X or Y or whatever classification we\u2019ve chosen for the post-liberalisation generation, is exposed to so many stimuli, but is completely unable to create anything of consequence. A generation of privileged young people, capable of transacting, of buying things easily \u2013 and just as easily discarding them \u2013 but not fixing them.\n\nI base my opinion on the scientific method of a dipstick survey of the people around me. But I am not the only one who finds young people to be entitled little know-it-alls who are less than invested in learning new things or improving upon a skill. We now know<\/a> that youngsters need to take their pants to a tailor to sew on a button. In Britain, they\u2019ve earned the moniker \u201clost generation\u201d \u2013 a term previously reserved for the men who died during World War I \u2013 because they can no longer<\/a> repair their appliances. So dire is the situation that we realise youngsters can\u2019t even \u201cname<\/a> a single star in the night sky\u201d or \u201cdry clothes on a clothesline\u201d.\n

We are a world of seven billion humans who depend on a couple of thousand innovators, researchers, technologists, artists, scientists and sports people to provide answers to all our problems.<\/blockquote>\nOf course all of this tut-tutting at the young is part of tradition \u2013 what sort of an older person would I be if I didn\u2019t wring my hands over \u201caaj kal ke bache\u201d? But all of this would be venting if it weren\u2019t so frighteningly true. A young man I know has all his work shirts dry-cleaned so that he is spared the chore of having to wash them. A colleague\u2019s mother, who lives in another city, was aghast when she visited her daughter and found that she did not even own a set of tools with which she could tighten the screws on her utensils. This colleague\u2019s friend moved a couple of houses: In each house, the permanent fixture was a set of framed posters resting on the floor, awaiting a carpenter who could come and hang them on the wall\u2026\n\nA couple of generations back, some of us would at least be able to fix our bikes or make a piece of utilitarian furniture with our hands. I doubt any of us now know anything except how to replace a faulty bike by paying someone to collect our junk.\n\nCome to think of it, I used to pride myself on an active sort of dilettantism that helped expose me to a variety of things that I may or may not choose to pursue an interest in. For my part, I had the gumption of pulling apart quite a few clocks, radios, and putting them all back together. Why, as a teenager, I even pulled apart my father\u2019s old bike \u2013 with not so pleasant results.\n\nBut at least I tinkered. I did, and continue to, read a manual or two. And because of that, I have more than enjoyed the ability to be able to diagnose when something goes wrong with a gadget, without having to fling it in the nearest dustbin. Was this a result of the lack of many distractions that today\u2019s young people have around them? When I was younger, there wasn\u2019t a Steve Jobs around to offer me the idiot-proof nirvana of an iPhone. Nor did I feel the pressure of posting a video of myself taking apart my watch on social media for likes and shares from my friends in ether.\n\nWe are a world of seven billion humans who depend on a couple of thousand innovators, researchers, technologists, artists, scientists and sports people to provide answers to all our problems. The world has become even more concentrated and divided between a different kind of haves and have-nots. The haves are the ones who design the latest algos for search or driverless cars or space travel and the have-nots are the suckers for all these inventions by the brilliant minds at work.\n\nThere is an interesting book<\/a> by Mathew Crawford titled The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good<\/em>. It\u2019s a treatise of sorts for the post-Pirsig generation where \u201cvalue\u201d and quality definitions have seen the most dramatic changes witnessed in the history of mankind. The book glorifies (in case the title didn\u2019t make it clear enough) the power of \u201cgetting your hands dirty\u201d. Of understanding beyond the surface, of not just being a passive consumer, but a sort of a creator of things, even if it means the smallest of increments.\n\nThis is perhaps the only hope for the generation we are now breeding, a generation of passive consumers who learn how to navigate the newest devices, yet are completely helpless when the device in question fails. GPS is a classic case study. There is very little interest left in understanding the neighbourhoods beyond our immediate surroundings, if we can\u2019t reduce them to points on a map.\n\nBut we already know what happens to people who reduce their neighbourhoods to map pins. Those people get chewed up by zombies.\n\nEdited by Karanjeet Kaur<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations. We\u2019ve bred a generation of young people who can buy and discard things but can no longer fix them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Millennials Won\u2019t Survive the Apocalypse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Congratulations. 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