Generation X and Y: Happiness
This morning in class, as an effort to get the students thinking about John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarian philosophy, I asked them to make a list of five things they need to be happy. It could be as abstract as “freedom” and as concrete as “food”, I said. Then they were to rank them and turn to a neighbor to compare. I expected at least some major differences in rankings and/or happiness-needs. Take a minute to mentally do the exercise on your own: below the fold, I’ll talk about the results.
The students in my class belong to “Generation Y”, young people who have never had to use a rotary phone and for whom the Internet has always been an existing reality. (I can remember first seeing the sluggish Netscape Navigator at the US Naval Academy in the EE department, and going to a network room where the shrieks and whistles of the dialup tones were constant.)
In that sense, at least, I’m an old fogey to them–though I’m sure some of my readers will say, “Hey, I used punchcards and coded in FORTRAN when it was cool!” Okay, FORTRAN was never cool. But that’s beside the point.
The results of my mini survey showed that the students mostly seemed to agree on the most important things and their priority. I, as a Gen-X-er, was thinking in pretty individual terms, about my own freedoms, ability to be compensated, pursue my dreams, etc. Them?
1. Love
2. Family
3. Friends
Cell phones also came pretty high up in the list. “Freedom” got added on after we went through the entire class’s brainstorming. They did see the possibility of conflict between aims of happiness, though, so in that sense, the small task was a success. So, too, was the discussion about whether Mill’s idea of human sympathy as a motivator is too optimistic. Seeing the world through another generation’s eyes is yet another benefit to teaching.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I always like your generational writing and observations. I had a college-aged assistant a summer ago and came up against some of the same issues. I’ve never known someone to whom love-family-friends were so important.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Hey, thanks! It’s interesting to me because, at 29, I’m probably only 10 years older than these students, on average. It doesn’t seem that much, sometimes–but then I ask these kinds of questions and am amazed.
Obviously, those things are very important to me, too–but I don’t know that they’d be the first things I would say if asked that question. “Freedom” would probably be top.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I tried your experiment (not cheating) and immediately came up with:
1. family
2. love
After a little thought - and almost putting down food - I added
3. confidence
4. language (the means to express and communicate)
Then, after much more thought, I added
5. food
I didn’t add shelter because I figured with family and love I’d have somewhere to go. Food I added because well, right now, food is just so important to me. Love can keep your warm at night, but it can’t fill a belly.
I’m 31, but it sounds like I’m fitting in more with your students. Except that I could never imagine putting down cell phone. Then again, I remember life long before cell phones and in-home internet access. They’re a big part of my life, but absent from most of my fondest memories.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Oh, and a question: do you think the difference between your and their answers is generational (X vs. Y) or age? By this I mean, in ten years, will your students have the same answers they do now, or will they look more like yours? I’m just thinking that at 19 years old, one might be a lot closer to one’s family or friends - in the sense that you might be more dependent on them, or the time in which you were together is still pretty fresh. By the time you’re 30, if you’ve moved away from home, started over in new cities, gone through cycles of friends - those things might not seem *as* present.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Hafidha, that’s true about age as well. I must admit that I may also be on the extreme of GenX personalities of individuality and freedom. Also, I tend to think more abstractly than a lot of people, so that may have something to do with it.
It’ll be interesting to see how their values change as they age. (Though as they are typical college students, I did hear one person say “beer” while working through the exercise!)
March 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I know that I would have given the typical genx answers in my 20’s. But having children and being married 10 years now has caused a very deep appreciation for family and society in general. In fact, it has caused me to see their fundamental necessity in sustaining me (epistemologically, physically, socially, etc.).
When I look back at my youth of independence, I used to naively think that I struck out on my own and forded my path to where I am. But after experiencing the intricacies of familial relationships and social fabric in general, I now naively realize that there was a very large social mesh that allowed me to ‘pretend’ like I was independent.
I look at the 20-somethings (who I counsel and work with) and get the ‘isn’t it cute’ feeling when I see them trying to will themselves to believe that they act, feel and think independently of their family relationships and society at large (even if they are completely devoid of family relationships). It’s the same feeling I get when my youngest daughter (2 years old) refuses to hold our hand and intentionally walks two paces away when in public. It’s very cute when they’re two.
March 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I think there’s a distinction here, between recognizing your interdependence with others and your family’s influence upon you, and the role that family and others play in your happiness.
This kind of a list exercise can’t get at the nuances involved, but I think that one can–and here I speak on my own behalf, really–be devoted to one’s wife, family, friends, and deeply indebted to how they shape you, for good or ill, and still maintain a sense of self that is apart from them. The reason “family” and “love” don’t appear at the top of my list for things I need to be happy is that I’ve learned to find happiness regardless of how others treat me, or my relationship with them (not in a blithe “I don’t care” sort of way, mind you).
And so, while I don’t think I am independent of others, I do think there’s a sense in which, as Hafidha points out, as you age, you learn to find a center that is not so deeply enmeshed in others, but without losing your other-focusedness.
At least that’s where I am at 29. Check with me when I’m 39 and have children to see if I find my words now to be “cute” and naive.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Yes, that is a good distinction to make. But it seems to assume some kind of Platonic view of happiness. I would tentatively argue that happiness has types and the type of happiness I experience from a thoroughly enmeshed social history (including one’s marriage and children) is qualitatively different than happiness that I might have experienced as a single person (as well as specific sadess too).
The happiness I might have had as a single person is epistemically inaccessible to me. While I might conjecture about the things that might have made me happy as a single person, those are only guesses. And as we all experience, many times the things we believe will render happiness often turn out to be bunk.
This to say that happiness, like truth, is so contextually entrenched that I’m fairly uncomfortable talking about it separate from that context. CK, I think your personal example speaks very plainly about what we would like to say (i.e. my happiness is not entirely indebted to my exact circumstances). However, I think the desire to think about one’s ‘happiness independent of my formation and history’ must be maintained with a sense of its artificial form of argument.
I may be reading your initial comments wrong, but you almost seem to expect some kind of universal value to be the recognized source of happiness independent of circumstance. If this is correct, then that would be entirely too Platonic for me. I think the answers given by your students affirm the body, the lived experience, and the centrality of experience to their own thinking and ‘feeling’.
Given this, I’m skeptical that one can have a cool separation from the formative factors of their current happiness and some ideal of happiness that could have happened despite their historical situation. Basically, I have no epistemic route into historically independent occasions to which my life might have wandered given different decisions, cohorts, etc.
So for now, I would not be willing to make the distinction that you make. Although I think it is good of you to point it out and obviously a good distinction through which to think (how’s that for not ending the sentence in a preposition)
March 19th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
[...] in my thought that I’m aware of, subtly, but that require more propositional attention. Dru’s comment about happiness is one instance of [...]